Transforming Nigeria’s Economy on the Path of Sustainable Development in the 21st Century: Challenges and Reflections

Abstract

With developed economies declining and emerging ones on the rise, Africa is fast becoming a highway for global brands. Most available and authentic indicators not only see South of the Sahara as the fastest growing area, but equally point at Nigeria, regardless of its unbelievable indices of poor governance, high unemployment rate, poverty and underdevelopment. Rich in biodiversity, mineral resources, oil, gas, and cheap manpower, Nigeria has an estimated population of 170 million people. Import-dependent and investor-attractive, it is however, anxiety-laden if its variegated domestic insecurity and infrastructural deficit is put into consideration. Largely relying on a mono-economy of crude oil since the ‘70s, the country appears blind to, and visibly indifferent to global attraction and shift to cleaner and cheaper energy sources, including economic diversification. The era of ‘oil is ready, food is ready’, is almost over. Only total realistic reformation would re-route Nigeria out of the vicious cycle of structural traps, hence stimulating the geometric variable of competitiveness expected in a Federal structure. Such would result in a consistent dialectical economic development, steered by an inclusive diversification empowering entrepreneurial growth, challenge infrastructural deficit, re-evaluate and revitalize the educational system, all under a visionary leadership. Nigeria is sitting on gold, and may not need the details of textbook analysis to mine and use it to stay afloat.