This is how oil ruined Nigeria!!!.
Incase you don’t know this is how corruption crept into Nigeria. Natural resources can sometimes be a blessing and also a curse.
After the Nigerian Civil War there was something call the oil boom. This was a period where the price of Petroleum went through the roof and oil producing states were amassing millions of dollars. Nigeria got so rich in this period that we got the title of Giant of Africa.
The Gowon Administration became the Big Brother to other African states as Nigeria joined the fight for Liberation of Angola, South Africa, Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe). And he also donated huge sums of money to countries like Gambia, Namibia, Congo and so on.
READ ALSO : Full Text Of President Muhammadu Buhari’s National Address
But as the oil boom was a blessing it was also a curse. After the Civil War, Gowon Administration embarked on huge infrastructural projects to rebuild farms, hospitals, Airport all the things that were damaged during the War. And also Military Barracks for the large army.
It was at this stage that corruption crept into Nigeria. The govt ordered a census in order to split the oil revenue, 55% for all states and 45% for the oil producing states. All the states then inflated their population in order to get more money
This angered Gowon and he refused to accept the census. Furthermore, Nigeria became reliant on oil for revenue and other sources of revenue died, import duties were brought really low and imported food became cheaper, this killed agriculture in Nigeria.
Gowon’s Generals and Governors started amassing wealth illegally. Two of them were caught, one resigned and the other one was not punished by Gowon. This showed that there was more corruption in his Govt.
Nigeria economy was fluctuating because of the reliance on oil, 82% of the country’s revenue was from oil, agriculture was dying and import duties became low.
There was also the case of the CEMENT ARMADA. The Gowon Administration order 16M metric tonnes sums of Cement…
to build military barracks, this caused a huge congestion at the Lagos port as ships had to wait in line for about a year to offload. These ships were given compensation for waiting and it resulted in some ships bringing in rubbish goods just to wait in line for compensation.
to build military barracks, this caused a huge congestion at the Lagos port as ships had to wait in line for about a year to offload. These ships were given compensation for waiting and it resulted in some ships bringing in rubbish goods just to wait in line for compensation.
At the end of the day, it was discovered that, the cement was a huge overestimation as the contractors just inflated money to dupe the military government.
The people lost faith in Gowon, as he did not better their lives with the oil wealth, they mismanaged the funds.
… More to come….
Courtesy : RonuSpirits
About Author
Is that all
More to come