OIL or AGRICULTURE: Where the Northern Elites Got it Wrong
It was depressing and pathetic the day I read the news that PMB had directed the search for oil in the North. And I thought "what a misplaced priority"!
The global fall in the price of oil and the unfortunate hunger in Nigeria caused by recession should have been an opportunity for the North to explore her comparative advantage in agriculture which is very much needed now than ever. Instead the President is wasting human and capital resources in search of depleting natural resource-Oil.
I know Mr President may not understand the principle of Comparative Adavantage as regards Nation-Building in Multi-Ethnic and Federal System like Nigeria, but what are those bunch of Ministers and Advisers telling this Old Man? Perhaps it is the "Northern Agenda" playing out: a situation where after successful oil exploration in the North, they will unleash their Universal Jihad Agenda on the rest of the country?
Well, focusing on agriculture at this critical moment would have been better for the North. A facebook user captures it much better:
"We are now in an age where, with visionary leadership, the north could for once rise up to her potential to feed Nigeria, feed Africa, and become one of the world’s frontiers of mega-industrial agriculture. We are now in an age where the north could leverage these new frontiers to build a wealth fund for the next three generations. Instead, a leadership suffering from vision glaucoma is casting her net wildly like a lunatic in the desert, looking frantically for a finite resource that is on its way out"- Pius Adesanmi

I Discover You Are A Wailer. Agriculture Has Been Our Occupation, Oil Too Will Be A Great Asset. We Can Not Abandon Oil Because We Are Into Agriculture. If Nigeria Especially The South Didn't Abandon Coco Because Of Oil They Would Have Been Better Off By Now. But I Tell You The North Wouldn't Be As Foolish As The South To Abandon Agriculture Because Of Oil.