Nigeria as a sovereign state has passed through series of social transformation since its independence 52 years ago. UCHE UDUMA, MICHEAL OCHE and KEHINDE AJOBIWE take a look at Nigeria’s social transformation within this period.
Nigeria had her independence in 1960 with 17 other African countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Mali, Madagascar, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Somalia and Togo. Interestingly, these countries liberated from their colonies in 1960, fall within the countries listed as developing countries.?
After their independence, development became a priority in the national plan of the liberalised nations. Nigeria, specifically in its pre colonial, colonial and early post colonial era hinged its development on Agriculture, with Agriculture being its only viable engine for development. A lot of emphasis was placed on Agricultural research and extension services in a bid to boost the production of crops for local consumption and export.
Within its first decade after independence, Nigeria’s agriculture sector flourished. Nigeria became world’s second largest producer of cocoa, largest exporter of palm kernel and largest producer and exporter of palm oil. Nigeria was not just able to feed its population, but had more than enough for export purposes. The revenue generated from Agriculture was used to develop basic infrastructures needed for development.
The three regions then in Nigeria competed to generate revenue for the development of their regions.? Each of the regions had one or two cash crops for revenue generation. The northern region had its groundnut pyramids, the west cocoa mountains, oil palm kernel heaps in the East and rubber plantations in the Mid-West. Apart from the major cash crops produced by the three regions, Nigeria was leading other countries in terms of exporting raw materials such as cotton, groundnut, rubber, hides and skin.
Then came the 1970’s oil boom which completely swept agricultural development under the carpet. Gradually agricultural development began to dwindle.? By 1977, the share of agriculture to the GDP declined from 48.23 percent in 1971 to about 21 percent. The percentage of?? agricultural exports also declined from 20.7 percent in 1971 to 5.71 percent in 1977. At this point oil became the major revenue engine.? 90 percent of Nigeria’s foreign revenue came from oil exports.
Today in Nigeria, that sector has fallen below subsidence level as it can barely feed its population. Nigeria imports food crops such as cassava, rice, palm oil, ground nut oil, fish and several other foods crops which before now were exported.
The oil boom paved way for unbridled corruption which Nigeria is yet to recover from 52 years after. The foreign revenue from oil sales have continued to be mismanaged and pilfered. Hence the super flux of the oil boom is apparently not commensurate with the social economic development of the country as expected.
Today, Nigeria can barely produce the goods and services that it consumes; even the oil which has become its mainstay is not processed in Nigeria as the nation’s refineries are in dereliction. Infra structural development, in terms of good roads, efficient and effective health care delivery and housing has been at a rather slow pace.
Communications
Communication sector remains one of the Nigerian’ssector which has evolved steadily over the years. Nigeria’s Telecommunications sector has grown in leaps and bounds in the last decade. The telecom industry emanated from the telecoms policies and structures inherited from the British colonial administration under the Post and Telegraphic Department. Nigeria in its colonial era and early post colonial era depended on telegraph and letter as its means of conveying messages.
However, the merging of Post and Telecommunications Department of the Ministry of Communications and the former Nigeria External Telecommunications Limited (NET) paved way for the birth of Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) in 1985.
However, in order to improve and increase the supply of telecommunication services in the country, the Nigerian Communications Commissions (NCC) was established by government decree no. 75 in 1992 to regulate the telecommunications industry and ensure adequate and effective telecommunication services nationwide at affordable prices.
However NITEL’s existence like most Nigerian establishments during the military era suffered inefficiency and issues of corruption which affected its services and growth. The birth of democracy in 1999 paved way for onset of Global System of Mobile (GSM) in 2001. Before then only few Nigerians had access to mobile telephony, however with introduction of GSM and emergence of several service providers such as Globacom, MTN, Etisalat, Airtel and others the telecommunication industry has spread its services to every part of the country even the remote villages.
The advancement in telecommunication was not limited to mobile telephoning; it spread across internet services, banking services and communication technologies in organisations. Nigeria in the last decade has emerged the largest and fastest growing telecom Market in Africa and among the ten fastest telecom growth markets in the world.
An expert in the Telecommunication industry, Mr. Wale Abidemi, told LEADERSHIP SUNDAY, that before the advent of GSM, the total number of telephones in Nigeria was 500,000, however with the introduction of GSM in 2001, Nigeria has overtaken South Africa, becoming African’s largest market with about 100 million subscribers.
