President Muhammadu Buhari recently presented National Development Plan 2021-2025, ditching the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP 2017-2020). Louis Achi writes that this should not be the usual economic rhetoric but a potent transformative footing
In conceptualising a sustainable National Development Plan (NDP), hope is certainly not a plan. Historically, national development planning remains a ‘weapon-grade’ tool deployed by progressive nations to confront regression and lift society through transformative governance.
Incidentally, some 10 months after China’s National People’s Congress, (NPC), approved the outline of the country’s 14th Five-Year Development Plan, covering the period 2021-2025, President Muhammadu Buhari, on December 22, 2021 presented the NDP document to the public. This was shortly before the commencement of the virtual meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) held at the council chambers of the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The 2011-2025 NDP, which supplants the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) has an investment size of N348.7 trillion to be contributed by the federal and state governments as well as the private sector.
The president stated that the Nigerian government required an investment size of N348.1 trillion to achieve the ambitious targets set out in the NDP 2021-2025. The overall target of the Plan is to achieve a broad-based real GDP growth rate of five per cent on average during the plan period; generate 21 million full-time jobs; and through an inclusive growth, lift at least 35 million people out of poverty in five years.
An enthusiastic Buhari further declared that the new NDP would set the stage for achieving the government’s target of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years, under the National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy (NPRGS).
It could be recalled that FEC had on November 10, 2021, approved the Draft National Development Plan, 2021-2025, which is the first of the envisaged Medium Term development Plans to implement the Nigeria Agenda 2050.
According to Buhari: “The Plan, as a matter of deliberate efforts, is comprehensive and has the capacity not only to accelerate and sustain national development but also the attainment of various Regional and Global Agendas, including the AU Agenda 2063, ECOWAS Agenda 2050 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, 2030.
“I have no doubt in my mind that with effective and sustained implementation, Nigeria will achieve quantum leap in unlocking its potentials in all sectors of the economy for a sustainable and inclusive national development.”
The broad objectives of the plan, according to Buhari, includes establishing a strong foundation for a concentric diversified economy with robust MSME growth and a more resilient business environment as well as investing in critical, physical, financial digital and innovation infrastructure.
Within the context of national development planning, it is a given that China’s five-year plan is the centerpiece of her system of industrial planning and policy. Reflecting the transformation of the country over the past 70 years, the content and purpose of the five-year plan has changed substantially since the first plan was issued in Mao Zedong’s China in 1953.
Not surprisingly, technology lies at the heart of China’s vision for its future, and accordingly, the 14th Five-Year Plan dedicates the first topical chapter (Chapter 2) to the topic of innovation. The compelling result of China’s relentless development planning over 70 years is clearly showing today.
A new report released last month, conducted by the research arm of globally renowned management consulting firm, McKinsey & Co, has shown that global wealth tripled in the last two decades – from $156 trillion in 2000 to $514 trillion in 2020, with China outpacing the United States of America for the number one spot.
McKinsey & Co examined the national balance sheets of 10 countries representing over 60 per cent of world income. They include Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States.
The study, which revealed that the world is now wealthier than ever, stated that net worth worldwide rose to $514 trillion in 2020, from $156 trillion in 2000. China, the report said, accounted for almost one-third of the increase. China’s wealth skyrocketed to $120 trillion from just $7 trillion in 2000, the year before it joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Regrettably, after almost six decades of national planning, Nigeria is at a crossroads in terms of national development. Despite several billions of petro-dollars in export revenues since the discovery of oil in the late 1950s, more than half of Nigerians still live in abject poverty without access to adequate healthcare, clean water and swamped by shocking illiteracy levels.
On comparative basis, the foregoing dilemma is more irritating when Nigeria is compared with other countries like Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore and Indonesia that were not as endowed in natural resources and were in the same situation as Nigeria in the 1960s.
These countries have experienced marked industrialization with improved quality of life for the vast majority of their populations since the 1990s while Nigeria cannot confidently say it is on the path to industrial growth. It certainly cannot be denied that Nigeria has had a relatively long experience in development planning – beginning with the Colonial Development Plan (1958-68). Medium-term development plans and national rolling plans were also developed and implemented with mixed results.
Other major strategic initiatives – such as the Structural Adjustment Programme; the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy; the Strategy for Attaining the Millennium Development Goals; and the 7-Point Agenda – were not seen to have been effectively implemented. Then, there was the Nigeria Vision 20:2020 which expressed the aspiration for Nigeria to become one of the top 20 economies in the world by 2020. All these have largely come to naught. Why?
Often, the absence of properly-defined objectives relevant to the country’s needs and inadequate administrative machinery to provide a high level capacity for plan implementation becomes a hurdle. Frequently observable is that most of the plans were over-ambitions and unattainable, considering the resources (human and natural) resident in the country.
The power of technology as a potential game-changer has always been relegated to the background and ranked unimportant in the planning process so that it becomes very difficult when operational bottlenecks begin to creep in as work progresses.
In the 21st Century, any development plan that fails to appreciate and accommodate technology as a key development facilitator as the Chinese have done cannot succeed. A weak database is also a major burden too. Considerable paucity of data, a critical planning tool, is prevalent in Nigeria. Debatably, an entity that has never been able to conduct a scientifically-proven and generally-accepted population census can never be a good planner for the future.
The extant level of technological development naturally hinders data gathering, processing and storage. Not to be overlooked are the orientation, behaviour, general attitude, religious and cultural disposition of Nigerians which imperil gathering of accurate data.
Coming at the sunset of his administration, is this move a whimsical valediction from a challenged Buhari presidency or a nimble, visionary governance move? Time will tell!
