NIGERIAN ECONOMY

There was survey managed and did/done on September 22, 1995, to dig up the remote causes of Mass Poorness and Underdevelopment in Africa at the Department of Political and (related to managing and running a company or organisation) Studies at University of Port Harcourt. In going through that paper, we are aware that more than two, amounts of it are still clearly connected with or related to this Conference, especially, the historical analysis of poorness and unemployment. At that school course, we reminded the people who were part of a study, etc. that the early (pre-colonial) shared mode of production in Nigeria was seen as the Group of people as a unit of social organisation, and the family as the unit of production.

Then, the people of Nigeria consisted of a person who raises many sheep, cattle, etc. in the North and farmer, hunters and artists who make things in the Middle and Southern Belts of the country. The production and social relationships in these early pre-colonial Nigerian communities were organised around independent families (units), which also had the rights and powers to make all decisions relating to the production and distribution of gotten over time/purchased useful things or valuable supplies. Although the system and ownership of land varied among Nigerian communities, in most places, especially in the Niger Delta and other parts of the Southern Nigeria, land was central to production activities. So, land and still was in a shared way owned, but individual families held parcels of such land in trust for the community. So, no one was without land, and cases of unemployment and poorness were more of generalised inability to fight the forces of nature.

The effect of colonial masters reflected who changed the normal behaviours, values and social structure of Nigeria's traditional process of people making, selling, and buying things by including/combining it into the worldwide Western person who uses the money to make more money system is never left out. The person who uses the money to make more money system then subjected the usual institutions to a new type of related to Europe democratic practice that abandoned/irritated a majority of the away from cities population. This person who uses the money to make more money penetration into and control of Nigerian pre-Western person who uses the money to make more money mode of production in Nigeria were accomplished or gained with effort through Western related to Europe private people who sell things competitive and related to kings, queens, emperors, etc. capital.

From then that the system was put in place to serve British, (at first Portuguese, Dutch and German) interest in Nigeria, policy decisions that affected production, distribution, exchange and consumption were made (not like a system where people can vote for leaders and laws)ally by the colonial management. Such decisions eventually led to restricted and uneven development that has become the main cause (i.e, export of first (or most important) product at the harm of domestic produce) of mass unemployment and poorness in Nigeria.

While we have in Nigeria the domestic farming-based part/area that is seen as a low level of working well and getting a lot done, that of export- farming-based aspect had reasonable growth. The growth is founded on an external demand that is unrelated to the basic needed things of the domestic farming-based, process of people making, selling, and buying things. Surprisingly, the new export (i.e, cash crop) part/area is capital intensive and does not employ much of the displaced labour force from the peaceful/church-related and poor farms. We are aware that the farming-based parts/areas of developing countries tilted towards the production of cash crops for exports. This was angrily staring in India where 53 percent of their exports was loyal to/was dedicated to tea, 60 percent of Costa Rica's exports was loyal to/was dedicated to banana, 50 percent of Malaysia's exports to rubber, 60 percent of Ghana's exports to cocoa, and 60 percent of exports in the Dominican Republic to sugar (Jaycox, L.V.K: 1993, 3-8). Jaycox went further to state that while the drive for export was going on, many developing countries, including Nigeria hugely imported foodstuffs to meet their domestic needs. This (popular thing/ the general way things are going) increased to the level that imports of food by developing countries rose from US$4.0 billion in 1955 to US$8.0 billion in 1970. It further rose to US$38.54 billion in 2005.

The neglect of farming had led some of the needed labour to move to the city-based centres in search of jobs in the businesses that came out/became visible through the policies of modernization and dependency i.e. import-substitution at independence in 1960 and government services and their employees led when a country builds factories and manufactures lots of things) at oil boom from 1973). The worst thing that happened was that, as these businesses are capital, instead of labour intensive, and the workers were not paid paychecks that let people live without money-based help, their standard of living could not soak up (like a towel) those moved relations and friends from the villages. So, according to Amin, Samir (1991:280), this type of moving from one place to another creates a monster-like type of growth of cities with more people with no hope of industrial employment.

We are aware of this difficulty, sticky situation in the oil and gas businesses operating in the Niger Delta Area (NDR). At the time of pre-independence agreeing with, or related to, the Constitution meetings to discuss things/meetings together, the people of the Area, especially the Oil Rivers, Ogoja and Calabar people demanded for their separate states, but they were told that the desired states will not be doable/possible as the areas have no identified sources of public finance. God, in fact, proved the British Government wrong when oil extracted from the ground and gas were eventually discovered in Oloibiri in Bayelsa State on June 4, 1956. After that, oil extracted from the ground and gas were discovered in other parts of the Area, including Abia, Imo and Ondo States.

In an earlier study, Etekpe, A (2007: 57-64) counted the number of oil wells in the Area in 1997 to be 1,215 oil wells in the country. Of this number, Bayelsa State had 423 (i.e., 34.82 percent) of oil wells as at December 31, 1997. The said studies further found that in Bayelsa State alone, 4.65 billion barrels of oil extracted from the ground has been lifted and discharged - amounting to N9.75 trillion (US$74.97 billion) as at December 31,2004. This amount is one-third of the total money/money income created from oil extracted from the ground in the country. Now, money income from oil and gas accounts for 80 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 95 percent of the national budget, and 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings of Nigeria. In addition to oil extracted from the ground, the Bayelsa State alone have 46 million, out of the 120 million cubic feet an equal of about 20 billion barrels of oil gas. This large amount of proven reserve has made Nigeria as the 10th largest producers of gas in the world.

The after-colonial governments in Nigeria received the British angry policies and have converted the blessings of oil and gas industry into extreme unhappiness/extreme pain and unemployment for the people in the area.

The making something available for lots of people to buy of oil and gas has caused related to surrounding conditions or the health of the Earth destruction, related to surrounding conditions or the health of the Earth pollution and related to measuring earthquakes despoliation on every part/face of the lives of the people in the Niger Delta Area since 1956. The creeks, rivers and soil are now heavily made dirty by oil spillage and gas flaring, and people can no longer be started/working at meaningful farming. And as they move to the city-based centres and are still not employed by the same multi-national oil and gas companies (MNOCs), they resort to violent protests, and are in turn, tagged as "impatient people".

The basic, built-in, important qualities/scent of the previous analysis is for Nigerians to appreciate the fact that the main cause of unemployment is the displacement of the poor farmers, as well as, destruction of the agro-friendship company made up of people working from their homes is that grew in response to the farming-based outputs. The destruction equally took away the population of useful products shown in Table 1-2. It is, therefore, clear that policies of after-colonial governments have made worse the size and rate of unemployment.