Situations altered significantly with the oil boom of the 1970s, as the discovery of vast oil and gas reserves in the strategically significant sub-Saharan country turned its fortunes overnight. The windfall transformed Nigeria's farming landscape into a gigantic oil field crisscrossed by more than 7,000 km of pipelines linking 6,000 oil wells, two refineries, numerous circulation stations and export terminals. The enormous financial investments in the sector paid off, with unofficial price quotes recommending Abuja generated more than $600 billion in petrodollars in the last years alone.
Regrettably, the fascination with non-renewables over all other sectors of the economy ultimately turned Nigeria's advantage into a bane. Newfound wealth generated political instability and huge corruption in government circles, and the country was rent asunder by decades of violent civil war and successive military coups. Agriculture was one of the first casualties of the oil routine, and by the 1990s, growing accounted for simply 5% of GDP. Farming modernisation and assistance continued to remain short on the list of national top priorities as vast stretches of rural Nigeria slowly plunged into hardship and food shortage. Deforestation, soil erosion and industrial contamination further accelerated the down-spiral of agriculture to the point where it wound up as a subsistence activity.
The fall of Nigerian agriculture coincided with the collapse of its macroeconomic and human advancement indicators. With earnings distribution focused on a couple of urban pockets, most of rural Nigeria was left reeling under massive hardship, joblessness and food shortages. A broadening urban-rural divide stimulated social discontent and mass migration into towns and cities. Arranged metropolitan criminal activity became as genuine a security risk as militancy in the Niger Delta area. Nigeria dropped to the bottom in world economic rankings and Africa's most populous nation got the dissatisfied difference of having over half (54%) of its 148 million people living in abject poverty. The World Bank coined the term "Nigerian Paradox" specifically to explain the unique condition of severe underdevelopment and hardship in a nation teeming with resources and capacity. The country was ranked 80th in a 2007 UNDP poverty study covering 108 nations.
The shift to democratic civilian guideline at the end of the last century paved the way for an enthusiastic programme of economic reform and restructuring. Abuja's seriousness for inclusive development was much in proof in the adoption of an ambitious blueprint created to reverse trends and start a stagnating economy. The Vision 2020 file adopted under previous president O Obsanjo sets out broad parameters for sustainable advancement with the particular goal of instating Nigeria as an international financial superpower in a time-bound way. The 2020 objectives are in addition to Nigeria's commitment to the UN Millennial Statement of 2000 that proposes universal standard human rights by 2015.
The realisation of these allied and linked objectives depends entirely on Abuja's ability to cause inclusive growth by ways of an entrepreneurial revolution, while at the same time correcting huge infrastructural scarcities and administrative abnormalities. Economies typically start expanding with an initial agricultural transformation: The case of Nigeria however requires agriculture to be part of a larger enterprise transformation that efficiently leverages the country's extensive resources and human capital.
The intricacy of issues included here is reflected in the reality that the National Poverty Removal Program of 2001 determines agriculture and rural advancement as its main location of interest. The truth that all advancement has to start from the bottom-up can not be overemphasised in the context of Nigeria, where a farming boom can ensure not simply food supply and exports however also supply commercial basic materials and a market for products.
Agricultural expansion is vital to economic prosperity across Western Africa, considering the region's crippling poverty levels. A 2003 conference arranged by NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa's Development) in South Africa strongly prompted the promotion of cassava growing as a hardship elimination tool across the continent. The recommendation is based on a technique that concentrates on markets, economic sector involvement and research to drive a pan-African cassava effort. What was as soon as a rural staple and famine-reserve food has become a financially rewarding money crop!
The NEPAD initiative has strong importance for Nigeria, the world's largest cassava producer. With its large rural population and extensive farmlands, the country boasts unique chances of transforming the modest cassava to a commercial basic material for both domestic and global markets. There is a growing and well-justified such a good point belief that the crop can change rural economies, spur rapid financial and industrial development and assist disadvantaged communities. While production grew steadily between 1980 and 2002 from 10,000 MT to over 35,000 MT, there is scope for significant additional increase by bringing more land under cassava growing. Nigeria should take the lead not just in establishing better production, harvesting and processing technologies, however also in discovering brand-new usages and markets for what is unquestionably a wonder crop. Nigeria stands to make huge strides towards inclusive and sustainable advancement merely through the smart and judicious promotion of cassava farming.
The following are some of the most immediate requirements for a successful revolution in Nigerian agriculture:
o Active promotion and facility of agro-based markets that generate work, sustain local food requirements and encourage exports.
o Efficient actions to modernise and diversify the farming economy as a means of buttressing entrepreneurial development in secondary sectors.
o Organization of a tariff system that promotes local fruit and vegetables against more affordable imports, together with the removal of institutional barriers against agricultural success.
o Aids on technically advanced farm equipment and practices that help increase efficiency without any adverse ecological adverse effects.
o An umbrella poverty alleviation program created particularly to promote agrarian reforms while at the same time improving the quality of life in rural neighborhoods.
o Boosted access to farming business loans through a network of regulated lending institutions considerate to farming realities.
o Grownup education programmes designed to assist Nigerian farmers update to locally appropriate but modern techniques of cultivation, marketing and circulation.
o Encouragement of both public and private sector agricultural research focused on remedying technological restraints dealt with by local farming neighborhoods.
If Nigeria's agricultural capacity is huge, it is partially because more than 90% of its 91 million hectares of total acreage is arable. While soil fertility is generally estimated on the lower side, the UN Food and Farming Organisation (FAO) anticipates medium to high yields throughout the country with optimal utilisation of resources. Combined with Nigeria's significant rural population traditionally involved in agriculture, this forecast equates to gigantic prospects in terms of agricultural efficiency and, by extension, financial revival. For a country emerging out of a troubled past and struggling to attain social, political and economic stability, the ideals of agricultural and entrepreneurial revolution hold vitally important. Because they are also inextricably linked in the Nigerian context, the country's future position on the world financial stage depends actually on the bounty of its harvest.