Recent pronouncements by federal officials on economic targets sound hollow when juxtaposed with the abject failure of the Vision 2020 plan that once riveted national attention. Pretty little was achieved under it. Similar to plans in some developed economies, its ambitions included massive infrastructure provision, millions of new jobs, export diversification, investment in human capital and effective governance. To meet the aspiration of being among the world’s top 20 economies, lessons learnt and mistakes made should guide new development plans and their resolute implementation.
As the 2020s get underway, the declared ambition by the President, Maj. Gen Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), repeated dutifully by his appointees, to set in motion policies that will move 100 million Nigerians out of poverty over the next 10 years draws attention to past efforts. According to the Minister of State, Budget and National Planning, Clem Agba, the government has already started collating stakeholders’ inputs to guide a new 10-year national development plan. But there should, first, be a thorough review of the failed Vision 2020 and indeed of all major planning schemes. This will enable policymakers to understand the pitfalls in formulation, priorities and implementation. For, without a doubt, Vision 2020 failed woefully.
Conceived in 2006, Vision 2020’s overall objective was to grow the country into one of the world’s 20 biggest economies by the benchmark year. Thorough in conceptualisation, multi-sectoral and in a departure from the first four national development plans, it had extensive buy-in from the private sector, the states and local government councils and from multilateral development partners. Critically too, reforms were expected to re-energise the public sector for service delivery.
Just how massive the scale of plan to deliver is explained in a few indices: poverty rate increased from 52 per cent in 1999 to almost 70 per cent by 2019 and the country became world’s poverty capital by 2018. Unemployment hit 23.1 per cent in 2019, up from 7.7 per cent in 1990 and 13.6 per cent in 2008. Oil receipts still accounted for 65 per cent of government’s revenue, says OPEC (70 per cent reckons the World Bank), while manufacturing contributed a meagre 9.5 per cent to the Gross Domestic Product. Infrastructure is horrible and external debt stood at $26.94 billion by September 2019 and rising in geometric proportions. Recession hit in 2016 after global oil prices, the primary driver of GDP growth in the years up to 2014, plummeted. Instead of moving forward, the economy moved backward and the quality of human life declined appreciably. The civil service, over-staffed, indolent and corrupt, is worse, not better.
National development planning has however featured in the success stories of many economies. From 62 in 2006, the number of countries deploying NDPs had risen to 134 by 2018, according to a report quoted in World Development, with many adopting it as the anchor for Sustainable National Development Goals. It was successfully applied in Nigeria in the immediate post-independence era through the first, second and third NDPs. The fourth, 1981-85, marked the beginning of a lack of political will, incompetence, poor implementation and policy somersaults. The confusion was evident in the introduction of the back-to-back three-year rolling plans (1992-1999), medium-term planning like the National Economic Direction (1999-2003), and others. The National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (1999-2003) and the state and LG counterparts – SEEDs and LEEDS – were also geared towards achieving the expanded targets of previous plans.
Again, there was no commitment to seeing them through. They suffered from policy reversals too as successive administrations, rather than see to their faithful implementation, came up with new programmes mainly slogans that do not survive the administrations that conceived them. Such were the Seven-point Agenda, Transformation Agenda and the current Economic Growth and Recovery Plan.
The country’s tragedy is reflected in the success of others: it was the blueprint with which the defunct Soviet Union transformed itself from an agrarian to industrialised economy. A series of five-year plans from 1962 introduced by President Park Chung-hee catapulted South Korea to an industrial powerhouse and the world’s 12th largest economy. Like two other Asian Tigers, Taiwan, with its six-year development plans, and China, whose first five-year plan 1953-57 set industrial goals and subsequent ones to the current 13th 2016-2020 have made it the world’s second biggest economy and biggest exporter.
A country can stumble into sudden wealth, but it cannot stumble into sustainable wealth creation or development. Nigeria and other OPEC countries reaped petrodollars from the first oil boom of 1973, but while, through careful fiscal husbandry, planning and dogged implementation, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, for instance, have become global magnets for investments and tourism, Nigeria has slid into poverty and instability.
Just as Germany, Italy and Austria emerged from the ruins of World War II to become top economic performers; policymakers here should also imbibe the ethos of purposeful, visionary leadership, planning and incorruptible implementation of policies. A visionary leader will realise that no plan can deliver with the current dysfunctional political structure that purports to run a natural federation like a unitary, rentier union that deprives its component parts control of their resources, rewards mediocrity, while suppressing merit and killing all incentives for productivity.
Therefore, the present structure has to give way to true federalism. Government should make way for the private sector and honestly and transparently privatise all state-owned commercial assets, open the space for foreign direct investment and undertake a root-and-branch reform of the public sector. Countries like Italy and Israel that have for decades experienced frequent, short-lived ruling coalitions demonstrate how agreed long-term economic plans outlasting the governments that inaugurated them deliver prosperity. Leaders need to place national objectives above partisan politics.
As long as planning – including the annual budgets – does not tie all expenditures to specific, realistic revenue sources, all plans will go the way of the bungled Vision 2020. Likewise, the ambition to free 100 million citizens from poverty over the next decade will be another mirage.
