Nigeria, a Paradox

Nigeria is a paradox. The land is rich in natural resources but a large percentage of her citizens are poor. She is blessed with crude oil in the South-South, solid mineral in the North Central, cocoa in the West and several food crops in the North. Bad governance, which has manifested through corruption, is responsible for the poor economic performance of the country. Nigeria has been unable to translate the huge natural resources at her disposal to the improvement of her citizens’ living standard. Sixty-nine percent of over 100 million Nigerians are living within the poverty bracket. “Nigeria is perhaps the best known example of the African paradox.

She is a country which has struggled with the development process over the last 57 years of her independence. As the 6th largest producer of oil in the world, she has earned more than half a trillion dollars in oil export since the discovery of that commodity in the South-South region of this country where we are gathered today. Unfortunately, the massive revenue from oil has been a source of enormous sorrow to citizens due to poor government by our political elite over the many decades since its discovery.”Furthermore,  “Nigeria has therefore tragically failed to translate her rich resource endowment to improvement in the standard of living of her citizens hence we today have 69 percent of over 100 million of our citizens in the poverty bracket, according to the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

The poor governance or its more virulent manifestation, public corruption, is of course the fundamental reason for Nigeria’s poor economic performance despite our globally acknowledged economic potentials to have become not just one of the largest economies of the world, but in fact, one of the most prosperous of those countries. There is no better saying of the governance failure in our nation than the relatively unchanged structure of the economy of Nigeria since our independence and it is the rapid change of the structure of an economy that determines the level of economic growth, development and prosperity that would happen.

In our case, it has remained relatively unchanged. Asian economies have experienced significant growth in economic prosperity where countries in Africa have failed to develop economically. African countries need to search for other sources of development in order to improve the poor. At 48 percent of the continent’s population surviving on a mere $1.25 a meal, it is urgent that the economies of Africa should find new sources of growth to the present crop of the poor.

Growing up as a child, I was told that youths are the leaders of tomorrow in Nigeria but right now the old, greedy politicians are still ruling and carting away our resources to foreign land.

It's a wake-up call for Nigeria to invest in technology, improve agriculture, train manpower, shun nepotism, tribalism and neglect the act of corruption in public offices. It is then that Nigeria’s natural resources will be a blessing instead of a curse.

About the Author

Gilbert James is a Geography and planning graduate of University of Jos. He is a Land Surveyor and CEO of WILLYJAY Events Consult Limited. Also the founder of Luizjay Global Entrepreneurs. He collaborated with Adaoha Foundation Care Centre for Women and Children to provide free medical services to internally displace persons in Kuchingoro and partnered with Hope Foundation to teach teenagers leadership and Entrepreneur skills during summer holidays at Famak British School, Asokoro

He can be contacted via 08036146731 or jaygilbert2000@yahoo.com