ECONOMIC PROBLEM: MUSING ANSWERS TO NIGERIA MAIN ECONOMIC DOWNSWING

ECONOMIC PROBLEM: MUSING ANSWER TO NIGERIA MAIN ECONOMIC DOWNSWING

Written by Mbibi Longinus Chinagorom(PAA)/09124601622

Since all of us living in the different parts of our present country agreed to live together as a people homogeneous by race and culture and we later assumed nationhood, our problem has been economic. Our main economic problem and around which pivot all other economic problems of our country is the problem of unemployment. Since we began tethering and toddling on the path of nationhood, our main obstacle for striding boldly on this path has been the unemployment problem. As a result of unemployment, there has been for the past few years a steady drift away of young men into other countries. This has been the chain result of our country being left under-populated and with the largest percentage of the population being the unproductive sector mainly children and old men and women.

In recent years it begins to dawn on us the cause of our economic ills have been mainly wrong planning of our economic programmes for the past many years we now realize we had been committing economic suicide by pattering our economy on primitive models: we had been practically an agricultural people, which is not bad but we stuck too long to the subsistence type, to the neglect of introducing cash crops, we did not introduce the right kind, nor did we cultivate the cash crops on a sufficient acreage. Apart from the fact that our economy is monocultural what we cultivated was not cultivated on such an acreage as the population justified. We imported more than we exported. The net result had always been that we always had an unfavourable balance of payments, and our national income had remained low and the nation had been growing under economic pain.

It is an economic law that the world's food cannot be grown in a plant pot. Agriculture is the most easily susceptible economic activity to the law of diminishing returns. Thus the growing population could not be normally contained under this water right economy and so large scale emigration ensued for a long period.

Necessity is the mother of invention is an adage which has revealed its truth to us in this country. In the face of our fast deteriorating economic ulcer, we examined objectively our trouble. We began to diversify our economy. We introduced better and more varied cash crops, practiced much organised farming and launched an ambitious programme of agricultural processing industries which we supplemented by few other manufacturing industries. We became thereby able to manufacture some agricultural products which we used to send raw for processing and manufacture and are later re-exported to us at higher prices. Now we earn more cash and our balance of payments is fast improving. Through the various industries we launched the condition of employment has become very encouraging. The result is that majority of those who had emigrated continue to return home; and practically no fresh emigrations take place.

By diversifying our economy we no more rely on the whims of certain market which at times become bottle necks and could manipulate sales and purchases in their own interest alone and stifle our own economy. 

Diversification also allows us to remain stable economically because we can now off set certain losses with certain gains. Through this economic stability, population continues to rise and the national income does not suffer. This economic stability is witnessed by the somewhat full employment. This is a sign of national prosperity which has been brought about by the magic economic formula of making all efforts and sacrifices to transform our economy from the primitive and unmechanised to the modern diversified, mechanised and finally industrialized economy.

In any country in which this formula is implemented with determination (as our own experience in this country has proven abundantly clearly to us) unemployment can never arise. This is because there will always be work for the growing population and the more populous a country and the higher the national level, the higher the international picture it will paint in the committee of nation's economic troubles, the whole political system is on the brink disintegration.

Emigration, widespread chaos and starvation will be the consequences. Now, because in this country we are enjoying economic prosperity we maintain full employment and we are becoming more populous than any single country in the world without at the same time showing signs of over population. Because of this full employment with well fed population, a state of peace, order and progress is assured the government by the people. Now we think we have found the answer to our country's economic problem.