According to him, “Due to years of neglect by the Federal Government, the number of land lines have reduced and now only few companies offer land line services, the mobile telephoning has helped to spread telephone accessibility to every part of the country. And this technology has cut across not only voice calls, mobile banking but data, as people can now browse with their phones.”?
Transportation
The history of the country’s transportation sector is one that attracts mixed feelings. Immediately after its independence, in November, 1969 to be precise, Nigeria recorded its first post independence air crash when Nigeria Airways BAC VC10 crashed on landing, killing 87 on board. Since then, the country has witnessed more air crashes, just as the bad state of the nation’s highways has led to several deaths. However, the country is making a new drive to resuscitate its rail transport system which used to be its pride at the time of independence.
At the time of independence, Nigerian Airways was the country’s only flag carrier. Today, the country does not have a national carrier. At some point in the nation’s history, the Nigerian Airways had about 30 fleets but it was finally grounded in 2003. Deregulation of the aviation industry in the 1980s led to an increase in passenger volumes, but the poor safety record of domestic carriers has left many potential commuters wary.
No fewer than 1,613 people have lost their lives in 16 different air mishaps involving aircraft operating within and outside the nation’s airspace with Nigerian passengers on board in the past 43 years.
Since the attainment of independence in 1960, the problems of Nigerian transport system have been blamed on bad roads, inadequate fleets of buses or trucks; irregular, inadequate and overcrowded trains and airplanes as well as congested ports.
Today, few Nigerians remember if the rail transport ever existed in the country. Nigeria’s single-narrow-gauge railway line constructed during the colonial period was for many years the only mode of freight movement between the northern and southern parts of the country.
According to the critique by Mazi Jetson Nwakwo, acting managing director of the NRC in 2008, the rail system suffered from lack of political will by the nation’s politicians.
Presently, the government says is trying to rectify the situation by privatizing the Nigerian Railway Corporation. According to the Nigerian Railway Corporation, new railway lines are being constructed in standard gauge (1435mm). These include: Ajaokuta – Warri line of 277km; Kaduna – Abuja (Idu) line of 186 km while the scope of work for Lagos – Ibadan segment is under review together with its cost implications.
It said with its vast assets, once rehabilitation work is completed the Nigerian Railway, is expected to play an increasingly pivotal role in the economic and social developments of the country in this millennium. However, the possibility of this being a reality will depend on the commitment and political will to put words in the action.
Nigeria is said to have the largest road network in West Africa and the second largest south of the Sahara, with roughly 108,000 km of surfaced roads in 1990. Road traffic accounts for more than 80% of the passenger market and an even higher proportion of freight. Road construction have been biggest campaign issues during elections in Nigeria, but analyst believe the government needs to invest more on air, rail and the water ways to reduce the burden on roads.
Nigeria’s sea ports are said to handle 68% of West Africa’s maritime trade. Despite having a reputation for inefficiency, they generate more than $250-million annually, and offer another potential means of decongesting the roads. The country has an inland navigable waterway of about 3000km, with an extensive coastline of around 852 km. The waterways transverse 20 of the 36 states and could be an easy facilitator for moving goods from the coast to the interior at low costs.
Education
The journey through the transformation of Nigeria’s education in Nigeria hasn’t been a smooth ride at all. The western region in 1955 initiated Universal Free Primary Education which saw four thousand, six-years-old children enrolling for primary education for the first time under the Premiership of Chief Obafemi Awolowo.? With the success recorded by (UPE) in the Western Region, the Eastern Region swung into action and embarked upon its 8- year free education scheme in 1957.
Since the Northern Region had already introduced Islamic form of education ever before the Christian (Western) education came into the country, there was no need for them to have UPE. However UPE was abandoned midway because limited funds available couldn’t leverage it. The Universal Basic Education, UBE, came as a replacement for Nigeria’s Universal Primary Education scheme of the 6-3-3-4 system of primary education.
The 9-3-4 system of education was designed in conformity with the MDGs and Education for All (EFA). The law stipulates a 9-year formal schooling, adult literacy and non-formal education, skill acquisition programs and the education of special groups such as nomads and migrants, girl child and women, Al-majiri, street children and disabled people.
Despite the introduction of such intervention like the UBE and the universal basic education, the country is yet to regain its ‘lost glory’ in the education sector. Today, old and outdated book adorn the libraries of public owned schools, while science lad only contain cobwebs.
Severally, years after the economic recession of the 1980’s, budgetary allocations for education have been on the decline, a factor that has often been blamed for inability to recruit quality teachers.
