Economic diversification which demands active participation in wide range of sectors, and firmly integrated into different regions, are better able to generate robust growth and great potential to increase Africa’s resilience and contribute to achieving and sustaining long term economic growth and development in the continent
By Benjamin Omoike
Lagos, July 16, 2016 – Nigeria has the potential to transform its economy and become an economic powerhouse in Africa considering its enormous resources, large internal market and strategic coastal locations.
Based on data from the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Nigeria’s gas reserve is about 187 trillion cubic meters, 31.81 billion barrels of crude oil reserve with a population of about 168 million (NPC), the largest in Africa. Nigeria is ranked the 26th largest economy in the world and the largest in Africa, with a GDP of N80.2tn (USD$509.9bn).
There is no doubt that petroleum (crude oil) has contributed substantially to Nigerian revenue sinceNige its discovery in 1956 and more especially, since 1970, when its price was on the upward trend. However, it is a known fact across the globe that for a country to attain growth and development, its economy has to be diversified.
As a matter of fact, there is an urgent need for the Nigerian government to begin looking into diversification of various sectors of the economy so as to attain solid economic growth. A lot of factors support calls for the diversification of Nigeria’s economy with an urgent need to decentralizing concentration on mono-crude oil -economy.
Studies have shown that there exists a positive relationship between economic growth in Nigeria and diversification of other sectors because, when there was proper management of human resources, huge investment and concentration on agriculture, Nigerian economy was recorded to be healthy and vibrant. In those golden years, agriculture offered over 70 percent of Nigeria’s teeming population job opportunities.
The global financial and economic crisis has revealed Africa’s vulnerability to external economic shocks because of Africa’s effort to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
Economic diversification which demands active participation in wide range of sectors, and firmly integrated into different regions, are better able to generate robust growth and great potential to increase Africa’s resilience and contribute to achieving and sustaining long term economic growth and development in the continent.
A significant bottleneck for economic development in many countries of the region is poor physical infrastructure. Essential services such as electric power, water, roads, railways, ports, and communications have been neglected, especially in the rural areas.
Without exaggerating, it is a well-known fact that Nigeria ranks among the most richly endowed nations of the world in terms of natural, mineral and human resources. Nigeria has a variety of both renewable and non-renewable resources, some of which have not yet been effectively tapped. Solar energy, probably the most extensive of the underutilized renewable resources, is likely to remain untapped for some time, and the vast reserves of natural gas produced with crude oil have yet to be fully utilized.
Before the discovery of oil in 1956 in Nigeria, Nigeria was famous in her agrarian economy through which cash crops such as palm produce, cocoa, rubber, timber, ground nuts, were exported, thus making Nigeria a power house in the agro-industry.
Having seen the gross problem caused by the neglect of agriculture and poor human resource management in Nigeria, which have engendered the dwindling of the Nigerian economy, it becomes therefore, necessary to offer some recommendations which will be pivotal to changing the status quo especially in face of the prevailing dwindling circumstances.
Government should partner with media houses to promote agricultural programmes which will inculcate in Nigerian youths the value and importance of agriculture. They should introduce Agricultural Science as an obligatory subject in Secondary Schools and possibly offer students who excel scholarships to universities to boost interest in agriculture
The Nigerian government, at all levels, should urgently create an enabling environment which will favour diversification of the economy. This will de-emphasize a mono-economy system and pay more attention to a heterogeneous economy. Secondly, there is an urgent need to establish a working and functional bank of agriculture or any micro finance bank which will be exclusively for farmers for easy access of soft loans. Government should create a special grant solely for genuine farmers.
It will be important to make agriculture attractive. Government should, as a matter of concern, put in place policies which will favour subsidy for agriculture. The implication is that government should incentivize farmers and subsidize their produce. Also, many farmers in Nigeria are still making use of crude and un-mechanized methods that favour low productivity. Therefore, there is an urgent need to introduce at all levels mechanized system of agriculture to increase productivity and to reduce strenuous human labour.
The Federal Government should revive all the agricultural research institutes, school of agriculture, and reintroduce farm settlements and other river basin authorities to encourage massive production of agricultural produce. Government should endeavour to give scholarships to all those who are interested in studying agriculture to enhance human capital.
Government should discourage politicizing implementation of agricultural projects, especially where some politicians hijack the system against the genuine farmers by creating unnecessary bureaucratic bottlenecks.
Government should partner with media houses to promote agricultural programmes which will inculcate in Nigerian youths the value and importance of agriculture. They should introduce Agricultural Science as an obligatory subject in Secondary Schools and possibly offer students who excel scholarships to universities to boost interest in agriculture.
Government should endeavour to provide intermittently courses, capacity building, trainings and retraining in agriculture for professional development. Government should package programmes in agriculture to be attractive and have the political will to pay attractive salaries to workers.
With all these in place, and with the support of all stakeholders, there is still a possibility of salvaging the Nigerian economy.
