The great Nigerian oil boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s brought billions of dollars flooding into the economy and attracted hundreds of thousands of farmers from the land into cities in search of fortunes.
But $40/bbl crude oil was a passing phenomenon. Now, with prices at less than half that level and crude oil production down by as much as 1 million b/d, a prolonged period of unremitting austerity has replaced Nigeria's boom.
LIFE GETS TOUGHER
Life has become tougher at most levels of Nigerian society, and there are few signs that dramatic improvement is on the way.
Local companies are learning the harsh facts of commercial life, making jobs for the average Nigerian even harder to find. The result has been a steady drift of people from the cities back to the villages.
Nigeria's obsession with oil money, shared by many of its trading partners and bankers, has tended to overshadow the fact that 70% of the population are small farmers who produce 80-90% of the nation's food.
Nigerians returning from the cities have been absorbed back into the system of subsistence farming, which provides limited scope for improving overall standards of living.
In this situation the rural areas are looking for all the assistance they can muster. And one of the first calls made by community leaders these days is on foreign oil companies who run their own local development programs.
The largest community development program is operated by Shell Petroleum Development Co. of Nigeria Ltd., the country's biggest operator. Activities range from provision of roads, water, and electricity to outlying communities to education projects and help for farmers.
Shell feels its money is well spent. Although the company is the biggest single foreign contributor of revenues to the central government, benefits from those payments are often slow to filter through to the people living on or around the company's concessions east and west of the Niger Delta.
Considerable attention is paid to helping farmers, many of whom have evolved from meager subsistence operators to small scale commercial farmers producing marketable surpluses that have raised their standards of living.
Twenty years of experience have shown that maximum returns come from educating farmers, providing them at cost with disease resistant plants, and encouraging marketing cooperatives. The result is blossoming production of yams, cassava, pineapples, plantains, and palm oil.
BRANCHING OUT
Shell's assistance program has branched out into fish farming. One thing not in short supply on the Niger Delta is water. Shell-sponsored programs show farmers how to create lakes and provide fish breeding stock.
Not only do the lakes produce a prized source of food for local communities, farmers get a secondary income from selling chicken eggs. Henhouses are suspended over the edge of the lakes, allowing the droppings to fall into the water where they provide food for the fish. In the best Shell tradition, nothing is wasted, and profits are maximized.
Copyright 1990 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
