Is Nigeria a Rich or Poor Country?
By a correspondent
A reflection on resource availability and potentialities of nigerian economyThis time around, there might be no putting off the matter. Is Nigeria rich or poor? Strange question it might sound - whoever heard of a leading OPEC member being remotely poor?
But rich? With austerity measures in force and stringent currency regulation and import restrictions, it does not sound like people who are not counting their pennies either.
Is it a question of temporary "cash-flow" problems, the type that afflicts the healthiest of firms and nations once in a while and which normally requires steel nerves at the top to overcome?
Is Nigeria a very rich country whose fate depends on how well oil is doing on the international market and whose wealth will dry up the day the last gallon of liquid gold is pumped out of the earth?
Are the current economic problems the result of the oil factor alone or should they be blamed on an imprudent use of the money that was available?
But maybe, most important of all, have the problems been exaggerated? Have temporary "cash-flow" problems been blown into a full scale economic crisis by an international community anxious to demonstrate that Third World countries cannot manage their affairs properly?
Victor Masi the Finance Minister under Shagari appeared to think that commentators on the Nigerian economic situation have been accentuating the negative and not drawing enough attention to the positive, or to use his words, to "the resilient nature" of the economy.
There is no doubt that it is oil that will continue to attract the greatest attention in any discussion on Nigeria, not only because oil has become a very politically sensitive subject, but also because the availability of oil means that things can be done on a large scale.
However it must be obvious now that any realistic long term talk about wealth in Nigeria will have to concentrate on food production and rural development rather than on oil. The size and numbers of Nigeria alone demand that, if the country were dealing with a population of the size of her fellow OPEC members of the Gulf area, there could be hope that all the citizens would become oil millionaires.
For the average Nigerian, however, his dreams and aspirations do not include joining a millionaires club or owning a private jet. For the millionaires and jet-owning group to hope to live in peace with their possessions, some attention will have to be paid to the very humble but legitimate needs of the average Nigerian.
All Nigerians, friends and foes of Nigeria are all agreed that Lagos is an impossible city and virtually an aberration on the face of the earth. That is how come Abuja came into being, and the planners gave careful thought to the factors that make Lagos such a hell-hole and were determined that Abuja should not suffer the same fate.
If Lagos was overcrowded and there was no space to expand, Abuja was selected to provide an almost never-ending space for all, if Lagos was forever being seen as a Yoruba heartland and all non-Yorubas felt like strangers, Abuja was selected deliberately so that no ethnic group will have dominance in the Federal capital.
The fact of the matter, however, is that no matter on how expansive a scale Abuja is planned it is bound to end up in the same miserable state as Lagos unless the rural areas are made tolerably habitable.
For, in vain will the politicians keep on appealing to the young and unemployed to stay away from the cities and urban areas, the influx will continue and the cities will be overrun for as long as the rural areas remain the "backwoods" and those who live there get the unmistakable feeling that their welfare is unimportant to the powers that rule the country.
People will enthusiastically respond to the slogan of "Green Revolution" at political rallies and it will make impressive reading in party programmes, but it will remain essentially a programme and not a political feel more attracted to the land than to sleeping under the fly-overs in the cities.
That day will come when the smallest village has a supply of pipe borne water and electricity and is linked to the nearest big town by a good motorable road, the day will come even faster if a farmer in his farm house in the middle of nowhere can take a telephone and talk to his friends in another part of the country or simply ask his bank manager a few questions from his own living room as he looks through the window on his field of corn or grazing animals.
It is because farming in Nigeria for most people is still more than the back-breaking job it is, that the 'Green Revolution' has never taken off fully in spite of the best political will.
It is not just the mirage of golden opportunities in the cities that lures the young and unemployed to the urban areas, they do not want to walk miles every morning to fetch water nor do they want to feel totally cut off from the rest of the world simply because they have chosen to grow food for the population and what is more important, they want to be able to get to the nearest big town without going through the obstacle courses that constitute the roads in the rural areas currently.
If the planners built the rural road networks, and provided water and electricity to the rural areas, they will soon discover that it will not take any enticing to make people decide that they prefer to stay in the rural places.
This point has been well illustrated in the developed countries where the drift has been from the urban to the rural area and where a rural dweller, far from spelling poor, uncouth and forgotten, constitutes the better-off, the well-provided and the powerful in the society.
Very soon, many people will see the joys of living in the small towns and live the cities to the politicians they will not even want to know what fortunes are being made or lost in the oil market, preferring the regular, reliable and predictable income from their farm produce and the dignity of life that comes from farming,
The "wealth" that comes from oil is too transient and too subject to forces outside the control of Nigeria for it to be made the basis of the country's wealth.
The current difficulties, whether they are indeed as desperate as they have been made out to be or not, provide the government with the best opportunity to make the fundamental changes that are needed to make the economy resilient in fact.
Rather than President Shagari appealing to legislators and his cabinet to adopt a modest lifestyle and refrain from driving flashy cars, he might consider diverting to the rural road network any money that there is to build or repair roads in the cities. He might for example put all monies meant for health facilities to building clinics in the rural areas.
It will not take long for the message to get home to people that the place to be is in the rural areas. Right now, there is nothing to indicate to the population that the government indeed has placed more emphasis on the rural areas.
Nigeria will be rich and remain rich when the majority of the people stop regarding their destiny as being linked to the fortunes of oil.
