Financial Crimes, Primitive Accumulation and the Development of Capitalism in Nigeria

The development of capitalism in Europe and America was preceded and instigated by the imperatives of primitive accumulation in which criminal, bloody, unethical and inhuman methods were adopted to accumulate wealth the investment of which stimulated the Industrial Revolution. This paper presents the thesis that the pervasive elite disposition towards financial crimes in Nigeria constitutes a form of primitive accumulation for investment in the transformation of a pre-capitalist social formation into a capitalist society, effectively utilizing legislations such as the Land Use Act and the financial institutions as the drivers of the processes of dispossession of peasant land and legitimization or laundering of illicit funds. Marxist Political economy is the preferred theoretical and analytical framework for the study. Data gathering was derived mainly from secondary sources and personal observations and the method of data analysis qualitative and historical. The objective of the paper was to critically analyze the implications of financial crimes for economic transformation in Nigeria. It concludes that the upsurge of financial crimes is attributable to the inordinate drive for capital accumulation for the development of capitalism in Nigeria. The significance of the paper lies in its reconceptualisation of financial crimes for a better comprehension of the dynamics of an underdeveloped capitalist society.