Ojonugwa Julius Akubo's Blog

Agriculture before the discovery of crude oil in the late 1950s was the main stay of the Nigerian economy. It was not just a source of revenue to the country, it was infact a source of employment to many Nigerians who specialized in crop farming, fisheries, animal rearing but to mention a few. It was then that we developed the groundnut pyramids, rubber plantations, coco plantations and the  big cotton fields that are gradually becoming histories today. With  the discovery of the crude oil in 1956 and the startment of full exploration in 1958 agriculture became of less importance to the government. As at of 1960 the contribution of agriculture to Nigeria's GDP was 60% but the reduction of this value became consistent with the increase in oil exploration. This was because crude oil sales became a faster way of earning more money by the Nigerian government. Little did the government notice the negative impact associated with crude oil especially with respect to agriculture. Thi...

Over the years many nations have survived via their domestically generated incomes while others have increasingly relied on external sources of finance which adversely results in increased foreign debt. As rightly stated by Hameed et al(2008) , too much of external debt could dampen economic growth by hampering investment and productivity growth which is the resultant effect of the fall in exchange rate. Although foreign debt as a topic is not the focus of this work its necessary to understand its effect as earlier stated. The term "Monotonous Economy" as used in this article defines an economy whose income source is strictly limited to a single major source. In other words it's an economy were diversification is absent. Nigeria for instance has over the years relied on crude oil for the financing and running of the entire government ever since the late 1970s.According to Anyanwu (1986), the major problems of the economy such as external debt obligation, unemployment, i...