It is often said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. In Nigeria’s case, it is more like ignoring all alternatives while hoping a broken economic model will miraculously start working. Despite being richly endowed with natural and human resources, the country remains locked in a vicious cycle of poverty, food insecurity, and unemployment. The price of a single onion now exceeds N250 in many Nigerian markets as of September 2025, up from about N100 just two years ago. That is not inflation alone; it is a symptom of a systemic failure to rethink how we approach development.
How did a country once known for its robust agricultural exports become unable to feed itself? The answer partially lies in the oil curse. Following the discovery of oil in Oloibiri in 1956 and the influx of petrodollars in the 1970s, agriculture, once the backbone of the economy, was relegated to the background. Cocoa, groundnuts, palm oil, and rubber, which were once Nigeria’s pride and major foreign exchange earners, gave way to the monoculture of crude oil exports. While other resource-rich nations reinvested oil wealth into other productive sectors, Nigeria built neither a strong industrial base nor a diversified economy. Today, we are paying the price.
Diversification is not just about shifting resources across sectors. As the economist Harry Markowitz explained in his Portfolio Theory, reducing risk requires spreading investments across multiple assets, ideally, at least 20. This principle, while born in finance, holds true for national economic planning. Yet, Nigeria continues to put all its eggs in one basket.
The need to diversify our economy has long been acknowledged, but the real crisis is the failure to diversify our thinking. We continue to look at problems with outdated assumptions, clinging to oil revenues even as global demand shifts towards cleaner, renewable energy sources. The real tragedy is not the scarcity of funds but the poverty of innovative thinking among our political elite.
As Machiavelli once said, “There is nothing more difficult to carry out than the initiation of a new order.” Reform threatens entrenched interests, and in Nigeria, these interests have deep roots. Even when reforms are proposed, as the current administration under President Bola Tinubu has attempted with subsidy removal and exchange rate unification, implementation is often half-hearted, reactive, or poorly communicated, fuelling distrust and resistance.
Nigeria is blessed with over 70 million hectares of arable land, yet the country spends over $10 billion yearly on food imports, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria. Meanwhile, food inflation hovers around 33.4 percent as of August 2025, with everyday items like rice, pepper, and yam becoming luxury items for the average family.
A reorientation in agricultural policy must go beyond subsidies or handouts to farmers. We need investment in value addition. Cassava should not be exported raw when it can be processed into flour, starch, ethanol, and animal feed. Cocoa should yield chocolate, not just foreign exchange. Local food pricing must incentivise both producers and processors while protecting consumers from price shocks.
One sector that has consistently been ignored is tourism. Nigeria has some of the richest cultural heritage, from the Nok Terracotta to the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, but we treat our culture as disposable. Domestic tourism, in particular, remains a missed opportunity. With 36 states and over 250 ethnic groups, we could turn our diversity into dollars if only the sector were taken seriously. Tourism is not only about exotic waterfalls or savannah safaris; tourists want to engage with real people, real food, and real experiences.
Then there is renewable energy. Nigeria sits in the sunbelt with over 300 days of sunlight yearly, yet solar energy remains an afterthought. India, which started investing heavily in solar and wind energy two decades ago, now ranks among the top five solar energy producers globally. Why are we not replicating this model in a nation where only about 57 percent of the population has access to electricity, and even less enjoy steady power?
The same can be said of rubber, palm oil, limestone, and other locally available resources. Malaysia, which once came to Nigeria to collect palm seedlings, is now a world leader in palm oil production and is investing in converting palm oil into biofuels and plastics. Nigeria, by contrast, still imports basic refined petroleum and household goods.
What Nigeria needs is not just policy diversification but intellectual and ideological diversification. We must stop seeing the government as a source of patronage and start viewing it as a platform for national transformation. The civil service must evolve from a passive bureaucracy into a catalyst for innovation and development. Public policy must be built on data, not guesswork or political convenience.
Educational reform should foster problem-solving and entrepreneurship. Technical and vocational education must be expanded to fill the skills gap in construction, carpentry, farming, metalwork, renewable energy installation, and tourism services.
We must also decentralise development. The Federal Government cannot and should not be the sole driver of economic change. States must be empowered to chart their own economic destinies through local content development, regional trade, and internally generated innovations.
As the global economy moves beyond fossil fuels and towards knowledge, services, and sustainability, Nigeria cannot afford to be left behind. The real oil boom is over. What remains is a narrow window of opportunity to use our remaining oil wealth to build a truly diversified economy, powered by ideas, innovation, and inclusion.
It is no longer enough to diversify our economy. We must also diversify our ideas, our assumptions, and our approach to leadership. Only then can we escape the cycles of poverty, food insecurity, and economic stagnation that have become Nigeria’s tragic norm. It is time to move beyond oil and beyond old thinking.
