PASSAGE I
COMPREHENSION: Read the
passage carefully and answer the question that follows. The question carries 3 marks
The African moralist has always regarded smoking as an indication of moral degradation.
A number of people have accepted the moralist idea on smoking while a good many people have remained indifferent to the moralist view and have continued to smoke. The same argument has been applied to the consumption of alcohol. The African moralist, basing his judgement on the behaviour of a few alcoholics, tend to regard the habit of taking alcohol as a sign of wretchedness. The moralist holds the view that anybody who forms the habit of consuming alcohol will never do well in life. While this may be true in respect of a few people in the society, the fear of the moralist has not been justified.
However, the economist is primarily interested in the habit of smoking and the consumption of alcohol in so far as they give satisfaction to smokers and drinkers and so generate supply of and demand for tobacco and alcohol.
Some moral principles associated with religion tend to lead on to economic problems.
Followers of certain religions are expected not to consume pork, take alcohol or smoke tobacco. Devotees of some religious groups, on the other hand, can eat pork while others are expected to abstain from alcohol and smoking.
Strict observance of these moral rules could cripple the breweries, the cigarette factories and some
businesses; however, there seems to be a growing number of alcohol consumers and cigarette smokers-a development which should be of interest to the economist.
Adapted from Peter Scott’s article in Sunday Times.
PASSAGE ll
Read the passage carefully and answer the question that follows. The question carries 3 marks
When man evolved a conscience, his basic relationship with the other animals began to change. Until then, they were broadly divided into those which ate him when they got the chance, those which he ate when he got the chance, and a third group which competed with him for food, or
was otherwise a nuisance to him in the business of keeping alive.
In the primitive situation, man was, therefore, basically against nature but, as the battle was progressively won, conscience crept in; the awareness of responsibility, and a failure to meet it, produced feelings of guilt.
Those who live in cities and need no longer do battle against nature are nowadays most actively for nature. At this time, something like a thousand kinds of animals (vertebrate animals) can be said to be in danger of extinction. A few of them have been reduced to this precarious position by extensive killing but the majority are disappearing only as fast as the particular kind of country they need for existence is itself disappearing and all the hands of man, as often as not by mistake.
There are three species of turtles whose future survival is menaced by the demand for turtle soup, which would hardly justify the extermination of a giant reptile whose family has existed for 200 million years.
Leopards are in jeopardy because of the fashion for their skins. As they get rarer, the prices rise and, as leopard skin become more expensive, the demand increases. No species can long survive the price of N60,000 which a half- grown baby leopard now carries on its skin.
And crocodiles, the longest surviving reptiles, are now dwindling alarmingly as a result of the fashion in crocodile skin for ladies’ handbags and men’s shoes. The human population explosion spreads mankind across the land surfaces of the earth at an alarming rate. There will be twice as many of us before most of us are dead. Does this mean no room for wild animals? Of course not.
Adapted from Peter Scott’s article in Sunday Times.
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