Nigerian Economy

7 Key excerpts on "Nigerian Economy"

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  The Economies of Africa

  • Peter Robson, D Lury, D A Lury(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  3

  THE ECONOMY OF NIGERIA

  1. INTRODUCTION

  By area and population, Nigeria is one of the bigger countries of Africa. In terms of economic potential, it is also usually lauded as one of the most hopeful. Yet in recent times, Nigeria's image of development effectiveness has been criticized unfavourably by some observers at home and abroad. Its pace of recent performance and immediate future prospects were recently characterized, in the words of a Nigerian economist, as a tale of false hope.1

  This chapter analyses the structure of the country's economy in the decade preceding its political independence up to the early stages of implementing its first national development plan. Its central theme is that both the character of investment and the behaviour of prices provide a useful understanding of the country's economic activities and problems during this vital period. In another dimension, it will also be argued that the foreign trade and public sectors constituted the fulcrum of change and defined the path of overall development. In overall perspective, it will be demonstrated that although the growth path was a positive one, its most characteristic features were those of distortion and uncertainty.

  2. RESOURCES

  Broadly, Nigeria's resources can be looked at from two standpoints: its physical features and its population. Following the post-independence plebiscite which removed the old Southern Cameroons province to join with the Cameroon Republic, Nigeria has a total land surface of some 357,000 square miles. It lies entirely in the tropics, and displays the characteristic vegetation belts of West Africa moving northward from the swampy southern coast, through the rain forest, derived savannah, open grassland and the southern fringes of the Sahara desert. Following this movement, the land's general elevation itself rises gently northwards from the coast to a general height of 2,000 feet in the north. In the central north-eastern part, the Bauchi plateau rises to over 5,000 feet above sea level. Otherwise, the country's relief consists largely of plains, gently rolling hills and, consequently, deep soils.

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  From Oil to Cities

  Nigeria's Next Transformation

  • World Bank Group(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • World Bank

    (Publisher)

  Nigeria’s Spatial Economy 111 From Oil to Cities • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-0792-3 country’s cultural history. To some extent, the historical trade networks persist in the present day. For example, the states of Kano and Katsina in the north and the province of Maradi in neighboring Niger form a vast, densely populated trading area based on the cultural area of the former Hausa states. An intensive trade in agricultural products thrives here, especially in livestock from Niger, cereals and manufactured products from Nigeria, and, above all, products reexported to Nigeria via Niger coming from Benin/Togo (OECD 2006). Informal trade in food and consumer goods thrives along borders. From Benin, transborder trade is tilted in favor of the purchase of goods from across the border into Nigeria. Imported items are mainly consumer goods, while the main exports from Nigeria are plastics and petrol. Cotonou is the most popular place of purchase, mainly for used cars and spare parts. Purchases of frozen foodstuffs are made almost daily from Igolo. Major places of sale within Nigeria for foodstuffs and used cars are Idiroko, Lagos, and Sango-Otta; and the relatively less important markets are Ibadan, Sagamu, and Benin. Connective infrastructure has played a pivotal role in the formation and development of modern day Nigeria, contributing to increased social, cultural, and economic integration and influencing the rate and pattern of urbanization across the country. Today, however, poor connectivity is a constraint on interregional trade, limits integration, and inhibits the functioning of Nigeria’s spatial economy. Poor transport infrastructure is reducing annual GDP by approximately 3 percent (World Bank 2007). Research indicates that there is strong correlation between the quantity, quality, and efficiency of a country’s transport infrastructure and the level of economic development (World Bank 2004; WTO 2004).

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  Issues in Economic Development

  • Olaniyi, Olayiwola Olubodun(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Daya Publishing House

    (Publisher)

