Scenarios changed significantly with the oil boom of the 1970s, as the discovery of huge oil and gas reserves in the tactically significant sub-Saharan nation turned its fortunes overnight. The windfall changed Nigeria's farming landscape into an enormous oil field crisscrossed by more than 7,000 km of pipelines linking 6,000 oil wells, 2 refineries, many flow stations and export terminals. The colossal investments in the sector paid off, with informal price quotes recommending Abuja generated more than $600 billion in petrodollars in the last years alone.
Regrettably, the obsession with non-renewables over all other sectors of the economy ultimately turned Nigeria's advantage into a bane. Newly found wealth generated political instability and enormous corruption in government circles, and the nation was lease asunder by decades of violent civil war and succeeding military coups. Agriculture was among the very first casualties of the oil routine, and by the 1990s, cultivation accounted for simply 5% of GDP. Farming modernisation and assistance continued to remain short on the list of nationwide concerns as large stretches of rural Nigeria slowly plunged into hardship and food deficiency. Deforestation, soil disintegration and commercial pollution even more hastened the down-spiral of agriculture to the point where it ended up as a subsistence activity.
The fall of Nigerian agriculture coincided with the collapse of its macroeconomic and human development signs. With income circulation concentrated on a few urban pockets, the majority of rural Nigeria was left reeling under huge hardship, joblessness and food lacks. An expanding urban-rural divide triggered social discontent and mass migration into towns and cities. Arranged metropolitan crime became as real a security risk as militancy in the Niger Delta region. Nigeria dropped to the bottom in world economic rankings and Africa's most populated country got the unhappy difference of having more than half (54%) of its 148 million people living in abject hardship. The World Bank created the term "Nigerian Paradox" particularly to explain the special condition of extreme underdevelopment and hardship in a nation overflowing with resources and potential. The nation was ranked 80th in a 2007 UNDP poverty survey covering 108 nations.
The shift to democratic civilian guideline at the end of the last century paved the way for a passionate program of economic reform and restructuring. Abuja's urgency for inclusive growth was much in proof in the adoption of an ambitious plan designed to reverse patterns and jumpstart a stagnating economy. The Vision 2020 document embraced under former president O Obsanjo lays out broad parameters for sustainable development with the particular goal of instating Nigeria as an international economic superpower in a time-bound manner. The 2020 goals remain in addition to Nigeria's dedication to the UN Millennial Statement of 2000 that proposes universal basic human rights by 2015.
The realisation of these allied and intertwined objectives depends totally on Abuja's ability to bring about inclusive growth by means of an entrepreneurial revolution, while concurrently correcting massive infrastructural scarcities and administrative abnormalities. Economies generally begin broadening with a preliminary farming revolution: The case of Nigeria nevertheless requires agriculture to be part of a larger enterprise revolution that effectively leverages the nation's substantial resources and human capital.
The complexity of problems included here is reflected in the truth that the National Hardship Elimination Programme of 2001 identifies farming and rural advancement as its primary location of interest. The fact that all advancement needs to start from the bottom-up can not be overemphasised in the context of Nigeria, where a farming boom can make sure not just food supply and exports but also offer commercial raw materials and a market for products.
Agricultural expansion is crucial to financial prosperity throughout Western Africa, thinking about the area's debilitating poverty levels. A 2003 conference arranged by NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa's Advancement) in South Africa highly advised the promotion of cassava cultivation as a hardship elimination tool throughout the continent. The suggestion is based on a strategy that concentrates on markets, economic sector involvement and research to drive a pan-African cassava initiative. What was when a rural staple and famine-reserve food has become a lucrative money crop!
The NEPAD effort has strong significance for Nigeria, the world's largest cassava manufacturer. With its big rural population and substantial farmlands, the country boasts unique opportunities of transforming the humble cassava to a commercial basic material for both domestic and global markets. There is a growing and well-justified belief that the crop can transform rural economies, spur quick financial and industrial development and help disadvantaged communities. While production grew gradually in between 1980 and 2002 from 10,000 MT to over 35,000 MT, there is scope for considerable further boost by bringing more land under cassava growing. Nigeria should take the lead not just in establishing much better production, gathering and processing technologies, but likewise in finding brand-new uses and markets for what is undoubtedly a wonder crop. Nigeria stands to make giant strides towards inclusive and sustainable development simply through the intelligent and judicious promotion of cassava farming.
The following are a few of the most urgent requirements for an effective transformation in Nigerian agriculture:
o Active promotion and establishment of agro-based industries that generate work, sustain local food requirements and motivate exports.
o Reliable steps to modernise and diversify the farming economy as a means of upholding entrepreneurial growth in ancillary sectors.
o Institution of a tariff system that promotes local fruit and vegetables versus less expensive imports, together with the removal of institutional barriers versus agricultural success.
o Subsidies on technologically sophisticated farm devices injection molder and practices that assist boost productivity with no unfavorable ecological negative effects.
o An umbrella hardship reduction program designed particularly to promote agrarian reforms while concurrently enhancing the lifestyle in rural neighborhoods.
o Improved access to agricultural business loans through a network of regulated loan provider considerate to farming truths.
o Grownup education programs developed to assist Nigerian farmers update to locally pertinent however modern-day approaches of growing, marketing and circulation.
o Motivation of both public and economic sector agricultural research targeted at correcting technological restrictions faced by local farming communities.
If Nigeria's farming capacity is massive, it is partly because more than 90% of its 91 million hectares of total land area is arable. While soil fertility is typically estimated on the lower side, the UN Food and Farming Organisation (FAO) forecasts medium to high yields throughout the country with ideal utilisation of resources. Combined with Nigeria's significant rural population typically involved in agriculture, this projection translates to gigantic potential customers in regards to agricultural performance and, by extension, financial resurgence. For a nation emerging out of a distressed past and struggling to achieve social, political and economic stability, the suitables of agricultural and entrepreneurial transformation hold critically important. Because they are also inextricably linked in the Nigerian context, the nation's future position on the world financial stage depends literally on the bounty of its harvest.