There is no better time to pay quality attention to the structure of the Nigerian economy than now. The situation is so chaotic that even many educated people, including economists, are at a loss about the state of the national financial system. Despite having the largest population in Africa, the largest concentration of black people, and being one of the most endowed countries, Nigeria is identified as about the poorest in the world. The most recent survey by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) famously puts multidimensional poverty in the country at 133 million people.

This is not worrisome to only the government, but the people who bear the brunt. Many in the international community are surprised that a country could be so rich and yet so poor. Rich in human resources, the hydrocarbons, solid minerals and so vast arable land. Experts in the oil sector have cried out that the days of petroleum products commanding so much attention and dictating the economic pace would soon be over. Alternative sources of energy are rapidly attracting the attention of developed countries that consume much of the products. And, even before then, owing to carelessness and criminality, Nigeria has been unable to meet up its OPEC quota in recent years. Production of crude oil stood at barely 1.2 million barrels by the end of 2023. Theft of the product that is so central to national revenue has hardly abated since then, with the security forces daily announcing discovery and destruction of illegal refinery.

It would not have had so grave an effect on the economy if the oil boom of the 1970s and 1980s had not proved to be so great a doom as successive governments abandoned the agriculture sector that had been the mainstay of the economy in the preceding decade. The four main lines of agriculture, crop production, fishery, livestock and forestry had, in the pre-independence and the ‘60s spurred the engine of development, with the Western Region deriving so much from cocoa, cotton and groundnuts in the North and palm oil with timber in the East.

In the 1960s, agriculture contributed more than 50 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Today, despite about half the population are still engaged in agriculture, it only contributes a little less than one-quarter to the GDP. Nigeria has more than 70 million hectares of arable land, much of it still fallow, but it depends on importation of critical inputs. The younger population that constitutes more than two-thirds of the demographics has no interest in tilling the soil, leaving only the old and bent in the rural areas to feed the nation through subsistence farming. Herders still roam the forests in the 21st Century.

Thus, the little products exported are sent raw, no value added.

It is not only in agriculture that little progress has been made. In industry, we lag behind many other countries, even in Africa, as households and firms compete for the less than 4,000MW of electricity being generated, while South Africa is already supplying about 50,000MW to the people. Successive Nigerian administrations have been promising to ramp up production and distribution to 10,000MW since the inception of the Fourth Republic in 1999. The resultant reliance on imported diesel to power imported generating sets made Nigeria- produced goods too expensive to compete with the imported ones.

Another impediment to non-oil exports is failure to meet international standards. Whether in Europe, United States or Asia, there are minimum standards for all imports, agricultural or manufactured goods.

Unlike in the 1950s and ‘70s when the regions had marketing boards that assured standards of the products as well as assisted exporters in packaging, finance and inputs, very little is available today despite having such bodies as the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) and the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON).

The Tinubu administration that has promised to raise non-oil exports should ensure that these organisations work in Nigeria’s interest.

We watch the solid minerals sector with cautious optimism as the minister in charge has pledged to ensure that it is given a pride of place. He deserves all the backing he needs in a bid to catch up with the likes of South Africa, Canada, Russia, Australia and Japan where solid minerals contribute a huge percentage of their revenue and generate employment. Nigeria’s gold, uranium, iron ore, bauxite, among others, should be officially exploited and sold to boost the economy.

As the Tinubu administration approaches its first year anniversary, it owes Nigerians a duty of reviewing its plans and reevaluating moves to lift the nation out of the woods, even if it has to jettison prescriptions by the Bretton Woods institutions.

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