NIGERIA
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
NIGERIA
BACKGROUND INFORMATIONStandard 16
Resources: Meaning, Use, Distribution, and Importance
Introduction
The concept of a "resource" is a human-centered concept. In order for something to be considered a resource, it must be perceived to have value by humans. This is why we can talk about changes in the use, meaning, and distribution of resources in particular environments. While some resources like water remain fairly stable in their use and valuing, others, like forests, may change a great deal. These changes are related to many different factors. Not least of these is technology. Human societies develop new ways of reshaping the surface and materials on and near the earth. New inventions are created and diffused from one place to another. New uses of raw materials and fuels are devised. All of these processes reveal that human societies, including that of Nigeria, are ever changing in their relationship with the environment. Another important dimension of resources is level of economic development. The way that Nigerians use and perceive resources varies internally. Nigerians’ use of resources also differs from that of the world’s developed countries. This essay provides a glimpse at some of the ways that resources are distributed, used, and perceived within Nigerian society. In the interest of brevity, the discussion focuses on several key resources, namely, water, forests, minerals, and soils.
Water Resources
Water is a resource that is needed by all humans and most other forms of life. Water is so crucial to humans that it often influences human settlement patterns. Nigeria is a country that receives a relatively high level of annual precipitation. As other sections have emphasized, however, rainfall is not distributed evenly through time or space. Large seasonal variation in rainfall exists, as well as large regional variation in rainfall. Because of these variations in time and space, people in different parts of Nigeria use water in different ways. For example, in the drier northern parts of Nigeria where rainfall is lower and less evenly distributed throughout the year, efforts have been made to develop irrigation. Irrigation development has involved many different kinds of dams, from large electricity-producing dams to smaller dams used mainly for field irrigation.
While irrigation is important in a few parts of the country, the vast majority of people use water mainly for day-to-day household activities like cooking, drinking, and washing. In a relatively well-watered country like Nigeria, one would think that acquiring water would not be a problem. Providing safe, abundant supplies of household water is not a simple task, however. In a poor country like Nigeria, gaining access to safe, continuous water supplies is an ongoing challenge for many. Human wastes and pollution make many water supplies unsafe for many people. In addition, the state has been unable to provide safe, affordable water. This is particularly true in rural areas. In many rural areas, women and girls are forced to walk long distances to acquire household water. In extreme cases, women and children may spend from two to three hours per day gathering water. It goes without saying that most rural households do not have their own pipe-borne water supply. In the best of circumstances, small villages or neighborhoods will have their own wells. While water supply is somewhat better in urban areas, major challenges still remain. In cities without a functioning public water system, individual households and groups of households must either drill their own well or purchase their water. The proliferation of small urban wells is not an optimum solution, however. There is no guarantee that the water drawn from these wells is safe for drinking. Without adequate sanitation facilities, household wastes filter into the city’s underground water supply.
Access to safe water is a critical factor in Nigerian public health. This is why the poor state of Nigeria’s water supply is so important. The most damaging drinking water-borne illnesses are typhoid, cholera, and diarrhea. Other human diseases are spread merely through contact with contaminated water. Bathing water illnesses include bilharzia (another name for schistosomiasis), guinea worm, and roundworm. Drinking and bathing are not the only methods through which water-borne illnesses are spread. Contaminated water is often used to wash foods like fruits and vegetables. This often provides another channel for diseases to spread.
Besides immediate household use, water is an important resource for transportation and electricity generation. With respect to the latter, Nigeria produces approximately one-half of all its electricity through hydro-dams. The Kainji Dam in west-central Nigeria is the source of most of this hydroelectricity. While this is an impressive relative figure, Nigerian electricity consumption is low by international standards. Thus, many Nigerians are still without electricity or do not rely heavily on electricity for their energy needs. In terms of transportation, Nigeria’s rivers play an important role in the country’s transportation system. Because Nigeria is a relatively well-watered country, it has an abundance of rivers. It should be noted, however, that the flow of rivers fluctuates seasonally, depending on both regional rainfall regime and human uses of river water (e.g. irrigation, dams). The two major rivers of Nigeria are the Niger and its primary Nigerian tributary, the Benue. The Niger River is the major river for all of West Africa, rising in the Guinea Highlands 4200 km upstream from its mouth. Because of substantial water loss upstream, however, the Niger is not as large as one might imagine by the time it reaches Nigeria. This reality hinders the use of the Niger as an all-season West African transportation artery. Nevertheless, the Niger-Benue system is of substantial importance to Nigeria. "The large volume of water [in the lower part of the Niger], particularly between June and November when it is in flood, the steady gradient of its valley, and the fact that it flows through rich agricultural lands, make it of great importance for transport."
Forest Resources
In a country like the United States, trees are primarily processed into lumber and paper products. Few people rely on wood as a major source of energy. In many parts of the developing world, however, wood is a primary source of household energy. In much of sub-Saharan Africa, fuelwood is the dominant source of energy for cooking and other activities. Nigeria is typical of this pattern. While fuelwood use is most common in rural areas, many urban households also rely upon wood for their daily needs. The table below illustrates this point.
