| Abstract: | Abstract: The Nigerian commodity marketing boards may have been dissolved far back in 1986, but as long as the export sector of the country's agriculture remains dysfunctional and unproductive, with the authorities unwilling to give it the priority, in practical terms, that it deserves for revival, there is bound to remain lots of hard feeling in the collective psyche of Nigerians, farmers in particular, directed at the Boards for their market intervention activities during the period 1942–86. We argue that the legacy of the Boards' heavy taxes on the export sector of Nigerian agriculture lives on in the form of damaged producer‐incentives reflected by a generally dysfunctional sector. Developing a simple formula that derives from Newbery and Stiglitz (1981) , for the measure of producer benefits of price stabilization, we argue that the Boards' stabilization scheme remains partly to blame for the present poor state of the country's export agriculture. |
