The Evolution And Effect Of Agricultural Policies In Nigeria (1960-1998)

Nigeria is an agricultural country located in Africa, and agriculture takes an important role in this country. However, backward agricultural and food supply difficulties have plagued Nigerian for a long time. Consequently, successive governments of Nigeria have searched for agricultural economy development. From1960to1998, successive governments have adopted different agricultural policies at different stages, which generated different influences on Nigeria’s agricultural economy.Nigerian government applied agricultural policy of laissez-faire during1960-1969, which implemented minimal intervention of agricultural development. At this stage, food production could attain self-sufficiency, agricultural income was accounted70%of GDP and80%of exports, and agriculture developed smoothly. However, this trend relies heavily on the inertia of the former agricultural development. As a matter of fact, because of being unable to intervene in agricultural development, the government was only to adopt agricultural policy of laissez-faire. Later, civil war, which lasted for three years, brought huge blow to agricultural development.During1970-1984, agricultural policies in Nigeria had been fundamentally changed. The government abandoned the agricultural policies in the early stages, replacing with "maximum intervention" policy. There was a biggest drawback of these policies that government intervened too much on agricultural development which result in the agricultural market lost its initiatives. In addition, because of the oil booms, the government neglected agricultural production, which eventually leading to the emergence of the agricultural crisis in Nigeria.In face of serious agricultural crisis, both Babangida regime and Abacha regime pursued the Structural Adjustment Policy. It demanded moderate management of government and at the same time gave full play to the market in the regulating role in the agricultural economy. Structural Adjustment Policy was the embodiment of the increasingly mature on the road of exploring agricultural development by the government of Nigeria, and under the guidance of which agricultural economy had been recovered step by step.Obviously, the agricultural policies in Nigeria showed instability and inconsistency during the40years after independence. There are three main disadvantages of the agricultural policies in Nigeria, which are narrow base of policy formulation, poor implementation of policies and weak institutional framework for policy coordination. Besides, there are some factors that restrict the effectiveness of agricultural policies, which are failure of economic development strategy, excessive reliance on petroleum industry, rural land ownership system hinders the development of agricultural productivity, insufficient agricultural input, lack of improvement of research and technology, farmers hardly to get benefit from improved agricultural research and development. Furthermore, backwardness of the agricultural infrastructure is the main course. Therefore, in the future, agricultural policy in Nigeria must be catered to its national situations, must be adapted to the level of the national economic developing, must be with feasibility, sustainability and coordination, must attach importance to food production, and pay high attention to strengthening the reform of land system.