NIGERIA IN THE FACE OF DEVELOPMENT
While a lot have been said about Nigeria’s economic performance of recent, there has been the old argument as to where to classify Nigeria in terms of development. If Nigeria is said to be the giant of Africa, does this mean that it is developed? The richest African hails from Nigeria, does this suggest that Nigeria breeds wealth and is said to be developed? Developed economies as well as world development support frameworks have refused to lend to Nigeria as much as they should be lending to an undeveloped nation. Does this mean Nigeria to be developed? All these questions are what this article seeks to resolve. There is no much of an argument about the fact that the Nigerian economy does indeed grow. This is, at least reflected in her gross domestic product (GDP) which translates into her gross domestic income (GNI) being put at 405.10 billion US dollars in 2016 (NBS, 2016). In other words, Nigeria averaged a GDP growth rate of 1.17 percent from 2010 until 2017. There have been too much to argue with regards to development in Nigeria. Economists have paid greater attention to the development problems of underdeveloped nations (which includes Nigeria) or what we popularly refer to as developing countries or less developed countries since after the Second World War in 1914. Coincidentally this period marked the amalgamation of the then major protectorates of Nigeria by Lord Luggard, thereby suggesting that Nigeria have long joined in the surge for better economic and structural transformation which would dovetail with development. Until now, Nigeria has accomplished little or nothing in the aspect of development. This strongly suggests that development is never bought overnight.
Most citizenry in underdeveloped nations still live in mud houses and thatched roof with poor housing patterns. Health-wise, a vast majority of them have low access to safe drinking water, there is little or no sanitary waste disposal. Life expectancy level is low as 2 die within a year, 3 die before they are five years old, and only 5 reach the age of 40 years out of every ten randomly selected children in underdeveloped countries.
In addition, underdeveloped countries have extremely high population-doctor ratio. For example India has 2083 persons to a doctor, Bangladish (5555 per doctor) and so on. However NBS explained that over 6000 patients in Nigeria depend on a doctor. This is a terrible margin considering the WHO recommendation of, at least, 600 persons per doctor.

In a bid to point Nigeria towards development, as well as to provide answer to the questions around which this article borders, it is needful to outline the features of an underdeveloped nation: Maybe putting the country in front of the mirror will help it see better what areas to fix. An underdeveloped economy has the following features:

General Poverty: Poverty is reflected in low gross national product (GNP) per capita or low per capita real income. Income is therefore a measure of relative poverty. The World Bank and NBS report (1999-2000) classified countries according to GNP per capital as follow;
Low income countries: the have GNP per capita less than or equal to $760. Contain 59.6% of world population. Most countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America belong to this class. For example Nepal and Tanzania with GNP per capita $210, Nigeria ($300), Ghana ($390), Zimbabwe ($610), and so on.
Middle income countries: these are characterised by GNP per capita between $761 and $9360 and contain 25.4 percent of world population. Countries like Phillipines ($1050), Kenya ($1310), Namibia ($1940), South Africa ($2880) and Malaysia ($3600) make up this category.
High income countries: they are characterised by GNP per capita greater than $960. This contains 15% of the world population. Countries like Luxemburg ($43570), Switzerland ($40080), Japan (32380), and USA ($29346) lead this pack.
Absolute Poverty: this is a measure of the standard of living of average citizenry of the nation. This is a more important factor in assessing underdeveloped countries. A country is underdeveloped if the living standard of the masses of the population is manifested in malnutrition (food insecurity), as well as poor health, shelter, clothing and lack of education. The Nigeria masses spend 80 percent of their income on consumption expenditure and yet account for more purchase of low quality food such as grains (rice) and starchy foods (garri) with little or nothing left for investment expenditure. This is completely the reverse of Advanced Industrial Countries (AICs) who spend 20 percent of their income on consumption of more nutritious food such as dairy, meat, fish, etc., and 80 percent of their income on investment expenditure. Furthermore, in terms of education, there is a 100 percent enrolment in school and the education type suits the development need of the nations who are said to be advanced or developed. This cannot be said for Nigeria where less than 70 percent are enrolled in primary school, less than 20 percent completes secondary school without disjoints, and less than 5 percent eases through tertiary institutions. To worsen the situation, the Nigeria education is not tailored to the development needs of the country as most of its curriculums are consequences of borrowed and poorly appraised ideologies.
Other variables that characterises Nigeria as an undeveloped nation are listed below and would be buttressed on in subsequent correspondences;
predominance of agriculture and drudgery-based applications or techniques,
poor demographic or population features,
unemployment, underemployment and disguised unemployment,
unstreamlined education,
little or no investment,
inequality in income distribution,
economic backwardness,
inflation,
poor balance of trade,
political and social unrest
poor balance of payment, etc
Having interacted with you on just a few variables of development already, you should have an informed opinion of the state of the nation.

Thank you! Till another time.
By Ibelegbu C. Augustine and Sandra O. O ( Proudly Nigerians)
written on Monday, 9th Oct 2017.