Nigeria is preparing for another national development plan to drive its economic growth and long- term development with a retreat today. ABDULRAHEEM AODU examines the fundamentals of the proposed plan.
The National Assembly in conjunction with Federal Ministries of Finance as well as Budget and National Planning will commence a two-day retreat today in Abuja on development plan where stakeholders are expected to look at the challenges facing the country in order to formulate a programme towards an achievable next national development plan.
The plan, according to investigation, is long overdue in addressing the multitude of challenges facing the country, drive its economic growth and long term development as well as help the country to emerge from an underdeveloped nation to a developing nation and probably attain a developed toga after the long term plan would have come to fruition. The chairman Senate Committee on National Planning, Senator Olubunmi Adetumbi (Ekiti North) told the Accountability Discourse Series 1.0, organised by ActionAid Nigeria in Abuja, that the retreat would prepare ground for the next national development plan aimed at preparing Nigeria for the next medium to long term planning.
Nigeria’s poor indices
Nigeria as a poor and underdeveloped country, is beset with various economic and social challenges ranging from poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, heavy debt burden, poor and infrastructural deficit, short life expectancy, low capacity utilisation, environmental degradation, technological backwardness, diseases, high maternal and child mortality, among others.
To properly address these challenges, the country needs to marshal its human and other resources together, project ahead and work assiduously towards achieving the projection through a worked out plan of building an improved economy and a developed country.
Challenges
Nigeria’s development is faced with many challenges, but the country’s inability to fully implement its numerous development and rolling plans remains its major drawback. If based on the number of development plans from 1962, Nigeria should have been one of the most developed countries in the world; however, despite these plans, the country has remained pauperised, ranking low in most global developmental and economic indices.
Previous national development plans
Since 1962 when Nigeria came up with the first post independence national development plan, the country has formulated three other plans (1970-1974, 1976-1978, 1981-1985) including several rolling plans.The country went through years of rolling plans such as the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS), Vision 2010, Vision 20:20:20, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that later metamorphosed to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs.
All these however failed for reasons that ranged from poor funding to poor planning, not involving the populace, low or lack of participation by the people and it’s sheer ambiguous nature. However, one thing they all had in common was poor implementation.
Overcoming old pitfalls
To ensure the success of any new development plan, the country must overcome the previous pitfalls by involving and having inputs of the grassroots people from the onset by ensuring their buy-in and ownership of the plan.
According to Sen Adetumbi, “The new national development plan is imperative because the previous plans have failed to achieve their targets due to poor consultation, poor implementation and inadequate resources. Oil, which is Nigeria’s primary source of revenue, is subject to volatility.
“On December 9 and 10 we would go on a retreat in Abuja with the Federal Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Budget and National Planning and Nigeria Governors Forum to collectively agree on the framework and modalities for the national development plan in order to have a common understanding on what constitutes a development plan for Nigeria and the methodology to apply.”
Serving the needs of the people
Often, projections have been made based on assumed needs of the people rather than their feedbacks. Proper planning requires that the grassroot people be given the chance to spell out their needs and their priorities to ensure that the limited resources are focused on areas where they can impact maximally on the lives of the common man instead of budgeting on issues that only catch the fancy of the elites.
To that extent, Sen Adetumbi assured that everybody would be involved saying, “The new national development plan must include all the segments, sectors, federal government, the 36 states and FCT, the 774 local government areas and people at the grassroots.
“It cannot be a handed down vision but a vision co- created by all the federating components. The consultation must be as wide and deep as possible. Kenya just finished one with thorough consultation; we want them to share the method followed with us but our own would be local content.”
Panelists at the Accountability Discourse Series 1.0, including professor of Economic Development and former acting director, planning and policy coordination and economic growth, Federal Ministry of National Planning, Prof Nazifi Darma, Mrs Abiodun Bayewu Olateru and social activist, Mr Jaiye Gaskia as well as participants urged for a host of issues that have served as challenges to previous development plans to be addressed in order to ensure that the country gets this particular one right.
Basis of planning, population census
Development plans, long or short term are based on demographic data. Since the last national population census took place in 2006, Nigeria in recent years has depended on estimated figures for its programmes. Therefore, the panelists urged for a new census and demographic data to serve as a basis for the development plan if the plan is to be measured to fit and not be the usual one-size- fits all model.
Size of revenue Participants at the discourse also want a determination of how much accrues to the country”s coffers from its primary revenue source which is oil. It also want to know, for example, how many barrels of oil Nigeria produces and sells daily with genuine figures being generated accurately from the oil fields, with dependable and provable cross-checks instead of relying on figures generated by oil companies and international agencies who don’t know where the oil fields are.
They also called for open governance, improved manner of revenue allocation where allocations are made to the three tiers in the currency in which the revenues accrued. Open budgeting is another issue they want addressed with specific incomes and expenditures clearly spelt with regards to how much was budgeted, how much percentage was released, whether the released amount was cash-backed, were the projects carried out and if so, up to how many percentage of completion? These inquiries, they believe, would cut out significantly corruption attached to budgeting.
According to Prof Darma, “Big countries like India, China, Brazil have development plans. With a population of almost 200 million, we need over N3 trillion infrastructure in the next 30 years. Without a development plan, we are putting resources in a sink hole. We need a coordinated development framework with a long term development plan and everybody must be involved.”For Mrs Olateru, the voices of the people at the grassroots must be heard. “The development plan should be sustainable even after the government that started it.” Gaskia, however, called for a developmental political class saying, “The development plan should be cross party and people-oriented.”
