Impact of Insurgence on the Agricultural Development in Nigeria

Abstract

Low agricultural production and productivity in Nigeria over the years compared to leading countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Brazil have been largely ascribed to low fertilizer usage, low utilization of improved seed, inadequate government expenditure and the inability to compete with other sectors. The issues of environmental sustainability, capital accumulation, foreign exchange earnings ability and well-being vis-á-vis production, productivity and agricultural development are rarely considered. The study examined the impact of insurgence on the agricultural development in Nigeria using secondary time-series data collected on Nigerian agricultural share of GDP, infant mortality rate, CO2 emission from fuel combustion and level of food production as proxies for agricultural transformation for the years, 1960-2011 while Nigerian civil war, Boko-Haram, Niger-Delta, Fulani herdsmen insurgences were used as proxies for insurgence. The data were analysed using the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) after testing for stationarity, co-integration and lag selection using the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF), Johansen and the Schwarz’s Bayesian Information Criterion (SBIC) statistics respectively. The results from the VECM showed that a unit decrease in previous year food production level would increase the share of agriculture to GDP by 4.26% the following year while a shift from noninsurgence to insurgence in any year by Boko-Haram, Niger-Delta and Fulani herdsmen reduced the share of agriculture to GDP by 17.56%, 19.45% and 17.47% respectively. A similar shift from non-insurgence to insurgence in any year by Boko-Haram and Fulani herdsmen insurgences reduced food production level, on average, by 10.21 and 4.69 tonnes respectively while a shift from non-insurgence to insurgence in any year by Niger-Delta crisis and Fulani herdsmen increased CO2 emission, on average, by about 5% and 8% respectively. It is inferred, from the results, that agricultural development should be all-embracing since its component elements have a long-run equilibrium relationship, that insurgence indirectly impact on agricultural development through its effect on the change in food production level, the share of agriculture to GDP, CO2 emission from fuel combustion and infant mortality, and that attempt at ignoring the insurgence by any sect from any region, whether religious, cultural, or communal is also a threat to agricultural development.