It’s widely agreed that the deep recession that Nigeria now faces is
an abysmal failure of public administration, economic policy and
execution. It is, in effect, the triumph of corruption – one of the
cheapest commodities with which the Fourth Republic is commonly
associated. Indeed, recession has weakened the confidence of workers,
taxpayers and voters in both government and politics. It is a recession
that is of unique character, in that there has been a dearth of
sorely-need funds, such that 27 out of the 36 states in the country have
been declared almost insolvent – unable to pay the salary of their
workers. It is a development that has enfeebled the morale of workers in
general. It has, besides, tended to question – on the part of would-be
local and foreign investors – the wisdom of investing in the country’s
economy.
But that is almost forgetting the fact that the Nigerian
economy is exquisitely famous for its resilience; for which it is sure
to bounce back. It has often been the argument of development
economists, since the past four decades, that Nigeria should not have
predicated her economy and national development solely on the fortunes
of oil, because it was fraught with, sometimes, calamitous danger that
comes with a steep dip in the market price of the product. It does seem
that, probably, because of the boom years of the post-civil war era,
public policy-makers have tended to think, with a laid-back attitude
that “for Nigeria, oil is the panacea to any question of economic
challenge.”
Since the Biafra war, it would seem that Nigerians
have been living in self-denial that the age of agricultural boom was
over, that the country needed to rely, quite comfortably, too, on crude
oil. The openly hostile reality of today’s recession is one that
deflates whatever confidence of those who say that crude oil is the
answer to any economic challenges that Nigeria may be confronted with.
For
development economists, to see crude oil as having the Midas touch that
could neutralise the unfriendly effects of today’s deep recession would
be unrealistic. It would be courting a catastrophe of a gargantuan
proportion for Nigeria to lean still, openly, heavily on crude oil, in
maintenance of her preference to be seen as a mono-product economy.
Nigeria does not, whichever way you look at it, compare favourably, with
any of the conservative, oil-rich, sheikhdoms of the Middle East, which
make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – including Saudi Arabia;
all of which are, primarily, dependent on crude oil.
With fat
times fast receding into history, Nigeria would do well by heeding the
advice of development economists, who argue that it was high time she
diversified her economic base; that it was time that she launched,
beyond policy pronouncement, what could be akin to a renaissance in
expanding – and very firmly, too – her economic base to non-oil products
to cushion the unkind effects of today’s deep recession.
Thus,
the Buhari era is an auspicious period for Nigeria to retrace her former
giant economic steps to the era of cocoa in what was then the Western
Region; groundnut, hides and skins, Northern Region; palm oil and coal,
Eastern Region; rubber and timber, Mid-west Region, and other untapped
minerals and cash crops – zinc, gold, iron-ore, kaolin, copper, yam,
cassava, rice, beans, sorghum, beniseed, corn, banana, plantain, citrus
fruits of diverse kind – including oranges, amongst others.