The recent presentation by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo of ‘Nigeria Agenda 2050’ failed to excite stakeholders, and for good reasons. Presiding at a National Economic Council meeting, Osinbajo was enthusiastic that the new long-term vision would transform Nigeria into a high-income economy. But disappointed in the past by similar well-designed national economic plans that were never well implemented or achieved targeted outcomes, Nigerians and the international community took scant notice. The outgoing regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), and its successors should ensure that this new plan does not end up as another pipe dream.

The plan was formulated against the backdrop of several subsisting development challenges. As Osinbajo explained, “The plan aims to fully engage all resources, reduce poverty, and achieve social and economic stability. It also targets developing a mechanism for achieving a sustainable environment consistent with global concerns about climate change.”

As usual, it sets lofty targets across all economic and social sectors. But, going by the country’s history, there are valid reasons to be sceptical about their implementation and attainability. Nigeria has walked this path several times before and previous plans have led nowhere. The country’s experience is littered with beautifully crafted national plans. At best, few were only partially implemented, none fully achieved its targets when due, and others failed to even get off the ground.

In 1991, partly in response to the United Nations’ advocacy for collective sheltering, the Ibrahim Babangida-led military junta launched the ‘Housing for All by Year 2000 AD’ programme aimed at delivering 700,000 housing units per year. It failed woefully.

Sani Abacha, his brutal successor, also proposed Vision 2010 to make Nigeria one of the largest economies in the world. Again, that vision turned out to be a mirage. Olusegun Obasanjo, pioneer president in the Fourth Republic, launched Vision 2020 tailored to achieve and extend Abacha’s fancies; it also fizzled out.

In late 2020, at a time when Nigeria’s economy had tanked, Buhari announced the successor plan to Vision 2020 and called it ‘Agenda 2050’, which has finally rolled out of the bureaucracy.

There is no point churning out development plans that subsequently, are not implemented. Yet, national developments are widely acknowledged as pivotal tools of economic transformation. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation declared that a well-researched national plan “will analyse a country’s objectives and priorities in relation to all sectors, propose and justify an overall plan, and would be of immense value in the allocation of its scarce resources.”

In Nigeria however, successive governments have invested rigour and flamboyance into visioning, with no commensurate investment in consistent and dogged implementation thereafter. The immediate post-independence leaders fashioned five-year national development plans followed by others under different names by successive military regimes such as ‘three-year rolling plans’, ‘perspective plans’ and visioning.

None fully delivered, their targets derailed by poor, or non-implementation. While in other countries, succeeding governments implement national plans and fit in their own pet projects, Nigerian governments often abandon inherited long-term plans only to mouth slogans and start new, ill-prepared programmes that their successors also promptly consign to the dustbin.

Nigeria Agenda 2050 should be different. It cites “accelerated, sustained and broad-based growth” which will provide the framework to reduce “unemployment, poverty, inequality, and human deprivation.” The country’s stark realities demand rigorous research and preparation to meet these objectives.

First, the government should undertake a thorough review of past plans and their unfulfilled targets. They should ascertain what went wrong, identify funding, manpower, skills, ICT and states and local governments’ buy-in aspects and set realistic, achievable targets.

The UN’s 2022 Sustainable Development Goals Index ranked Nigeria 139 among 163 countries. This means the country has not made adequate plans for a better and sustainable future for its citizens. Stakeholders have in the past expressed their doubts over the country’s ability to meet the SDGs by the year 2030. Other African countries such as Algeria ranked 64; Egypt 87; South Africa 108; Ghana, 110, and Kenya, 118 on the SDGs index.

Sadly, the National Bureau of Statistics in its latest National Multidimensional Poverty Index Report said that 133 million Nigerians, which represents 63 per cent of the country’s population put at 216 million, are poor due to a lack of access to health, education, and acceptable minimum living standards, alongside unemployment and other socioeconomic shocks. Any appropriate national plan must therefore adequately anticipate and take these into consideration.

The number of unemployed individuals in the country has hit 23 million and the unemployment rate is currently 33.3 per cent. Agenda 2050’s projected annual average real GDP growth of 7.0 per cent cannot bridge the wide poverty, investment, and unemployment gaps. On the contrary, the World Bank says the country needs back-to-back double-digit growth for at least 10 years to close the gaps.

Planners should look to the success factors of the Asian Tigers – Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and China – where well-articulated national developments were formulated and doggedly implemented without wavering by both the governments that conceived them and their successors.

Nigeria is a federal polity, meaning there can be no substantial, sustainable development as long as the 36 state governments remain dependent on the central government without formulating independent economic plans of their own.

Planning and national development targets are serious business elsewhere. Egypt doggedly pursued its electricity power target and raised capacity to over 59,000 megawatts within a few years. The Brazilian government saw through its plan to boost the country’s infrastructural projects through the private sector and achieved it. Rwanda’s fealty to its development plans is yielding dividends and by 2022, it had attained robust growth despite the global unfavorable environment.

Nigeria needs massive investment to boost its power, infrastructure, industry, and financial buffers to realise economic development. The federal and state governments should make realistic economic plans and partner with the private sector to implement them. Agenda 2050 should not be another empty slogan; it should be made to deliver.

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