This has contributed negatively in the quality of students being tutored by the teachers. Today the standard of education has fallen to a pitiable state. For the fifth year in a row, Nigeria secondary students have recorded woeful results at both the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) exams. The universities in Nigeria has not fared better either.
Last year the country witness one of its most embarrassing moment when the British authority banned students from various Nigerian universities from practicing medicine in the UK. Most of the universities were those considered top universities in Nigeria. It is worthy to note that as at the time of Nigeria’s independence in 1960, Nigeria had a few universities which were divided into the regions.
These included the University Nigeria Nsukka, University of Ibadan Ahmadu Bello University Zaria in the Northern Region. Nigeria today can boast of over 150 universities; however the standard and quality of graduates being churned out from the universities has fallen drastically low.
However, an education expert Samuel Ajayi told LEADERSHIP SUNDAY “Poor implementation of school curricula is one of the causes of poor educational standards, which causes inadequate skills acquisition. To revive the education sector, we need to revisit areas such curricula, school discipline, school ownership, teacher education and awareness levels of the links between education and self-reliance.”
The Health Sector
Like every other sector of the economy of any country, the health sector is very important because of the role it plays in the lives of the people as no country can maintain a steady economic growth in the absence an adequate healthcare system
In Nigeria, where are three tiers of health institutions, namely, the primary, secondary and tertiary health institutions, the tertiary health institutions in consists of highly specialized services provided by teaching hospitals and other specialist hospitals which provide care for specific diseases such as orthopedic, eye, psychiatric, maternity and pediatric cases.
Care is taken to ensure an even distribution of these hospitals. Also, appropriate support services are incorporated into the development of these tertiary facilities to provide effective referral services. Similarly, selected centers are encouraged to develop special expertise in advantage modern technology to serve as a resource for evaluating and adapting these new developments in the context of local needs and opportunities.
Primary Health Care (PHC) was initiated in Nigeria by President Ibrahim Babangida in 1987 to accelerate integrated health care development across the country simultaneously. PHC was introduced to tackle the increasing childhood diseases such as pertussis, diphtheria, measles, polio, tetanus and tuberculosis.
In a bid to realise the aim of Primary Health Care services, Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI ) was initiated to hasten the immunization of? children younger than two from about 20 percent to 50 percent initially, and to 90 percent by the end of 1990. The health centers at the Local Governments level were to work with the support of the secondary health care at the state ministries of health.
While the health centers serve as the first point of medical care for people in the rural areas and the local government areas,the secondary health care give specialized services to patients referred from the primary health care level through out-patient and in-patient services of hospitals for general medical, surgical, paediatric patients and community health services.
In the 1980’s Nigeria had more than its fair share of diseases which its health sector had to tackle. Among the acute diseases the PHC and SHC had to tackle with were cerebrospinal meningitis, yellow fever, Lassa fever and, most recently, AIDS; the latter included malaria, guinea worm, and river blindness. Cerebrospinal meningitis was particularly intense in the Northern Nigeria due to its heavy population and the extremely hot weather in the north.
It is worthy to note that Nigeria recorded more cases of meningitis in Africa than any other country. In its bid to control the spread of meningitis, the federal and state governments swung into action in 1989 and embarked on mass immunization in the affected regions. Almost at the same time large outbreak of yellow fever occurred in several areas Oyo, Imo, Anambra, and Cross River in the south, Benue and Niger in the middle belt, and Kaduna and Sokoto in the north.
To? control the yellow fever outbreak, fourteen million doses of vaccine were distributed with international assistance and the outbreak was brought under control. Other killer diseases such as Lassa fever, sprung up at different parts of the country. And more recently HIV/Aids surfaced.?
The health sector, undoubtedly has found it extremely hard to eradicate disease outbreaks in Nigeria due to lack of consistency and continuity. The Government’s continuous neglect of the general hospitals and primary health care centres has not helped in health care delivery. Diseases which were being fazed out such as polio, Lassa fever, yellow fever and guinea worm are yet to be completely eradicated.
State governments are supposed to allocate 10 per cent of its annual budget to health care. However, little amount of money is allocated for health care in most states. Lack of modern health care facilities in the health centres and the General hospitals has remained a problem yet to be resolved. Poor remuneration of health workers has not helped the second tier health care either.
The health workers spread across the country time and again embark on industrial action due to poor remuneration.
By the time they resume, diseases which were being kicked out had gradually begun to gain its way back in to the state and maternal mortality rate also increase. It is now common place for Nigerians to die needlessly due to lack of efficient and effective health care delivery.