Major Source of Energy for Cooking
|
Rural
|
Urban
|
|
| Wood | 73% | 21% |
| Kerosene | 11% | 52% |
| Wood-imported stove | 9% | 12% |
| Other | 7% | 15% |
In urban areas, most people who use fuelwood buy small bundles of wood or charcoal (which is produced from wood), from urban merchants. Thus, when women and others conduct household shopping, an important item on their list is often fuelwood. An interesting dynamic of fuelwood marketing is wood quality. Not all wood is of the same quality. One of the most important criteria of wood quality is moisture content. If shoppers buy wood that is too wet or dry, they have wood that either burns too fast or too slow.
In rural areas, people often gather their own fuelwood. In fact, many rural people earn small amounts of income by gathering fuelwood for the cities. Depending on the state of local vegetation, fuelwood gatherers may have to travel extensive distances to collect their fuelwood. One reason for this is that many tree species like oil palms, and cocoa trees are not used for fuelwood. Thus, fuelwood collectors must gain access to particular trees in particular places. Further, fuelwood collection is a seasonal activity. For small-scale wood collectors, the dry season is a time of intensified fuelwood collection. This is because there is typically less farm work to do in the dry season and wood is lighter and easier to carry. This is important because most fuelwood collectors are limited in their collection by the amount that they can carry as a headload. Because of the seasonality of fuelwood collection in the northern half of the country, fuelwood prices fluctuate seasonally as well. In general, fuelwood is more expensive during the rainy season.
One important determinant of fuelwood use over the last several decades is population growth. To the extent that people do not acquire their energy needs from non-wood sources, greater population growth leads to greater cutting of trees for fuelwood. While this basic argument is an accurate assessment for many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, it is important to evaluate the role of humans in managing tree resources. In Nigeria, there are indications that people are quite capable of managing their tree resources without outside, bureaucratic intervention. The region surrounding the northern city of Kano provides an excellent case study of fuelwood management.
The Kano closely-settled zone (i.e. Kano’s surrounding region, see population density map) has some of the most densely-populated rural areas in all of Nigeria. Within this region, land use is very intensive and most land is continuously under agricultural production. In this situation, it is logical to expect that tree densities have declined as population densities have risen. This has not been the case, however. One study of the Kano densely-settled zone indicated that tree numbers rose substantially during the period 1972-1981. Further away from the city, tree densities increased 26 percent over the period 1972 to 1985. Timber volume also increased. This is because "the volume of timber per hectare is actually greater in farmland than in either shrubland or forest reserves because the trees are much larger. A single kapok tree (silk cotton), for example, may contain as much wood as several hundred trees of a smaller species with a shrubby growth habit." As this account indicates, the intensive use of land for farming may actually increase wood resources available to humans. In the situation of the Kano hinterlands, this is because rainfall is insufficient for dense forests to develop. And, instead of maintaining smaller shrub savanna lands that would develop without human modification, farming has promoted the growth of larger tree species. This modification is not without consequence, however. The elimination of smaller shrubs and dwarf tree species has altered local ecosystems dramatically
Mineral Resources
Mineral extraction in Nigeria is highly localized and employs relatively few people. Nonetheless, minerals have been some of Nigeria’s most important resources in the last several decades. As the following examples indicate, however, the importance of mineral resources fluctuates a great deal over time. For example, in the British colonial era tin was an important resource extracted from north-central Nigeria. At the peak of tin mining in the 1940s and 1950s, the industry directly employed as many as 75,000 workers. After this peak, however, both tin production and employment levels began to decline precipitously. Part of the reason for this decline was the exhaustion of the tin reserves. The more important reason was that tin production in other parts of the world was far cheaper and more economical. Because places like southeast Asia and Bolivia could produce tin ore much more cheaply, Nigeria’s tin industry went into serious decline. Not long after the decline of tin, however, Nigeria discovered vast quantities of petroleum reserves. These discoveries were to have major impacts on Nigeria’s national development, both positive and negative.
Nigeria has substantial petroleum and natural gas reserves. The country is also a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and typically among the largest oil exporters in the world. While it is important to know that Nigeria is a large oil producer, it is also critical to know where these resources are located. As with most geographic phenomena, oil is not located evenly throughout Nigeria. Instead, it is concentrated along the Nigerian coast, particularly around the delta of the Niger River and in the southeast corner of the country. The highly concentrated location of oil resources has been of critical importance throughout the short history of independent Nigeria. Large-scale oil resources were first discovered in this region of Nigeria in the late 1950s. Extraction of crude oil did not begin until the 1960s. The history and geography of Nigeria’s southeast region are both important in the violent and protracted Biafran War, which lasted from 1967 to 1970. Biafra is the name of the new state that Igbo separatists were attempting to establish in the late 1960s. Part of the Igbos motivation to secede from the Nigerian federation was oil. If the Igbos were successful in establishing the state of Biafra, they would gain control over almost all of Nigeria’s newly discovered oil resources. As it turns out, the Igbos lost their bid for independence, and the colonial entity of Nigeria held together.
