Wednesday, July 24, 2013

"THE TWO GREATEST FORCES THAT MAY LIKELY SHAPE THE FUTURE OF NIGERIA"

Nigeria faces a very bleak future without her oil revenue that comes in on the daily basis into the federal government coffers. About 90% of the Nigeria's foreign exchange earning comes directly from this oil alone. The nation's entire financial life or security and her entire future are all solidly built on oil export since the 1960s when this oil was first discovered in the commercial quantity in Nigeria in the Niger Delta region. 

For the last 45 years, Nigeria has made hundreds of billions of the American dollar from her oil sales only as revenues according to the data from the western financial institutions. The same western monetary agencies also claimed that more than $300-$400 billion of this oil revenue have either been siphoned away by the past and the present Nigeria's leaders as well as her top government officials or mostly mismanaged over the last few decades. Today in 2013 in Nigeria, there is nothing physically present on the ground in Nigeria to truly justify these enormous oil wealth and the huge yearly revenues from this oil in all reality, truth and honesty.

Today, about 80% of all Nigerians are living in abject poverty and they survive daily on $1-$2 a day living budget or expenses. The unemployment rate has reached over 23% amongst the youths. This has left behind millions of young college-educated Nigerians without any possibility or hope for any future employment opportunities or a better future.


Furthermore, tens of millions of the ordinary Nigerian workers in both the private and the government sectors of the Nigeria's workforce earn poverty wages that will never allow them to practically meet all their basic human needs in this life. The Nigeria's present national infrastructures, education systems, health care facilities and her social services are all very old, over stressed, outdated, inadequate and collapsing.

The national population of Nigeria stands at around 160 million citizens and residents in 2012. Nigeria's population is rapidly growing at an annual rate of 3.2%. This population is expected to hit about 400 million persons by the year 2050 when the global oil experts expected the Nigeria's present oil reserves (onshore and offshore) that currently stand at about 38 billion untapped barrels of oil to be completely depleted at the current rate of exploration that stands at 2.5 million barrels of oil a day or 1 billion barrels of oil a year.


The oil in Nigeria today has never benefited the ordinary Nigerians, but only the nation's top elites (serving and retired military generals, serving and retired security chiefs, politicians, public elected officials, their families and cronies, as well as the retired and the serving top government officials).

In conclusion: Can Nigeria survive her future without this oil revenue that comes in on the daily basis and in the midst of her current uncontrollable national population growth and explosion? Time is fast running out against Nigerian nation that has refused through her corrupt and mediocre leadership for the last 50 years to manage her oil revenues properly and to invest this oil wealth wisely for the betterment of all Nigerians as well as the establishment of a national policy that will control her rapidly growing national population for a better future for all Nigerians. Are Nigeria's present leaders aware of these two unavoidable major events of the future? At the moment these leaders are all very busy stealing and mismanaging the leftovers from this oil revenue that is depleting rapidly. Once beaten, twice shy. Time will surely tell.





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