THE INDICATORS OF DEVELOPMENT

Indicator as an English word means a sign that is showing how a situation is changing. Development is the process of creating a change that transforms a human groups and societies into advanced one.

Geographically the indicators of development are:

• Infrastructure
• Accessible Roads
• Income
• Employment
• Population Quality

Infrastructure: This is one of the important indicators of development. All human beings on earth need good comfortable home for relaxation after work. Housing brings in development in different geographical location and brings out the beauty of the environment, and also includes others social amenities.

Accessible Roads: When discussing development if there is no accessible roads for easy movement development as not started. So accessible roads need to be put into concentration, good roads make transportation of passengers and goods to reach their location easy. Roads create the means of communication, distribution of raw materials to industries and finished goods to market easily.

Income: Income brings development in a country and equitable distribution of it makes one to work harder. Example people working in an oil company work hard because they are well pay.

Employment: A well employed personal usually struggle to satisfy his needs. The employed ones are independent people. Development and employment work together because if there is no employment no development, also to development too. Opening of economic brings employment and development in a country.


Population Quality: This is one important indicator of development. Development can be more productive and effective where there is division of labour, hence people will be able to specialize in one type of work or skill. In some developed countries where populations are few. The government of the country use to brings out visa lottery forms for people to come into the country to work. Because many factories are built and equipped but no people to work there.

GEOGRAPHY PHOTO LIBRARY

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1. MUAMMAR GADDAFI 

BRIEF HISTORY OF MUAMMAR GADDAFI

Muammar Gaddafi was born in a Bedouin tent in Sirte, Libya in 1942. He studies history at the University of Tripoli, Libya where he obtained a degree in history 1963.When he was twenty-seven years old, he became the de facto leader of his country on one coup d’etal of 1969, Libyan Arab Republic. Then he was a Army Captain and leads a successful military coup against king Idris 1 of Libya.

In 1969 he was a colonel and became the ruler of Libya and rule for four decades, before he came in power, the houses in Libya were huts. Muammar Gaddafi’s administration gives Libya good government and built good houses, hospitals, schools, roads & transportation and power etc.

Libya economic was good, standard living, because he gives his people the comfort they needs. He was one of the best leaders in Africa at then, spends in human capital development for Libya citizens in different geographical location, and builds a solid and dynamic economy for his country. Libya depends on oil and the largest producer of crude oil in Africa.

Muammar Gaddafi rule Libya for 42years (1969-2011), before the 2011 revolution that came up, which lead to his death. He was killed in his home town, Sirte 20, October 2011. He died at the age of 69years old. 

Fixed price

According to Wikipedia, the term  fixed price is a phrase used to mean the price of a good or a service which is not subject to bargaining. The term commonly indicates that an external agent, such as a merchant or the government, has set a price level, which may not be changed for individual sales. In the case of governments, this may be due to price controls.

With fixed price, inflation in Nigeria will be reducing to 3 per-cent. Presently, inflation in Nigeria stands at 8.4 per-cent in 2013.

Nigeria has experiences a lot of inflation in the past all as a result of no fixed price. Any manufacturing industry can just decide to increase its price of commodity without the public/government notice and this affect the society.

Inflation hit different geographical areas in Nigeria and this gives rise to corruption. In the past decade inflation rising to about 13 per-cent making corruption to be high, if you look into Nigeria’s societies at then you will see that “corruption create a great impact in the societies that corruption is controlling people at then”. Examples, fraud of different types enter into the societies like internet fraud, money doubler, human trafficking etc.

The government of Nigeria must condemned corruption and fights inflation to the lowest level.

 

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Vegetation

In Nigeria there are two broad types of vegetation. Forest and savanna. The difference in vegetation from place to place is caused by climate, soil, topography and man.

• Forest:  

The original forest cover the southern parts of the country where the mean annual rainfall is about 1150mm. however, the original forestland has been reduced by human activities from tropical rainforest to secondary forest and derived savanna.

The vegetation of the forest region is sub-divided into three sub-types include: mangrove swamp forest, Deltaic swamp forest and Rainforest.

i. The mangrove swamp forest, varieties of the same species especially red mangrove between 10-15m tall are found along the lagoon and in the drier land away from the river coconut trees and reeds tend to replace mangrove.

ii. Deltaic swamp forest is a fresh water swamp forests which occur intensively in the Niger Delta and in the flood plains of large rivers common trees there are: Raffia palm, abura, mahogany, sass woods.

iii. Rainforest is found in the West-Ibadan, Niger, Benin and a few forest reserves of it in Ondo also in the Cross River basin along the boarder with Cameroun. High relative humidity, look at it now the high rain forest we know before it as restricted to a few forest reserves just as mention above. The high forest consists of evergreen plants and trees that grow to various heights.
 

• Savanna

The savanna zone have a high rural population density, they practice shifting cultivation. The original forest vegetation is burn annually to derived savanna; meanwhile looking at some areas you can found only a few forest trees remain as evident to show the original forest. The savanna is characterized by grass land with scattered trees.

The savanna vegetation may be sub-divided into four types. They are as follows:

• The woodland savanna which trees and shrubs form a close canopy. 
• The scattered savanna where the trees and shrubs spread far apart over a wide area. 
• Dead land savanna where trees and shrubs absent. Shrubs savanna where trees are absent.

