Scenarios changed significantly with the oil boom of the 1970s, as the discovery of vast oil and gas reserves in the strategically considerable sub-Saharan nation turned its fortunes overnight. The windfall changed Nigeria's farming landscape into a massive oil field crisscrossed by more than 7,000 km of pipelines linking 6,000 oil wells, two refineries, numerous flow stations and export terminals. The colossal investments in the sector paid off, with unofficial estimates recommending Abuja generated more than $600 billion in petrodollars in the last decade alone.

Sadly, the obsession with non-renewables over all other sectors of the economy ultimately turned Nigeria's advantage into a bane. Newly found wealth spawned political instability and massive corruption in federal government circles, and the nation was lease asunder by years of violent civil war and successive military coups. Farming was one of the first casualties of the oil routine, and by the 1990s, growing accounted for simply 5% of GDP. Farming modernisation and support continued to remain short on the list of nationwide priorities as large stretches of rural Nigeria gradually plunged into hardship and food scarcity. Deforestation, soil disintegration and commercial contamination further quickened the down-spiral of farming to the point where it ended up as a subsistence activity.

The fall of Nigerian agriculture coincided with the collapse of its macroeconomic and human advancement signs. With income circulation concentrated on a few city pockets, the majority of rural Nigeria was left reeling under massive poverty, joblessness and food lacks. A broadening urban-rural divide sparked social unrest and mass migration into towns and cities. Arranged city criminal activity became as real a security threat as militancy in the Niger Delta region. Nigeria plunged to the bottom in world economic rankings and Africa's most populous nation got the unhappy distinction of having over half (54%) of its 148 million people living in abject poverty. The World Bank created the term "Nigerian Paradox" specifically to describe the special condition of severe underdevelopment and poverty in a country overflowing with resources and capacity. The country was ranked 80th in a 2007 UNDP hardship survey covering 108 countries.

The transition to democratic civilian guideline at the end of the last century led the way for a passionate programme of financial reform and restructuring. Abuja's seriousness for inclusive growth was much in proof in the adoption of an enthusiastic blueprint designed to reverse trends and jumpstart a stagnating economy. The Vision 2020 document embraced under previous president O Obsanjo lays out broad specifications for sustainable advancement with the particular objective of instating Nigeria as an international financial superpower in a time-bound way. The 2020 goals remain in addition to Nigeria's dedication to the UN Millennial Statement of 2000 that proposes universal fundamental human rights by 2015.

The realisation of these allied and linked goals depends totally on Abuja's ability to cause inclusive growth by ways of an entrepreneurial transformation, while simultaneously remedying massive infrastructural shortages and administrative abnormalities. Economies typically begin expanding with an initial agricultural revolution: The case of Nigeria however requires agriculture to be part of a larger enterprise revolution that efficiently leverages the country's substantial resources and human capital.

The complexity of issues involved here is reflected in the truth that the National Poverty Eradication Programme of 2001 determines farming and rural development as its primary location of interest. The fact that all development needs to start from the bottom-up can not be overemphasised in the context of Nigeria, where a farming boom can guarantee not simply food supply and exports but likewise offer industrial raw materials and a market for items.

Agricultural growth is important to financial success across Western Africa, considering the area's crippling poverty line. A 2003 conference arranged by NEPAD (New Collaboration for Africa's Advancement) in South Africa strongly prompted the promotion of cassava cultivation as a hardship eradication tool across the continent. The suggestion is based on a strategy that concentrates on markets, economic sector participation and research study to drive a pan-African cassava initiative. What was when a rural staple and famine-reserve food has actually become a profitable money crop!

The NEPAD effort has strong significance for Nigeria, the world's biggest cassava bag manufacturer. With its large rural population and comprehensive farmlands, the nation boasts unique chances of changing the modest cassava to a commercial raw material for both domestic and international markets. There is a growing and well-justified belief that the crop can change rural economies, stimulate fast economic and commercial growth and assist disadvantaged communities. While production grew steadily between 1980 and 2002 from 10,000 MT to over 35,000 MT, there is scope for significant further increase by bringing more land under cassava growing. Nigeria needs to take the lead not only in establishing much better production, harvesting and processing technologies, however likewise in finding brand-new uses and markets for what is certainly a wonder crop. Nigeria stands to make huge strides towards inclusive and sustainable development just through the intelligent and sensible promotion of cassava farming.

The following are some of the most immediate requirements for an effective revolution in Nigerian farming:

o Active promo and establishment of agro-based markets that generate employment, sustain local food requirements and encourage exports.

o Efficient steps to modernise and diversify the agricultural economy as a method of strengthening entrepreneurial growth in ancillary sectors.

o Institution of a tariff system that promotes local produce against more affordable imports, together with the removal of institutional barriers against agricultural profitability.

o Aids on technically innovative farm equipment and practices that help improve productivity with no adverse eco-friendly side effects.

o An umbrella poverty alleviation programme created specifically to promote agrarian reforms while concurrently enhancing the lifestyle in rural communities.

o Boosted access to farming enterprise loans through a network of regulated lending institutions sympathetic to farming truths.

o Adult education programmes created to assist Nigerian farmers update to locally appropriate however contemporary approaches of cultivation, marketing and distribution.

o Support of both public and economic sector farming research targeted at remedying technological constraints dealt with by local farming communities.

If Nigeria's agricultural capacity is enormous, it is partially since more than 90% of its 91 million hectares of overall acreage is arable. While soil fertility is usually approximated on the lower side, the UN Food and Farming Organisation (FAO) predicts medium to high yields throughout the nation with optimum utilisation of resources. Combined with Nigeria's considerable rural population typically associated with farming, this forecast equates to massive potential customers in terms of farming performance and, by extension, financial revival. For a nation emerging out of a distressed past and struggling to attain social, political and financial stability, the perfects of agricultural and entrepreneurial transformation hold essential. Due to the fact that they are also inextricably connected in the Nigerian context, the country's future position on the world financial phase depends actually on the bounty of its harvest.