Africa has a new number one; Nigeria. On April 6th 2014, Nigeria thoraxed itself to becoming Africa’s biggest economy in terms of GDP after re-basing, overtaking South Africa. This has brought a lot of brouhaha since then from every corner of the world; writers, bloggers, media houses, social media sites etc. No one should prevent Nigerians from bragging about its new status despite the criticism; I mean, if it was Kenya, hallo! We would brag about it until forever comes and repeats itself twice! Nigeria is christened the giant of the west Africa. It is the 7th most populated nation in the world and Africa’s most populous nation; with a population of around 170 million plus as of July 2011. It is one sixth the population of Sub-Saharan Africa and 3 times the size of South Africa. It is Africa’s leading oil producer, ranked 6th in the world in oil exports and 10th in natural gas revenue.
Re-basing/ re-benchmarking of national account series (GDP), is the process of replacing an old base year volumes of GDP with new and more recent base year. It’s carried out so that a nation’s GDP statistics give the most up to date picture of the economy as possible; for Nigeria, it was more of a political reason, President Jonathan Goodluck is under great pressure to show economic results as he approaches a run for re-election. Many nations do it frequently, but Nigeria last rebased its GDP in 1990. The latest 2014 GDP stands at a cool $510 billion (from $276 billion) and this has boosted the size of the economy to over 60%, moreover, it has also pushed the country to the 24th largest economy of the world. GDP per capita went up from $1555 in 2012 to $2688 taking the country up from 135th position in the world to 121st. GDP per capita in South Africa in comparison is $7508; 3 times bigger than Nigeria’s. Some of the new sectors accounted for which were negligible or non-existent in 1990’s re basing were; mobile telephone market (Africa’s largest with over 125 million subscribers), the music industry and the hugely popular local film industry, Nollywood; accounts for 1.4% of the GDP.The problem of using GDP as an economic indicator is that it only shows how rich a country is and not the individuals. For the ordinary Nigerians, most of who still live less that $2 a day, the re-basing is likely to have very little effect on them. The fact that Nigeria is now number one is not enough to sugar coat the troubling and worrisome facts about today’s Nigeria.
Nigeria has 101 problems; like seriously. It is a divided nation; the north which is the oil producing states and south, the non-oil producing states. Boko Haram and related groups remain a threat to the stability of the nation. Just recently on April 14th, a week after Nigeria was named Africa’s number one economy, some 270 plus young school girls (who are yet to be rescued) were abducted in the dead of the night from a boarding school in north-eastern Nigeria in what was the most brazen act so far by the Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram; fears abound that they have been sold to slavery or used as sex slave. Nigeria might be the country with the highest private jet owners in Africa but among the worst and miserable places for wealth redistribution and income inequality in the world; the poor are really POOR, the rich are extremely RICH; after all, the richest black man in the world, Aliko Dangote is Nigerian, with a net worth of $16.1 billion. The country was also ranked LAST out of 80 countries evaluated in 2013 by the Economic Intelligence Unit as the worst place for a baby to enter the world; that is depressing! Other problems in Nigeria include widespread corruption, poor governance, rampant oil theft, slow ports, bad roads, lack of electricity; despite growing investment, the nation only meets 20% of its current electrical power needs. Nigeria is the only oil producing nation without reasonable electricity, drinking water and health care facilities. In addition, the unemployment rate in Nigeria is alarming, 23.9%; this problem is particularly acute amongst the country’s youth population, and according to the National Baseline Youth Survey Report, 54% of Nigeria’s youth population was unemployed in 2012.
Nigeria’s re basing has definitely improved the country’s profile; the balance sheet, it’s credit rating; it has promoted it from being a low income country. Being ranked 24th in the word for a third world country is not a small deal; it’s now ranked with the likes of Norway, Belgium, Argentina, Thailand, Taiwan etc; this means it has a lot of catching up to do; a fly on a bull is still a fly anyway… I’m just saying. It now has to meet expectations for being Africa’s biggest economy. South Africa; the only G-20 member in Africa, is ahead of Nigeria in areas such as infrastructure, income per capita and governance. It will continue to remain the most competitive economy in Africa despite Nigeria’s new status. Nigeria has little to celebrate about and has a long way to go before TRULY claiming the title, ‘Africa’s biggest economy’. They need to hold onto that champagne bottle just a little longer before they pop it to celebrate. #SomeoneTellNigeria
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