As recent history now reveals, the Igbos were prophetic in their claims over the Nigerian oilfields. Since the 1970s, oil revenues have been central to the functioning of the Nigerian government. In fact, since the intensification of oil production began in the 1970s, oil revenues have provided roughly 80 percent of the federal state’s total revenues. Thus, the revenues from a small region of the country ostensibly benefit those throughout the country. While this assessment is highly simplified because of corruption and regional politics, it is certainly true that not all of the benefits from Nigeria’s oil flow back to the people living in this region. Because of this situation, the oil-producing region has been the site of continued political and economic conflict. This conflict intensified in the 1990s with the internationally known political-environmental movement led by Ken SaroWiwa and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP).
The Ogoni movement is representative of the claims of many ethnic minorities in the Niger Delta. The central complaint of these peoples is that they have been exploited by both the Nigerian government and the foreign oil companies operating in the delta. They and other international advocates claim that this exploitation has taken both positive and negative forms. In negative terms, they claim that their local environments have been degraded by oil spills, destruction of local ecosystems, and natural gas flaring. They also claim that the government and the oil companies have essentially ignored their claims for retribution. In positive terms, the Ogoni and other groups claim that they have gained few if any benefits from the development of oil resources in the region. It is unclear what the future holds for this region of Nigeria, but there are signs that the administration of President Obasanjo is more sympathetic to the plight of delta residents.
The Biafran War and the more recent struggles in the Niger delta are indicative of a broader problem within Nigeria as a whole. Quite simply, how should the oil and natural gas resources of Nigeria be utilized? How should the profits from these resources be distributed both socially and geographically? How can these resources be developed without destroying the lives of people within production zones? These are questions that are very much in debate in contemporary Nigeria. Regardless of the resolution of these questions, it is clear that the presence of oil in Nigeria provides an important linkage between this West African country and other parts of the world. In particular, approximately one-half of Nigerian oil flows to the huge gas-guzzling American economy. Because of this flow, American car owners are very much connected to issues of resource use in the distant country of Nigeria.
Soils
It is often easy to overlook soil as a resource. This is particularly true for Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom do not directly depend on soil for their immediate livelihoods. In Nigeria, however, thirty to forty times the number of people are directly engaged with the soil through agriculture. Unfortunately, however, soils are only mediocre to average throughout much of the country. In many countries with low soil fertility, chemical fertilizers are used extensively. This is not the case in Nigeria, however, where fertilizer use continues to be among the lowest rates in the world. Lack of fertilizer use is due to a mix of different factors. Most Nigerians cannot afford fertilizer or get credit for increased agricultural inputs. Further, government has often mismanaged distribution of state-supplied fertilizer.
In the absence of chemical or organic fertilizers, Nigerian agriculture has relied on different fallow systems to maintain soil fertility. In areas of moderate to low population density and relatively equitable land distribution, these systems are quite effective (see standard 14 for more information). These fallow systems can often be disrupted by population change or changes in land tenure, however. The key point to note here is that external social and economic constraints often limit the ways in which people use resources like soil. In other words, individual farmers do not have full control over the way in which they use their land. If a farmer is faced with the choice of immediate personal survival or the long-term health of the soil, personal survival is the obvious winner. In other cases, however, individuals may shift their agricultural production to other crops. Cassava provides an excellent example of a shift to a new crop.
Due to several different factors, cassava (also known as manioc) has emerged as an important Nigerian food crop in recent years. In fact, many agricultural experts believe that cassava will be an increasingly important world food crop in the years to come. Nigeria is representative of this prediction. As agricultural resources become scarcer relative to population, high-yielding crops that can be grown on average to poor soils will become more important. Cassava is such a crop. The major drawback of this crop, however, is that it can lead to dietary deficiencies if not supplemented with meat and other foods. This problem is partially solved by eating the leaves of the cassava plant, which are rich in vitamins and other nutrients.
So far I have focused on the use of soil as an agricultural resource. Soil is also an important building material in Nigeria. In the majority of the country, the walls of houses and other buildings are constructed out of mud. Since soil is readily available, it serves as a relatively cheap and environmentally friendly building material. The use of mud in construction is important because it decreases the amount of wood, stone, or other materials that are required for building construction. In order to produce a solid and durable wall, mud is typically mixed with a straw-like material and some gravel. Mud-walled buildings like these are then topped off with a thatch roof, metal roof, or a wood-supported mud roof.
Conclusion
As the examples in this essay have shown, resource use is subject to many different influences. Distribution of environmental elements like water, forests, and soil is one important factor in resource use. Another important factor is level of socioeconomic development. Several of the examples discussed above contrast sharply with resource conceptions and resource use in developed countries. One of the clearest examples is that of fuelwood. The roles of the state, foreign companies, population change, and culture were also discussed at different points in the essay. Because of the number of diverse factors listed here, it is clear that understanding humans and Nigerians’ use and conceptualization of resources is never a simple task.
Web Materials on Nigeria’s Resources
General Resources
Water Resources
Forest Resources
Mineral Resources
Soils-Agriculture
