Sustainable Management of Natural Resources in Nigeria

Nigeria is a country with abundant resources and the potential to be a very powerful nation, but it is hampered by many problems. These problems are caused by Nigeria’s colonization by England. Because of this intrusion on their way of life, their future was altered dramatically. The nation of Nigeria as a whole has suffered greatly as a country because of this colonization, its problem is rooted in the way it was colonized and ruled.

1. A resource is a substance in the environment that is useful to people, is economically and technologically feasible to access, and is socially acceptable to use.

There are about 16.6 million people living in Nigeria. Nigeria has the world’s highest fertility rate but the life expectancy is about fifty years. It is estimated that in about thirty years, the population would grow to about fifty million people living in the country of Nigeria alone. This will cause water irrigation and food supply issues because there are more mouths to feed. Another issue facing Nigeria is the spread of HIV. As men travel, women would supply men with condoms to pass around to other men they may encounter to counter HIV. Drought also is an environmental disaster facing Nigeria and its plant life. People would chop trees down for a living and soon, there were not enough trees to supply the number of people demanding them. Droughts are becoming more common in the area. Before they would come every ten years but now, droughts are coming every three years if not

Natural resources are raw materials extracted from the earth. They are useful in many different ways for its diversified opportunity of benefit and profit for economic development. Examples of natural resources are mineral, oil, waterways, land, timber, diamonds, coals, coltan and genetic. Majority of developing countries, distributions of natural resources vary from one geographic location to another. The variability of location has caused greed and grievances in economic development. This was attributed to more risk of conflict, weak governance, and poor economic performance.

The amount of a natural resource that a region or deposit has is classified either as a reserve or as a resource. Reserves of natural resources are the volume of natural resource that is economically and commercially exploitable with available technology. Resources are the total volume of natural resources present in the system or region, but may not be exploitable with current technology or economic evaluations. Resources may turn into reserves and reserves may turn into resources, dependent upon current market prices. (Owen, Inderwildi & King, 2010).

Today Nigeria still has social, political, religious, cultural, and economic problems, but they aren’t as serious as before, still, some problems are decreasing in the society, there are new ones or/and some problems are

The three factors/ approaches that best explain the current patterns of forest decline and recovery are population/markets, political economy, and ethics. The population/markets approach introduces the concept of forest transition theory which talks about how the economic growth that destroys forests is also necessary for its restoration and return. The initial expansion in population and economic activity puts pressure on forest resources, resulting in rampant deforestation that clears land for agricultural use. The intensification of agriculture then allows more crops to be grown on less land, in turn freeing up unneeded land for forest recovery. From a political economy standpoint however, a decrease in forest cover is viewed as an expansion

Nigeria has become the fastest growing country in Africa, its coastal ports are the heart and soul of its economy. Since its creation by the British Empire, there has been a civil breakdown and conflict among its tribal leaders. However, their religious understanding between Islam and Christianity has kept them at peace amidst themselves throughout time. The last few years, the government has developed itself into a functioning federation, the people are able to notice how outside influence has improved their daily lives.

For example, Shell Oil, an MNC (Multi National Corporation), extracted 50% of Nigeria’s yearly crude output, and 14% of its own output from the Niger delta region (The Changing Nature of Third World Exploitation, 1995). Though a large number of the local populace was recruited by Shell to serve as the basic labor force, there has been no change in the deplorable conditions the locals were living in. Over a period of 15 years, due to massive and widespread oil spills, heavy land degradation of the alluvial soil has taken place. The locals, who come from an agriculture based society, have in effect, been deprived of their ancestral way of life, their heritage, all due to the greed driven actions of the partly

Resources are non-human things within an organization; they show how well an organization makes decisions in the short and long term. They are the financials and balance sheet with ratios. Resources are tangible and intangible.

Another factor precipitating deforestation appears to be poverty. Commonly held views argue that “high discount rates” received by poor countries are a cause of deforestation (The World Bank Forestry Policy 1991, Pearce and Watford 1993.). Because forests imply long gestation; private agents, particularly from the poorest countries, value what they can get immediately from forests more than what they can get in the future. But in 1999, Ekbom and Bojo challenged those views in a World Bank examination by showing that poverty does not necessarily lead to shorter time horizons and an increased rate of environmental degradation. They show how in fact the rural poor have used resources in a conservationist manner over a long period spanning centuries. Ostrom (1990), one of the various analysts they quoted, established a number of conditions that would lead to long term use of common resources despite their short-time

The Nigerian economy has quite the surplus of natural resources they offer the potential for economic growth. “Crude oil accounted for over 95% of exports and over 65% of government revenue in 2004;” Nigeria is number eight in the world's exporter for oil. But agriculture still is a big part in the basic economic activity for the Nigerians.

The economic condition of Nigeria has been damaged due to conflict among several competing ethnic, tribal and religious group has limited political stability and led to political strife. As per United Nations, Nigeria has low human development because of the high number of illiteracy among adult population and also due to low life expectancy rate.

Nigeria is an Agricultural and oil rich nation but characterised by Political instability, corruption, poor

     Nigeria has been a country in political turmoil for a long time. The country was created in 1914 under British colonial rule and at that time it was considered a protectorate. It was not until 1960 that Nigeria received independence from the United Kingdom. One of Nigeria's problems politically is that it has over three hundred different ethnic groups. The three largest of these are the Hausa-Fulani, Igbo, and Yoruba. At the time of the independence of Nigeria it was split up into three states with each state being under the control of one of the major ethnic groups. The natural resources of the other 297 ethnic groups were exploited for the major three groups,