  20 : Overview of Nigeria Economy 20.1 Overview of Nigeria Economy As of 2001, the most conspicuous f-act about Nigeria’s economy is that the corruption and mismanagement of its post-colonial governments has prevented the channeling of the country’s abundant natural and human resources–especially its wealth in crude oil–into lasting improvements in infrastructure and the construction of a sound base for self-sustaining economic development. Thus, despite its abundant resources, Nigeria is poorer today than it was at independence in 1960. Still one of the less developed and poorer countries of the world, it has the potential to become a major economic power if the leaders resolve to learn from past mistakes and to harness the country’s rich natural and human resources for a productive and sustained effort to promote economic development. Before the country was colonized by Britain, during the second half of the 19th century, the various nationality groups that currently make up Nigeria were largely an agricultural people. They were food self-sufficient and produced a variety of commodities that were exported overseas. British colonial administrators amalgamated (joined together) the nationality groups in 1914 into a larger economy for exploitation for the benefit of British industrial classes. Under colonial rule, Nigeria remained an agricultural country, exporting raw materials to Britain and importing from it finished goods. Therein lay the origins of the dependence of Nigerian Economy on commodity markets of the industrialized Western world for its foreign exchange. While the industrialization of the country was discouraged, rudimentary foundations for a modern Nigerian Economy, however, were laid. Colonial economic policies shaped future independent Nigeria’s economy, particularly in marketing, labor supply, and investment. The process of colonial rule and formal economic exploitation ended in 1960 but This ebook is exclusively for this university only.

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  Regional Development Poles and the Transformation of African Economies

  • Benaiah Yongo-Bure(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  6 The Nigerian Economy

  An overview

  Nigeria has the natural and human resources to establish a diversified self-sustaining industrial economy. It has a large pool of educated human resources that can be trained into various experts, specialists, and technicians. It has tremendous agricultural potential. The large and growing population of over 180 million and large and growing GDP provide a large domestic market, which can absorb much of its domestic output. Its daily output of over two million barrels of oil per day (bb/day) should be able to provide it with huge revenues to finance a transformational national development program.

  Nigeria is counted in two groups of countries that are projected to become major world economies. The two groups are the MINT countries (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey) and the PINE countries (Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Ethiopia). These economies are projected as among the emerging economies following the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries.

  Nigeria’s population is growing fast (about 3 percent per annum), with a high fertility rate. It has a large population of children aged 15 years and younger. Nigeria’s population is projected to outstrip that of the other three MINT countries by 2050 and could by then be the fourth most-populous country in the world, with a population of about 402 million (UN 2015). On the other hand, Nigeria’s overdependence on oil plus its major problem of electric power shortage and inefficiency greatly impair the country’s viability as a modern economy. Industrialization, diversification, and rural development can address the issues of poverty, unemployment, and geographical and interpersonal inequalities. Such policies would considerably enhance the domestic market and the capacity of the country to absorb much of its national output. With the prospects of rising incomes, Nigeria offers a large consumer market. Development of the manufacturing sector, especially of the capital goods industries, would have tremendous impact on domestic supply and demand. The multiplier effects would extend to the whole West Africa and the rest of Africa through trade and investment.

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  Development in Nigeria

  Promise on Hold?

  • Edlyne Eze Anugwom(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  There is no doubt that Nigeria represents the largest black nation on Earth and perhaps the biggest economy in sub-Saharan Africa. But these significant features have been more the problem rather than an impetus to development, as we shall see from the historical development and socio-political growth of the nation over time. In order to achieve some semblance of order and ease comprehension, this chapter is organized under three main sections. These are: overview of the geography and history of Nigeria; socio-political developments in post-colonial Nigeria; and heterogeneity as the source of recurrent threats of implosion since independence in 1960.

  Social geography of Nigeria

  Nigeria, the largest or most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa is located in West Africa. It is a tropical rainforest region with swathes of desert in the North and is endowed with enormous natural and mineral resources ranging from the well-known oil deposits, iron ore, coal, lead/zinc, lignite, bitumen, limestone, marble, bauxite, salt, barites to gas, clay and gemstone gypsum, etc. In fact, conventional wisdom has it that each region/zone and state in Nigeria can lay claim to at least a minimum of three mineral resources in abundant or commercial quantities. Such states as Plateau, Ondo, Nasarawa, Kaduna, Benue, Edo, Kogi are literally over-flush with mineral resources and some of these states, especially Nasarawa and Plateau, have been the sites of artisanal mining that has recently been associated with insecurity in the Northern areas of Nigeria. According to Obaje (2009), reports from the Geological Survey of Nigeria have it that the country has about 34 known major mineral deposits scattered in different locations across Nigeria. Geographically, Nigeria is on the Gulf of Guinea in the West African subregion with an area of 923,768 square kilometres (made up of 910,768 square kilometres of land mass and 13,000 square kilometres of water). It is bordered by such other nations as Cameroun in the east, Benin in the west and Chad (in the northeast) and Niger (in the northwest) in the extensive fringes of the country.

