Between agriculture and petroleum-Nigerian economic saga

The woes of a monolithic economy…….between agriculture and petroleum …..The Nigerian economic saga

 I am not an economist, not an expert but just a concerned Bloody Nigerian, let’s compare and contrast what is happening now and was happened then   …………In  1960s, agricultural was the  most important contributor to domestic production, employment and foreign exchange earnings. Between  1970s – 2013 agriculture  was overtaken by oil  ,between 1970 – 1999 Agricultural sectors was  allowed to stagnate from the oil boom decade of the 1970s,.Now in  this present  economy, oil accounts for 95% of our exports (2.3m bpd and oil sales N8.026tr 2012) 75% of our consolidated budgetary revenues comes from oil (11.214tr 2013, 10.519 tr 2014, 11.493 tr 2015)  and mind you, agricultural exports as at today just  represent just about 0.2% of our total exports but still employs about 70 per cent of Nigerian’ working population, while the oil sector employs less even fewer, now let’s imagine if agriculture has being given a strong priority in the Nigerian economic mainstream, how many jobless population  would the country will have had today ……. This is the inconvenient truth …… Agriculture focus states in Nigeria have the lowest unemployment rate (Kwara 7.1%, Cross Rivers 12.2% and Benue State 14.2)

More disturbing   stories………Malaysia picked its palm fruits from Nigeria and in 2008 Malaysia raked in $20.3bn from oil palm while that sector in Malaysia is one the highest employer of labour …furthermore let look at Nigerian food import bill; Nigeria is the largest importer of wheat in the world (imports about $4bn worth), Nigeria  is  the largest importer of rice in the world (imports about $2bn worth)  Nigeria spent about $623,830,318.15 yearly in the importation of dairy products ,Nigeria imports $312.5m of fish ,the  Nigerian total yearly food import bill was  put at $10bn ……what a sad scenario…………Nigeria imports what it has  a comparative advantage to produce……….Now the wakeup call………if youth unemployment will really be dealt with ,Agriculture still have a brilliant  role to play.   

Data source -FAO