In Nigeria the savanna zone is split into two:

1. Guinea savanna and 
2. Sudan savanna.

The Guinea savanna is the largest vegetation zone in Nigeria and where you find the great population of the middle belt. Guinea savanna extends from the South around Enugu to the North toward zaira. The rainfall in this zone is between 100 – 150cm and 6 months wet season in the North and 8 months in the South. The trees are devasted by human activities and grow long tap-roots to survive the hard condition, also the grasses have durable roots to survive dry season fire by men. Elephant grass is the common grass there with a height of about 3.6m.

Sudan savannas, in this zone intense cultivation with over-grazing and bush burning carryout have depleted the grassland that covers large areas.

The grasses are short between 1.5m and 2m high and stunted trees like silk cotton, baobab and acacia, in the dry season the water they store in the trunk, that it what they used to over come the hard condition.

The Sudan savanna extends from Sokoto through Kano to some parts of Borno and Adamawa. Experience’s seasonal rainfall (about 65 and 100cm) and lower relative humidity below 40%. The dry season is longer about 6 and 8 months.

This zone has the greatest density of population in the Northern parts, due to the growing of cotton, millet, groundnut and maize. Has the highest concentration of cattle. It has a clay soil but shrinks and cracks in dry season. 

 

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Important factors in Agriculture

Some numbers of factors are important in agriculture in Nigeria. They include the following:

Climate:

The climate of Nigeria is another factor to agriculture. The mean annual temperature is above 200c and temperate are adequate usually every where high in the country, the relative humidity is high. Rainfall is very high in Nigeria, in the South – Calabar receives a total rainfall of about 3020mm a year. In the East – Enugu receives a total rainfall of about 1750mm a year.

Population

Geographically in Nigeria population is rising faster than food production. One may say why food production don’t match population growth, is because our low level of technology but not it only also the physical environment too. Example the Sahel region experience drought problem and make food production low in the region and they find it very difficult to feed themselves. In this, one can say there is correlation between types of climate and vegetation.

Vegetation (Click here learn more about vegetation) and

Soil 

Soil type and its moisture content determine vegetation growth. Also changes of soil type in some crops may occasionally have a sufficiently marked effect upon agricultural production. Examples cocoa, it is the soil type more than any other factor, mangrove trees prefer swampy soils, coconut trees grow well in sandy soils, palm trees like acid soils and rice like swampy soils.

REFERENCES

ADELEKE. B. O and LEONG. G. C. (1981): certificate physical and Human Geography, Ibadan University press

LES EDITIONS J. A. Africa Atlases Nigeria.

OLAYEMI. J.K. (1995): issues in Nigerian food security. Working paper Development policy centre Ibadan, Nigeria.

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Nigeria Export Crops

Nigeria is a major export of cash crops such as palm oil, palm kernel, rubber, groundnut and cocoa. These exports brought in foreign exchange to Nigeria, and the building of some factories that is making used of these export crops in Nigeria now let is proportion of it export reduced. Nigeria now imports some food items considered to be essential such food items include rice, groundnut oil, milk and wheat.

In the past decade Nigeria lost her pride of Agriculture, due to the oil boom. She exported crude oil over the globe, until the economy crisis that hit the world in 2008. This make commodity prices high in the world at 2008 and the government of Nigeria during the administration of Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua 2008, food prices (rice) skyrocketed worldwide. The Government imported strategy on ensuring food security into the country by making supply arrangements of sufficient quantities internationally (some metric tones of rice were imported between May and October, 2008) The Government strategy of ensuring food was very successful, and the food prices (rice) was subsidized to the consumer at N6, 000 per bag.

To ensure more food in the country the Government move ahead to gives fertilizer and cassava stem to farmer to plant.

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Agricultural Practice

Agriculture is the cultivation of crops and the rearing of livestock. The stability of the Government of any nation depends on agriculture. Despite the oil’s boom agriculture play’s significant role in the Nigeria economy. It Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 35.2 per-cent in 2011.

In the six Geo-political Zones in Nigeria agriculture has seen as the oldest and largest industry in the zones include the world, when discussing agriculture, it has to do with so many things like growing food for people, feed for animals and fibres for clothes.

The main crops planted in Nigeria are the root crops, the vegetables, the cereals, the fruit and nuts, the beverages, the legumes, the cash crops, the spices and the oil seeds crops.

Nigeria Export Crops

Important Factors in Agriculture
Vegetation


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POWER (Electricity)

The supply of electricity for manufacturing industries in developed nations makes production effective. Before the industrial revolution which took place in the 19th century. Coal was the main source of power for manufacturing industries. In developing nation where is no regular power supply, manufacturing industries easily fold up, because the cost of running plant is high.

To solve the problem of power failure in Nigeria let the federal government of Nigeria give right to the six Geo- political zones in the federation to generate their power. Half of it cost should be fund and implemented by the federal government and the states governments of each of the zones will come together to fully implement it cost in their zone. The zone which has excess can supply the less zone (the less zone will pay for the supply), any of the zones can decided to use hydro and solar energy (if there is excess sunlight).

By doing this there will be regular power supply and industries, factories, business, offices, house hold etc will pay for their consumption as they use.

This will be as a challenge (zone to zone) to installed regular power. Regular power will attract foreign investors and brings comfort to settlement. Also as a source of revenue to the government. 

 

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