Colonisation, Globalisation and the Nigerian Built Environment

Abstract

The paper sought to ascertain the factors that are responsible for foreign inputs in the Nigerian built environment. The premise for this clarification is that globalisation has become the banner under which most foreign inputs in local scenes are classified in spite of other sources, application of this classification to a country like Nigeria, a former colony which has had a long history of having foreign inputs in her built environment shows that there is a mixture of what comes under globalisation and colonisation. The study shows that for the most part, the prevalent practice of housing provision for government workers, which is government’s central intervention method, continued to derive from colonial antecedents. And that for a nation which already has high preference for foreign inputs, as evidenced by foreign domination of the construction industry, forces of globalisation may easily swallow much of the domestic industry in the built environment. Though, globalisation also makes best practices in the built environment available to the nation.

KEYWORDS: Globalisation, FDI-Foreign direct investment, LDC-Less developed countries, Comparative advantage, WTO- World trade organisation, Colonisation.