Curing Nigeria’s Oil Curse

Editorial Comment
It is probably a cliché when people say oil is a gift and a curse all rolled up in one.  Oil is a curse for Nigeria. It is as powerful as it is counterintuitive

The natural resource has made Nigeria a poor mental giant of Africa. Oil is bad for a Nigeria's health

This is evident in the lack of positive socio economic impact from the humongous proceeds from the country’s oil and gas production.

Nigeria is earning about $282 million from oil revenue daily, according to Mrs.  Diezani Alison-Madueke, minister of Petroleum Resources.

Despite the enormous earnings from oil, there is little to show in terms of development.

Hunger and anger rule the land.

There is a general feeling of economic exclusion by Nigerians, fuelled by the perception that a country’s resources are being siphoned away by its inept and corrupt leaders.

In simple terms, Nigeria’s oil wealth typifies the paradox of plenty-so called resource curse, an irony that countries and regions with an abundance of natural resources, specifically point-source non-renewable resources like minerals and fuels, tend to have less economic growth and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources.

Nigeria is a laboratory for all other nations to learn what the "oil curse" can do to destroy nations.

It is so shameful that the abundant natural resource has become an economic curse than a blessing.

Oil curse has hindered the country’s development bending the economy towards trouble and rift.

Since the British discovered oil in the Niger Delta in the late 1950s; everything in Nigeria has been obliterated from ingenuity to hard work and to jobs.

The relentless export of crude oil has also driven exchange rate to the roof because whatever Nigeria now manufactures is less competitive abroad.

Terry Karl, a Stanford professor captures the situation aptly when he wrote that “Oil concentrates a nation’s economy around the state. Instead of putting resources into making things and selling them, ambitious people spend their time currying favor or simply bribing the politicians and government officials who control oil money. That concentration of wealth, along with the opacity with which oil can be managed, creates corruption”

Also, most extractive operations are illegal and encouraged by corrupt multi-national corporations in collusion with national governments.

It is very convenient to say that countries without oil and far less human potentials are faring better than Nigeria.

Oil wealth has brought Nigeria less democracy, less economic stability, and great insecurity.

Nigeria can reverse the oil curse by moving away from oil dependence and start building credible institutions that safeguard her economic interests and outline how business can be conducted above board.

She must focus on making information and communication technologies (ICTs) the integral drivers of the socio-economic development.

The country’s economic managers must use proceeds from oil to fire the kiln of development by building of an army of ICT entrepreneurs.