  Prominent geographical landmarks in Nigeria include the famous River Niger which flows south through the eastern parts of Nigeria. River Niger, which is Africa’s third longest river (1,174 kilometres) rises from the Futa Jallon Mountains in East Sierra Leone, does a journey of over 4,000 kilometres before entering Nigeria from the northwest. River Niger then receives River Benue, which originates in the Cameroons at Lokoja (consequently called the Confluence town), and then flows for about 547 kilometres into the Atlantic Ocean (see NBS, 2011). The prominence and popularity of River Niger also draw from its main tributaries in many parts of Nigeria. These main tributaries include the Sokoto, Anambra and Kaduna Rivers. The River Benue on the other hand empties into Lake Chad and has Gongola and Katsina-Ala Rivers as major tributaries. These two rivers and their tributaries have been great sources of agricultural success in the country – apart from being home to abundant aquatic life, they have been the source of fertile soil and have provided the possibility of irrigation farming, especially in the North and Middle Belt of Nigeria. However, in recent times they have been the source of adverse climatic events, such as flooding and its attendant destruction. For instance, the massive overflowing of the River Benue in 2012 occasioned great destruction far beyond Lokoja and Kogi state where the menace originated.

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  Economic Geography

  • B. W. Hodder, Roger Lee(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Part 1

  The economy and economic geography

  In this section we present a simple model of the economy around which the rest of the book is constructed. The model also serves to indicate certain themes and issues arising from the geographical study of economies and these are considered against the background of a selection of the diverse literature in the field of economic geography.

  Passage contains an image

  1 A concept of the economy

  In this book the term ‘economy’ refers to a network of economic decision makers. Such a mechanistic interpretation derives from neoclassical economics as the major source of theory in economic geography. This dependence is misplaced as neo-classical economics hides the fundamental structural relationships between people in the social production of material life beneath its concern with the exchange of commodities considered merely as material objects . However just as economics is breaking free from its neo-classical strait-jacket so too should economic geography. The speed with which it does this is an important determinant of the rate of obsolescence of this book.

  Underlying the argument pursued in these pages then, is the neoclassical concept of the economy which, so it seems to us, can only be fully understood when treated as a whole. But economies, as defined here, can exist at any scale. They range from simple subsistence village economies through to those operating at the national or international scale. Yet even at its simplest the economy is a complex phenomenon. The reader may find it useful to consult some of the descriptive case studies of simple village economies written by economists, social anthropologists and geographers (e.g. Firth 1952; Epstein 1962; and Hill 1972). It is not possible to translate their findings from one spatial scale to another, but such studies are useful in that they introduce the concept of the economy by describing, within the context of a small and specific community area, the complex integrated and continually changing interaction of variables affecting economic activity. In this book, however, the approach is to try to simplify the characteristics and operation of economies, at whatever scale, down to common elements and processes. We begin by setting up a very simple model of the economy.

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  Journalism in Nigeria: Possibilities for Professionalisation in the Light of Christian Social Ethics and Culture-driven Values

  • Maryann Ijeoma Egbujor(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Peter Lang Group

    (Publisher)

  3.1. Historical, Geographic and Political Context Nigeria operates a federal republic with a presidential system. The country is situated in the Western axis of Africa with a total land capacity covering over 923,768 square kilometres and is known as the Giant of Africa. 389 It borders four other countries from the Gulf of Guinea between Chad, Benin, Niger and Cameroon. 390 The country was formerly colonized by the British and later gained its independence in 1960. 391 The land is identified for its successful agricultural 389 See Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook (2018-2019). New York: Skyshore Publishing. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/geos/ni.html, retrieved June 4 th , 2018,. 390 See ibid. 391 See ibid. An Overview of the Nigerian Context 96 produce and is recognized as the largest petroleum and natural gas producers and exporters in the region of Africa. 392 With a diversity of religious and cultural endowment, it has a population of over 190,632,261 million people, the majority of whom are youth comprising approximately 30.74 % of the population. 393 Apart from English being the official language of instruction in the educational institutions, the three major “languages” equally certified and integrated into the school curriculum are Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba. 394 The major ethnic groups speak these languages. Identified as Africa’s most populated country, Nigeria comprises more than 250 ethnic groups, namely Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, Ijaw, Kanuri, Ibibio, Tiv, among others. 395 However, these geographical facts are subject to scrutiny considering the limited scope of the research. Nigeria had a fascinating political history following the end of the British rule on 1 October 1960 when the country reclaimed its independence with the adoption of a Parliamentary system of government.

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