Fortunately
for our dear country, we possess some of the most sought-after natural
resources in the world and in abundance. Every day, we remind ourselves about
how each region, each state; in fact, how each local government area possesses various
natural resources at commercial quantities. Without even adding agriculture and
tourism to the list, where we have gargantuan potential, Nigeria’s resources are
capable of making it one of the biggest economies in the world. Unfortunately, we
have failed to conceive the kind of ideas that would commensurate with our
resources. Countries with huge resources like ours are hubs of ideas. They
invest so much in strategies and roadmaps because they understand that
resources and ideas must complement each other for development to occur. But in
our case, we squander the resources we bother to exploit and abandon the ones
unexplored. Because we have made our country a graveyard of ideas, our leaders
want us to be grateful for the stillbirth that characterises our development.
Early in the
life of this country, there were development blueprints projected by the
leaders of each region. Citizens simply knew the direction of government and
seamlessly keyed into it. There were short- and long-term goals; well-thought-out,
well-spelt-out and realistic. Citizens could see the manifestation of such
ideas, without so much noise about it by the government. The unprecedented
successes recorded at the regions are still the highlights of our success story
as a nation. Today, what we have are fancy terminologies and acronyms lacking
in depth and ingenuity, whose publicity is prosecuted on billions of naira but
with little or no direct impact on the people. More annoyingly, every incoming
administration adopts yet another fancifully-christened development credo and
discontinues with the previous administration’s…the cycle of inconsistency and
emptiness continues.
Vision 2000,
Vision 2010, Vision 20:2020, NEEDS, 7-Point Agenda, and Transformation Agenda
are each a brainchild of successive administrations. Ask their proponents what
these programmes are, how they work, their challenges, duration, what’s in them
for Nigerians and how their successes can be measured. That is when their
barrenness of ideas and the potential for failure of their programmes become
evident.
The development
plan meant for a country cannot be hurriedly cooked up and pursued by one
administration. The China that is threatening to overtake America as the world’s
biggest economy today was founded on decades of strict implementation of a
roadmap. We all like to cite how Malaysia got her oil palm seedlings from
Nigeria only to become the world’s leading palm oil exporter – that is
development plan. Within two decades, Brazil has risen to become one of the
fastest-growing economies in the world; poverty levels have dropped drastically(NAPEP
was modelled after Brazil’s successful poverty alleviation programme), while within
the last decade over 40 per cent of shanty towns have been redeveloped into
modern residential areas. The country’s new capital, Brasilia, was built from
scratch to finish within three years, and Brazil will host the next World Cup
and Olympics as a sign of its prosperity.
Our
inability to discern politics from national interest has continued to halt our
development. Development plans are like
the Constitution; irrespective of party affiliation and other sentiments, successive
administrations are expected to understand its ultimate goals and do their bits
in achieving same during their tenures. As it is now, we need to thrash out those
shallow bulks of political mirages clad in grand lingos that we call
development plans. Genuine thinkers should be assembled across all sectors and
tasked to come up with a socio-economic direction for this country. If we
continue to allow the ship of Nigeria to sail in the direction of the wind, we
may someday meet ourselves in the wilderness.
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