AbstractThe performance of the Western Nigeria Development Corporation and its separate projects shows the limitations of profit and profitability as a basis for evaluation. Judged on the basis of profit most projects have been failures. The objectives stated for the corporation specify the fostering of economic development, but these are expressed in the law in such general terms that they do not provide alternative criteria on the basis of which the Corporation can be measured, and the Economic Plan of Western Nigeria in 1955 was similarly unspecific. The article argues that objectives should be specified in more precise terms, and that Corporations should be required to operate, thereafter, on business principles with unprofitable services paid for by government if provided at government's behest.