In today’s difficult economy and especially in the aftermath of numerous global economic upheavals, corporate players are devising creative ways to keep their businesses afloat. Employees and other stakeholders are in like term looking for ways to keep their jobs alive and active. Part of that creative efforts to wade through the storm include but not limited to being open to, and developing new abilities to connect with new productive ideas.
On their parts, government Ministries, agencies, Commissions and Departments across the world are rethinking the age long axiom which says that ‘government has no business in business’’. To public office holders desirous to serve and save the masses particularly the poor, governance is no longer viewed from leisurely prism but approached from the perspectives of discipline and anchored on sustainability and productive collaborations with private sectors and development driven Civil Society Organizations(CSOs).
From the above standpoint, there is a legitimate need for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu led Federal Government, to revisit, persevere and implement the National Development Plan (NDP) 2021-2025, a successor plan to both the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP 2017-2020) and the Vision 20:2020, launched in December, 2021, by the out gone President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government.
Indeed, the president has not left anyone in doubt of the direction of his administration’s economic policy, which revolves on lifting impediments to a friendly business climate, revenue generation, elimination of multiple taxation, monetary policy reforms, ease of doing business, growth of the economy that would engender prosperity. This fact notwithstanding, the 2021-2025 national development policy remains a document worthy of national attention and too important to be relegated to the background for whatever reason.
To use the words of the former Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, National Development Plan (NDP) 2021-2025, sets the tone for Nigeria’s next economic destination and prioritizes robust infrastructure, economic stability, improved social indicators and living conditions of Nigerians.
First, infrastructural provisions enable development and also provide the services that underpin the ability of people to be economically productive. Infrastructure investments, from what development professionals are saying, help stem economic losses arising from problems such as power outages or traffic congestion. The World Bank estimates that in Sub-Saharan Africa closing the infrastructure quantity and quality gap relative to the world’s best performers could raise GDP growth per head by 2.6 per cent per year.
Aside from the evidence that the current plan has the future we all desire and will play a sizeable role in the product complexity space internationally and adopt measures to ease constraints that have hindered the economy from attaining its potential, particularly on the product mapping space, going by what experts are saying, another practical importance that qualify the Development Plan as exemplary is the new awareness that for the first time in our planning history as a nation, we are having a Development Plan that is divided into three volumes and comprehensively enriching.
In the past, we always had one volume, which is the plan itself. But this time, we have three volumes. Volume one is the main plan. “Volume two is a prioritized and sequential list of programmes and projects that will be fed into the annual budgets while Volume three contains the legislative imperatives.”
Also, in line with the global belief that every government must find ways to create a sustainable economy, find solution to the harmful effects of poverty upon the poor and upon those who are not poor but know that countless men and women are ravaged by hunger but choose to look away, the plan is laced with opportunities for inclusiveness for young people, women, people with special needs, and the vulnerable ones, mainstreaming women gender into all aspects of our social, economic and political activities.
Another compelling reason as to why the present Federal Government must not abandon the plan is that for a very long time, Nigeria has become adversely reputed for changing economic plans with every change in leadership. This fear cannot be described as unfounded as we have as a country had several economic plans in the past. They had a huge sum of money injected into them but none achieved its targeted result. They were all aborted on the way by corruption, incompetence, and change in administration and in some cases a combination of these factors.
As noted elsewhere, since independence in 1960, the country has demonstrated that there is no development plan which has achieved its core objective. There is always a disturbing laxity in marching plan targets with practical and unfailing consistency. The result is that the country remains one of the most politically and economically dis-articulated countries in the world.
In my view, what has all these years abbreviated Nigeria’s socioeconomic growth, or accelerated development of other nations, is by no means a function of development plans but predicated on, and traceable to the existence of deformed leadership styles.
Take as an illustration, for most of our political history, public office holders in Nigeria assume self-sufficient attitude, despise others and view themselves as the exclusive possessor of what they have, as well as claim excellence not possessed. Unfortunately, such characterizes the leadership’s sphere, not just in Nigeria but Africa as a continent; a factor that’s largely responsible for leaders’ inability to provide direction, protection, orientation, shape norms or manage conflicts in their various places of authority. The bitter truth is that no matter how good a plan or system of government may be, bad leaders must bring harm to their people.
This piece is not alone in this line of argument.
While underlying the problem of Nigeria’s underdevelopment exacerbated by the failure in the leadership system, Chinua Achebe, in his book, ‘The Trouble with Nigeria’, remarks that there is nothing wrong with Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. But concludes that the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.
Looking ahead, two questions that are important are; what strategy can the nation deploy to arrest such ugly narrative in ways that will make this recently developed national plan not end in shame like previous experience but bear the targeted result? Two, how can the present handlers of the nation effectively diversify the nation’s revenue sources, bearing in mind that such arrangement will reduce financial risks and increase national economic stability as a decline in particular revenue source might be offset by increase in other revenue sources?
The above questions call on leaders in the country to reassess their priorities via development of ability to give every citizen a stake in the country and its future by subsidizing things that improve the earning powers of citizens – education, housing and public health and placement of emphasis on, and understanding that the economy would look after itself if democracy is protected; human rights adequately taken care of, and the rule of law strictly adhered to.
Therefore, as we hope to build the Nigeria of our dreams, one point President Tinubu must not fail to remember is that Nigeria, according to a report, is the only, or among the few oil-producing countries without adequate metering to ascertain the accurate quantity of crude oil produced at any given time.
What the above tells us as a country is that there is more work to be done and more reforms to be made. The masses on their part must develop the keen interest in holding their leaders accountable.
Utomi is the Programme Coordinator (Media and Public Policy), Social and Economic Justice Advocacy (SEJA), Lagos. He could be reached via; jeromeutomi@yahoo.com, 08032725374.
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