In the early 1960s, Nigeria stood as Africa’s undisputed economic giant, with a GDP per capita that rivaled or exceeded many peers shortly after gaining independence in 1960. By the 1970s oil boom, Nigeria’s income per person actually surpassed China’s between 1970 and 1975. By 1981, Nigeria alone accounted for nearly 31% of sub-Saharan Africa’s entire GDP.

Nigeria possessed fertile land, vast oil reserves, a large domestic market, and an ambitious post-independence leadership that believed in state-led industrialisation. In contrast, by 1960, South Korea’s GDP per capita was roughly equal to Nigeria’s, while Taiwan and China were poorer. However, those Asian nations pursued ruthless economic diversification, investing in education, building export-oriented manufacturing, and creating world-class industrial policy.

South Korea transformed from exporting wigs and plywood to cars and semiconductors. China turned peasant agriculture into the factory of the world. Nigeria, however, doubled down on oil and left agriculture to wither. Had Nigeria grown like South Korea or China since 1960, its economy today would be several times larger.

Nigeria built a string of massive state-owned enterprises that could have industrialised not just Nigeria, but the entire continent. Nigeria invested billions in the Ajaokuta Steel Complex starting in 1979. By the mid-1990s, it was 98% complete, the largest steel plant in Africa, designed to produce 3.3 million tonnes annually.

Imagine if Ajaokuta had operated like Mittal Steel: supplying cheap, high-quality steel rods and plates to build bridges, railways, and factories from Dakar to Addis Ababa. Africa’s infrastructure deficit could have been tackled with Nigerian steel.