NIGERIAN AND ITS VAST RESOURCES;

ARE THEY CONSERVED FOR FUTURE GENERATION?

               

BY:

MUDASSIR ALIYU YUNUSA

NTA ZARIA

mudassiray@gmail.com

   

      Nigeria is a country located in West Africa, the largest country in Africa in terms of population and wealth potentialities. It is the largest oil producer and exporter in Africa and 5^th in the world generally. Almost all valuable resource can be found in the country, some underground and surface resources are yet to be tapped. Apart from that the country is blessed with abundance land which is extra ordinarily fertile and suitable for cultivating numerous types of crops for domestic consumption and export for cash and revenue generation. The climatic condition in the country varies from time to time peculiar to the three (3) regional areas of the country, for instance, in Northern region only statistics has shown that with effective management and proper utilization of the endowed resources particularly in the field of agriculture, Nigeria can feed the whole African continent.  Likewise cocoa and rubber; palm oil and palm kennel are among the important and valuable resources in the world, and are richly endowed in western and eastern regions of Nigeria respectively.

     Initially farming and mining were the mainstay of the Nigerian economy especially in pre independent era and even after the country attained self control and with revenue from the duo sectors aforementioned above the country was able to provide to its citizens some basic life requirements. But with the discovery of oil and its drilling in commercial quantity the face of Nigerian economy was turned to the revenue derivable from crude oil neglecting some other important and nucleus economic sector especially agricultural and industrial sector making the country to depend mainly on oil proceeds.

     However, even though some resources are yet to be tapped in Nigeria, but there is need to make the best use of the country’s resources and preserve them to sustain both the present and future generation.

The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life. We must maintain for our national development the adequate material basis with which our future will still be on proper track. Nigeria must show foresight and must look ahead as a nation not only enjoys a wonderful measure of present prosperity but if this prosperity is used to harness future success. The benefit for conserving the available resource is numerous for any nation aspiring to be great, it is highly encouraging for any country to determine on how to maintain its status quo through proper planning and preservation of the resources for future use, there must be a realization of the fact that to waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed. For the last few years, through several agencies, the government has been endeavoring to get our people to look ahead and to substitute a planned and orderly development of our resources in place of a haphazard striving for immediate profit. Our great river systems should be developed as national water highways, the forests and their tributaries, standing first in importance. 

    We are prone to speak on the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so. The mineral wealth of the country, the coal, iron, oil, gas, and the like, does not reproduce itself, and therefore is certain to be exhausted ultimately; and wastefulness in dealing with it today means that our descendants will feel the exhaustion a generation or two before they otherwise would. But there are certain other forms of waste which could be entirely stopped the waste of soil by washing, for instance, which is among the most dangerous of all wastes now in progress in the country and is easily preventable, so that this present enormous loss of fertility is entirely unnecessary.

     We all know that the foundation laid by our past leaders still remain the same up to present people are benefiting from their legacy, in even though some became rotten and others have started fading off. My question here is what are we doing for our children and grand children who are yet to be born as our fore father done to us? Did we make any tangible provisions that may ameliorate our future generation? Is there any arrangement for our future sustainable development economically, socially and politically?

     It is a mandate for every good citizen to contribute his/her own quota in building a just and prosperous society. Let us make sure that our resources (both human and material resources) are highly preserved for our own future generation. We should desist from any action that may eventually jeopardize the welfare of the next generation to come, because they are our blood descendants, and I am sure no matter the level of madness one have, one will not stab him/herself with a knife. Therefore any misuse and extravagant of the present resources will automatically impair and wash away the quality of its future demand and hence jeopardize the welfare condition of our offspring.

                                   Mudassir write from NTA Zaria channel 32