Scenarios changed 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 massive oil field crisscrossed by more than 7,000 km of pipelines connecting 6,000 oil wells, 2 refineries, numerous circulation stations and export terminals. The enormous investments in the sector paid off, with informal price quotes recommending Abuja generated more than $600 billion in petrodollars in the last decade alone.
Regrettably, the obsession with non-renewables over all other sectors of the economy eventually turned Nigeria's boon into a bane. Newly found wealth spawned political instability and massive corruption in government circles, and the nation was rent asunder by decades of violent civil war and succeeding military coups. Farming was one of the very first casualties of the oil routine, and by the 1990s, cultivation represented just 5% of GDP. Farming modernisation and support continued to remain short on the list of national priorities as vast stretches of rural Nigeria slowly plunged into poverty and food shortage. Logging, soil disintegration and industrial contamination even more accelerated the down-spiral of agriculture to the point where it ended up as a subsistence activity.
The fall of Nigerian farming accompanied the collapse of its macroeconomic and human development indications. With earnings circulation concentrated on a couple of metropolitan pockets, most of rural Nigeria was left reeling under huge poverty, unemployment and food lacks. An expanding urban-rural divide sparked social discontent and mass migration into towns and cities. Organised city criminal activity ended up being as real a security hazard as militancy in the Niger Delta region. Nigeria dropped to the bottom in world financial rankings and Africa's most populous nation acquired the unhappy distinction of having majority (54%) of its 148 million people residing in abject hardship. The World Bank coined the term "Nigerian Paradox" particularly to describe the distinct condition of severe underdevelopment and hardship in a country overflowing with resources and potential. The country was ranked 80th in a 2007 UNDP hardship survey covering 108 countries.
The shift to democratic civilian rule at the end of the last century paved the way for an enthusiastic programme of economic reform and restructuring. Abuja's urgency for inclusive development was much in proof in the adoption of an ambitious plan designed to reverse patterns and boost a stagnating economy. The Vision 2020 file adopted under previous president O Obsanjo sets out broad parameters for sustainable advancement with the specific objective of instating Nigeria as a worldwide economic superpower in a time-bound way. The 2020 objectives are in addition to Nigeria's dedication to the UN Millennial Statement of 2000 that proposes universal standard human rights by 2015.
The realisation of these allied and linked goals depends totally on Abuja's capability to bring about inclusive development by means of an entrepreneurial transformation, while all at once correcting massive infrastructural lacks and administrative anomalies. Economies typically begin expanding with an initial agricultural revolution: The case of Nigeria however calls for farming to be part of a bigger enterprise revolution that efficiently leverages the country's comprehensive resources and human capital.
The complexity of issues involved here is shown in the reality that the National Poverty Removal Programme of 2001 determines farming and rural advancement as its primary area of interest. The fact 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 just food supply and exports but also provide commercial raw materials and a market for products.
Agricultural expansion is crucial to financial prosperity across Western Africa, thinking about the area's crippling poverty line. A 2003 conference arranged by NEPAD (New Collaboration for Africa's Development) in South Africa strongly advised the promotion of cassava cultivation as a poverty obliteration tool across the continent. The suggestion is based on a strategy that focuses on markets, private sector participation and research study to drive a pan-African cassava effort. What was once a rural staple and famine-reserve food has actually ended up being a financially rewarding cash crop!
The NEPAD effort has strong importance for Nigeria, the world's largest cassava manufacturer. With its large rural population and substantial farmlands, the country boasts incomparable chances of changing the simple cassava to a commercial raw material for both domestic and international markets. There is a growing and well-justified belief that the crop can transform rural economies, stimulate rapid financial and commercial growth and assist disadvantaged neighborhoods. While production grew gradually between 1980 and 2002 from 10,000 MT to over 35,000 MT, there is scope for considerable more boost by bringing more land under cassava cultivation. Nigeria should take the lead not just in establishing better production, collecting and processing technologies, but likewise in finding new usages and markets for what is unquestionably a marvel crop. Nigeria stands to make huge strides towards inclusive and sustainable advancement just through the smart and cautious promo of cassava farming.
The following are some of the most immediate requirements for a successful transformation in Nigerian farming:
o Active promo and facility of agro-based markets that produce service provider companies work, sustain local food requirements and encourage exports.
o Efficient actions to modernise and diversify the farming economy as a method of upholding entrepreneurial growth in supplementary sectors.
o Organization of a tariff system that promotes regional fruit and vegetables versus less expensive imports, together with the removal of institutional barriers against farming success.
o Aids on technically advanced farm devices and practices that assist enhance efficiency with no adverse ecological side effects.
o An umbrella poverty alleviation programme created particularly to promote agrarian reforms while all at once enhancing the quality of life in rural neighborhoods.
o Enhanced access to agricultural enterprise loans through a network of regulated loan provider sympathetic to farming truths.
o Adult education programs created to assist Nigerian farmers update to locally pertinent however contemporary approaches of growing, marketing and distribution.
o Motivation of both public and economic sector agricultural research study targeted at fixing technological restraints faced by regional farming neighborhoods.
If Nigeria's agricultural capacity is huge, it is partly because more than 90% of its 91 million hectares of total acreage is arable. While soil fertility is typically estimated on the lower side, the UN Food and Farming Organisation (FAO) anticipates medium to high yields across the nation with optimum utilisation of resources. Combined with Nigeria's substantial rural population typically associated with agriculture, this projection equates to massive prospects in regards to farming productivity and, by extension, economic resurgence. For a country emerging out of a struggling past and having a hard time to attain social, political and economic stability, the suitables of agricultural and entrepreneurial revolution hold essential. Since they are also inextricably connected in the Nigerian context, the country's future position on the world economic stage depends literally on the bounty of its harvest.