Background and Rationale for Diversification of Nigeria Economy towards Sustainable Economic Development

The economic standpoint of Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy appears gloomy as the result of the current record fall in international oil prices since 2004 with little or no indication of a rapid bounce back in the nearest future. The present unpalatable economic circumstance Nigeria economy finds itself now need urgent and real economic diversification policy strategies.

 

The real economic problem in Nigeria is not declining oil prices (superficially, it may seem so), the real issue is that, high oil prices have always covered and contributed to the main problem now bringing the country to the verge of economic collapse.

As we may recall, Nigerian economy have enjoyed several economic prosperity resulting from oil booms in the 1970s, 1980s and even recently in 2014 when bent crude was sold for USD 110 per barrel. The current oil price slump is not an entirely new experience to Nigeria as the country has been through similar situation in the past. In 2008, oil prices fell to as low as USD 38 per barrel. Brent crude price declined by over 40% from USD 110 and floated around USD 65 per barrel in June 2014. The fall continued through 2015 to where we are today with the price slowly crawling up at USD 50.52 as at 6^th June, 2016.

As a matter of urgency, Nigeria government must encourage the diversification of the Nigeria economy; and not just in any random areas but in livestock sub-sector specifically as this is the only sustainable way to survive the recurrent situation of global economic uncertainty from over dependence on crude oil revenue often faced by Nigeria. It is crucial for Nigeria government and the general public to not believe that crude oil provides a never-ending source of foreign exchange and revenue generation for the required sustainable economic development in Nigeria.

The above therefore necessitated the suggestion for diversification of the Nigeria economy in agriculture sector, particularly in the livestock sub-sector; and specifically, in the poultry, piggery, fishery and cattle production sub-sectors.

Diversification into these sub-sectors has loads of benefit to Nigeria. It will enable the country to maximally employ her abundant resource base in rebuilding the economy and enjoy the benefits of all the linkages and synergies, economies of scales, develop national technologies and foreign investment profiles, build human capitals, exploit new opportunities, lessen averagely operational costs, increase national competitiveness and grow the standard of living and self-reliance of the citizens for national economy revival.

In discussing the statement of the research problem, studies of economic histories provide us with generous evidences that an agricultural revolution is an essential pre-requisite for sustainable economic development.

The above fact is valid bearing in mind that, the industrial revolution of the Nineteenth century which catapulted most agrarian economies of Europe to industrialized nations got their stimuli from agriculture. Indeed, the importance of the agricultural sector in any country (like Nigeria) pursuing sustainable economic development cannot be over emphasized.

The central statement of the problem of this research work and of course the series of blog posts that shall follow is that, even though there have been reported cases of general decline in the contribution of agricultural sector to sustainable economic development in Nigeria, the livestock sub-sector (specifically) has the potential of serving as the industrial and economic launch pad from which sustainable economic development the country can take off.

The continuous falling trends in the contribution of the agriculture sector to Gross Domestic Product in Nigeria, in other words does not include poultry, piggery, fishery and cattle production livestock sub-sectors. These livestock sub-sectors can therefore serve as some of the few highly effective and efficient agriculture sub-sectors in achieving the quest for sustainable economic development in Nigeria.

The main objective of the series of posts is to assess the role of the selected livestock (cattle, poultry, piggery and fishery) sub-sectors’ contribution to sustainable economic development in Nigeria.

Other specific objectives of the research are: to identify the role of poultry, fishery, piggery and cattle production sub-sectors in sustaining economic development in Nigeria; to discuss the prospects, challenges and possible solutions to factors determine production in the selected sub-sectors; to prove from empirical evidence whether the said decline in the contribution of the agricultural sector to Gross Domestic Product (sustainable economic development) in Nigeria includes the poultry, fishery, piggery and cattle production sub-sectors or not; and lastly, to determine the selected livestock sub-sectors’ contribution to sustainable economic development between the period under study.

In an attempt to achieve the above general and specific goals, the research strives to answer the following questions and even more: What are the roles of the livestock sub-sector, specifically, poultry, fishery, piggery and cattle production sub-sectors in sustaining economic development in Nigeria? What are the prospects, challenges and possible solutions to poultry, fishery, piggery and cattle production in sustainable economic development in Nigeria?

Can we say that, the said decline in the contribution of the livestock sub-sectors to Gross Domestic Product in Nigeria include the contribution of the poultry, fishery, piggery and cattle production sub-sectors? Can the fore mention livestock sub-sectors drive the Nigeria livestock sector towards contributing to achieving sustainable economic development? What are the roles of the Nigerian government and other stakeholders have to play in improving and sustaining the contribution of livestock sub-sector to sustainable economic development? What is the livestock production between the periods under study?

The significance of the study is anchored on the fact that agriculture is considered a catalyst for the overall development of any nation. This has made many economic development theories and economists distinguished the sector as one of the cannot-do-without segment of production system in achieving sustainable economic development.

Wilber & Jameson (1992) acknowledged and concord with this fact and wrote, ―The hope for technical change in agriculture and green revolution suggested that agriculture could be the dynamo for sustainable economic growth and development.

The industrial revolution of the Nineteenth century which catapulted the agrarian economies of most developed countries of the world like Britain, United State of America, France etc today in fact got their stimuli from agriculture. The sector in recent history has also worked a tremendous miracle in countries like Mexico, India, Brazil, Peru, Philippines and China.

Diversifying into the agriculture sector and specifically into the livestock sub-sector in light of the above background and rationale is therefore suggested for Nigeria as a developing economy to ensure food and nutritional security, income equality, unemployment reduction, poverty alleviation, industrialization advancement, ease pressure on balance of payment, reliable source of government revenue and overall economic development of the country.

Nigeria should diversify into the agriculture sector as a developing country to speed up the rate and increase the chances of achieving sustainable economic development, since it a proven fact that, the more developed a country is, the lower the contribution of agriculture to Gross Domestic Product.

The study like any other study was confronted with some limitations ranging from the fact that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was used to measure Sustainable Economic Development even though it does not to some extent reflect the true economic transformation of a country and does have some limitation due to the difficulties associated with measuring economic development and lack of generally acceptable consensus standard of measuring sustainable economic development ranging from Measure of Economic Welfare (MEW), Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and couple with dearth of available Human Development Index (HDI) in Nigeria.

The above approach was nevertheless used since there exists correlation between Measure of Economic Welfare (MEW) and Gross Domestic Product and can thus be considered as a sub-sect of Measure of Economic Welfare.

Another limitation of the study was the disjointed, incomplete and non-availability of single and comprehensive data (document) with regard to the contribution of poultry, fishery, piggery and cattle production to livestock sub-sector.

The above limitation necessitated the gathering of secondary data from various publications ranging from Central Bank of Nigeria bulletins, National Bureau of Statistics publications, Ministry of Agriculture etc. the data gathered expands from 1982-2014.

We shall in our next blog post be reviewing theoretical and empirical literatures related to the research.

Cite as follows: Dan-Abu Michael Ngbede, (2016). Appraisal of the Role of Cattle, Poultry, Piggery and Fishery Sub-Sectors to Sustainable Economic Development in Nigeria: 1982-2014. A research project submitted to the department of Economics, University of Jos, Plateau state, Nigeria in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award of Bachelor of Science (B. Sc) in Economics.