Recently I got into banter with someone over the composition of Nigeria’s GDP and the result is this blog post. Just to be clear, GDP is the market value of final goods and services produced within the boundaries of a country. Often, this is a composite of several sectors grouped for statistical purposes into Agriculture (defined as sum-total of Crop Production, Livestock, forestry and fishing), Industry, Services, Building & Construction, and Trade (i.e. wholesale and retail). The graph below plots the components of Nigeria’s GDP in the 5 decades since independence in 1960.

However the above raw figures are unclear and not much meaning can be gleaned from them so I express them in percentages below

From the above, agriculture appears to have given way to Industrial GDP in the 1980s and all seems well – right? Wrong  exactly Industry is defined as sum-total of Crude oil/Natural gas, Mining activities and…