Nigeria used to be an agrarian economy until the 1970s. She used to be a major agricultural country producing for internal usage as well as for exportation. It is however disheartening that Malaysia, which even took different species of palm tree seedling from Nigeria at independence in 1960, has researched so much and so well and into its production more than Nigeria.
Locally the country produces dye cloth, smith metals like iron, bronze and gold. If even manufacture soap, processes cotton into cloth and other finished goods but all these are in crude form devoid of further research. The country has not made enough progress in research due to some superstition beliefs and ancestral domination of certain areas of technology. These areas are so much guarded in secrecy that other families are not allowed to get a glimpse of ideas about them. The rural-urban drift of youth did not allow them get much of this technical gift peculiar to their ancestors.