Nigeria is the 6th largest oil producing nation yet the poorest.why?
Nigeria is full of oil and has been rated the 6th largest in oil producing nation in the world and yet ,the poorest.why?

Who told you we are the poorest nation in the world? Get your facts right please.

WHERE DID U PUT SIERRALEONE ,KENYA MALI ,TOGO KUTONU, ND GHANA IS TILL AMONG OUR DEBTOR

Are you serious?

I did not mean the poorest country in the world, but the poorest country that produce oil. For example Saudi Arabia Iran Venezuela have big oil reserves, just like Nigeria but they are not poor.

Nigeria is Africa's leading oil producer, yet more than half of its people live in poverty.

Just look here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/country_profiles/1064557.stm

Did u ask why. Here 's an answer:

Because we've got some problems to solve.

Dont worry, it shall be Good soon.

THanks for worrying about us.

@the topic

Why
Ask out government
Ask OBJ why

then get back to us what u get your answer

The wealth is not evenly distributed and I still blame all our economic problems on the colonial rule and the last two republics but may God help us implement better policies to improve the economy.

j-girl, u are funny. which colonial administration? since when? who among the great nations of the world was not colonised once? america was once colonised by britain. south africa came out of a bigger problem a couple of years back so why nigeria. if u ask obj he will tell u atiku.
the problem is that we keep on having individuals who are working towards getting richer than the government itself.
we always raise presidents who come to power with 20,000 naira account balance and become the richest man in the universe and always shout thief when anyone asks why.
because we have a committed of armed robbers living in aso rock at the expense of the masses.
we always have an administration that is ready to do away with heros like okonjo iweala because of selfish interests.
we have an administration that is bent on selected justice. a president with bell university, renewed uttah farm and transcrop to show for been the president/petrolium minister for seven and half years.
a president that has excess powers that he can select who will and who will not run for elections not minding how the populace feel about it.
a president who we are praying that he ends like his fellow canibans like nebukadineze, sadam hussiem, idi amin, charles taylor to mention but a few.

That is an effect of what happened. When the British left, what they did was to leave the economy to novices who really had no idea how to rule the country and then to make it worse, they used Nigeria as an experiment for neocolonialism and modernization which caused part of the devastation of the economy. They just wanted us to go straight from our so-called "irrational and traditional" society to a "rational and westernized" society. The discovery of oil is both a blessing and a curse. If we had a diversified economy, we would be better off today. When Slaves were bringing in more money than other kinds of exports, we shifted to that one even though we were still under Britain at the time.
When they left and we found out that it was oil that was and still is the 'in-thing' we focused all our attention on Oil and started importing everything importable because of the decline in our own manufacturing industries. As i always say, anything westerners do, we do in excess.
I'm not excusing our leaders either.

Well, these are some of the answers to your question.

1. Corruption

Many of our leaders have stolen billions of dollars from money that accrues to the government to the detriment of our teeming population. General Abacha was estimated to have siphoned off about $3 billion -$4 billion. Ismaila Gwazo, Abacha's National Security Adviser, refunded almost $200 million to the administrations of Abdulsalami Abubakar and Olusegun Obasanjo (after Abacha died in office).

In addition, many top civil servants divert public funds into their accounts, inflate contracts and award contracts to incompetent people.

2. Over dependence on oil.

It is estimated that about 95% of our foreign earnings comes from oil. Many Nigerians simply let go of other sources of income. Nigeria at one point was the largest exporter of cocoa, now we lag behind Cote 'Dvoire and Ghana.

3. Bad Economic Policies

In Nigeria, we have had leaders that opened our borders to all sorts of goods that we produce at home. At this point in time in Nigeria, we should be self-sufficient in Rice production like the asian countries. Instead, we continue to import.

Another example: we have a refinery built in Kaduna (the north), while the oil itself exists in the Niger Delta (the south). Hundreds of millions of dollars was spent on building the pipeline used to transport oil to the north when it could be refined in the south where it was originally extracted.

5. Large Population

Our per capita income is very low compared to other oil producing countries because we are about 140 million strong in Nigeria. Kuwait produces more oil than us and doesn't even have up to 20 million people calling the place home.

GNature:

Another example: we have a refinery built in Kaduna (the north), while the oil itself exists in the Niger Delta (the south). Hundreds of millions of dollars was spent on building the pipeline used to transport oil to the north when it could be refined in the south where it was originally extracted.

It is infact cheaper to have a refinery in Kaduna to carter for fuel needs of the states around Kaduna than to use tankers to transport refined fuel to those states on a daily basis from the South.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm,is this a question or an answer?if it is a question, its simply ,"thivery n thivery".Authourity stealing wey pass armed robbery and lack of vision coupled with politics of self empowerment.shekina!

Afam:

It is infact cheaper to have a refinery in Kaduna to carter for fuel needs of the states around Kaduna than to use tankers to transport refined fuel to those states on a daily basis from the South.

What about countries who have no drop of oil? How many refineries have they built?

Nigeria is not the poorest nation. Only the most mismanaged nation in the world. but so are most African countries.


www.myafriplace.com

Another jealous African talking from his nut-sack!!

@ poster

When you have leaders like Sam Egwu who embezzles everything and robbing his nation blind what do you think?

Mental independence never occurred after the colonialism era.

I never could figure out why corrupt leaders would stash the oil revenue in secret European bank accounts.

Because Nigeria people are stvpid. THey keep blaming their leaders for everything