Scenarios altered drastically with the oil boom of the 1970s, as the discovery of vast oil and gas reserves in the tactically considerable sub-Saharan country turned its fortunes overnight. The windfall changed Nigeria's agricultural landscape into a massive oil field crisscrossed by more than 7,000 km of pipelines linking 6,000 oil wells, two refineries, countless circulation stations and export terminals. The enormous investments in the sector settled, with informal quotes suggesting Abuja raked in more than $600 billion in petrodollars in the last decade alone.
Regrettably, the fascination with non-renewables over all other sectors of the economy eventually turned Nigeria's boon into a bane. Newfound wealth generated political instability and massive corruption in government circles, and the nation was rent asunder by years of personal care violent civil war and succeeding military coups. Farming was one of the first casualties of the oil regime, and by the 1990s, growing represented simply 5% of GDP. Farming modernisation and support continued to stay short on the list of national concerns as huge stretches of rural Nigeria slowly plunged into hardship and food shortage. Logging, soil disintegration and industrial pollution even more sped up the down-spiral of agriculture to the point where it ended up as a subsistence activity.
The fall of Nigerian agriculture accompanied the collapse of its macroeconomic and human development indications. With earnings circulation focused on a few metropolitan pockets, most of rural Nigeria was left reeling under enormous hardship, unemployment and food lacks. An expanding urban-rural divide triggered social unrest and mass migration into towns and cities. Organised urban criminal activity became as genuine a security threat as militancy in the Niger Delta area. Nigeria plummeted to the bottom in world financial rankings and Africa's most populous nation acquired the unhappy distinction of having more than half (54%) of its 148 million people residing in abject hardship. The World Bank coined the term "Nigerian Paradox" specifically to describe the distinct condition of severe underdevelopment and hardship in a nation teeming with resources and potential. The nation was ranked 80th in a 2007 UNDP poverty survey covering 108 countries.
The shift to democratic civilian rule at the end of the last century led the way for a passionate programme of economic reform and restructuring. Abuja's seriousness for inclusive growth was much in proof in the adoption of an enthusiastic plan designed to reverse patterns and start a stagnating economy. The Vision 2020 document adopted under former president O Obsanjo sets out broad specifications for sustainable development with the particular objective of instating Nigeria as a worldwide economic superpower in a time-bound way. The 2020 goals 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 objectives depends entirely on Abuja's ability to produce inclusive development by ways of an entrepreneurial transformation, while all at once remedying massive infrastructural lacks and administrative anomalies. Economies typically begin expanding with an initial agricultural transformation: The case of Nigeria nevertheless requires agriculture to be part of a bigger enterprise transformation that efficiently leverages the country's comprehensive resources and human capital.
The intricacy of issues involved here is reflected in the reality that the National Hardship Eradication Programme of 2001 identifies agriculture and rural development as its primary location of interest. The reality that all advancement needs 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 basic materials and a market for products.
Agricultural growth is important to financial success throughout Western Africa, considering the region's debilitating poverty line. A 2003 conference organised by NEPAD (New Collaboration for Africa's Advancement) in South Africa strongly prompted the promotion of cassava cultivation as a hardship removal tool throughout the continent. The recommendation is based on a method that concentrates on markets, private sector participation and research to drive a pan-African cassava initiative. What was once a rural staple and famine-reserve food has actually become a financially rewarding cash crop!
The NEPAD initiative has strong importance for Nigeria, the world's biggest cassava producer. With its large rural population and substantial farmlands, the country boasts unrivalled chances of transforming the modest cassava to an industrial basic material for both domestic and worldwide markets. There is a growing and well-justified belief that the crop can change rural economies, spur quick financial and industrial development and help disadvantaged communities. While production grew steadily in between 1980 and 2002 from 10,000 MT to over 35,000 MT, there is scope for significant further increase by bringing more land under cassava cultivation. Nigeria must take the lead not only in developing much better production, gathering and processing innovations, however also in discovering new usages and markets for what is unquestionably a marvel crop. Nigeria stands to make huge strides towards inclusive and sustainable development merely through the intelligent and cautious promo of cassava farming.
The following are some of the most urgent requirements for a successful revolution in Nigerian farming:
o Active promotion and establishment of agro-based industries that create work, sustain regional food requirements and encourage exports.
o Efficient actions to modernise and diversify the agricultural economy as a means of strengthening entrepreneurial growth in ancillary sectors.
o Organization of a tariff system that promotes local produce versus less expensive imports, together with the elimination of institutional barriers against agricultural profitability.
o Aids on technologically sophisticated farm devices and practices that assist improve productivity with no negative eco-friendly adverse effects.
o An umbrella poverty relief programme created particularly to promote agrarian reforms while simultaneously improving the quality of life in rural communities.
o Boosted access to farming business loans through a network of regulated lending institutions considerate to farming realities.
o Adult education programmes created to assist Nigerian farmers update to in your area pertinent but modern approaches of cultivation, marketing and distribution.
o Motivation of both public and economic sector agricultural research aimed at correcting technological restraints dealt with by local farming neighborhoods.
If Nigeria's agricultural potential is huge, it is partly due to the fact that more than 90% of its 91 million hectares of overall land area is arable. While soil fertility is generally estimated on the lower side, the UN Food and Farming Organisation (FAO) predicts medium to high yields across the country with optimum utilisation of resources. Combined with Nigeria's considerable rural population generally associated with agriculture, this projection translates to gigantic prospects in regards to farming efficiency and, by extension, financial resurgence. For a country emerging out of a distressed past and having a hard time to obtain social, political and economic stability, the suitables of agricultural and entrepreneurial transformation hold vitally important. Since they are likewise inextricably linked in the Nigerian context, the nation's future position on the world economic stage depends literally on the bounty of its harvest.