Growth elements in Nigeria’s planning processes

Nigeria has had many plans and budgets since independence in 1960. Nigeria had four National Development Plans in the period 1962-1985: 1962-68, 1970-74, 1975-80 and 1980-85. Nigeria adopted the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) and its Rolling Plans in 1986. SAP remains the main programme Nigeria is implementing today, because the principal elements, philosophy and ideological inclination adopted in 1986 have not changed. But what is the state of Nigeria today?

Today, Nigeria may be described as a failing state. Unemployment, poverty, high crime wave problems have been worsening. Also there are no physical structures to show for the trillions-of -Naira budgets announced every year over the decades. Sadly, too, Nigeria is not only highly indebted but also has a very high propensity for accumulating local and foreign debts. Nigerian governments have only been wasting resources and imposing untold hardship on the ignorant and unsuspecting citizenry. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to explain why Nigeria’s planning over the years has been fruitless. More importantly, the article is also written to explain how the missing growth elements can be introduced into Nigeria’s planning process to promote competences-building growth.

What has been the development theory guiding Nigeria’s planning? Okigbo (1989), analysed the Nigerian planning process 1900-1992 and noted that the theory that guided the Nigerian First National Plan (1962-68), was the Harrod (1939)-Domar (1946) Model – the HDM, and the model remains Nigeria’s planning theory. This model states that the growth in income achievable by a nation over a period is dependent on the rate of savings and the capital invested.

In other words, the more the capital invested, the higher would be the growth of income in a society. The HDM assumes that labour is not needed in the production process or that there is only one input in the production process and that is capital (Glahe, 1977). With HDM as a planning theory, there is only one planning variable – capital. In a society where capital is considered as the most important factor of production, planning is synonymous with efforts aimed at making capital available for spending (Galbraith, 1967).

The HDM, Rostow’s stage growth theory and some others like them constitute the set of theories sociologists called the Modernization theories. The evolutionary, neo-evolutionary and modernization theories are mechanistic and a historical perception of the human development experience (Hoogvelt, 1976). These theories claim that Western Europe in the sixteenth century achieved the maximum level of development for human societies; Europeans achieved the modern industrialization, uniquely – other races of the world would not achieve the modern Industrial Revolution (IR). The theories then classified nations into two categories – simple (primitive) and complex (advanced). African and Latin-American nations were classified as primitive nations while Western nations were classified as advanced nations.

The evolutionists and modernists proposed that primitive people and places may be made modern by transferring resources especially capital and technology from the rich West to them. This is the origin of International Technology Transfer (ITT) in its various forms as the main development strategy for African and Latin-American nations. Nigeria has existed for about 56 years as a flag-independent nation with Western nations, the World Bank, the IMF, Nigerian economists, accountants, bankers and lawyers, and other social scientists who see the claim about capital and the assumptions of the evolutionists and modernists as axiomatic truths, urging Nigeria to throw money at every problem.

The most popular planning framework is the rational planning framework (RPF). There are six phases in the RPF. They are: 1) Establish objectives, 2) Establish planning premises, 3) Determine alternative courses of action, 4) Evaluate alternatives, 5) Select course of action and 6) Formulate derivative plan.

The RPF is an inappropriate framework for planning because it encourages people who do not understand problems to plan for a nation like a company and set non-achievable and beautiful objectives and day-dream in the name of planning. Nigeria has always been setting non-achievable objectives: education for all, housing for all and egalitarian society by year 2000; green revolution, operation feed the nation (OFN); transformation agenda; etc. Ogbimi and Adjebeng-Asem(1994,) developed the scientific planning framework(SPF).

The SPF has seven phases. They are: 1) Problem identification, 2) Problem analysis/perception, 3) Setting achievable objectives, 4) Plan implementation, 5) Plan monitoring and appraisal, 6) Plan review and 7) Plan termination. The SPF ensures that a problem is well analyzed and understood before setting achievable objectives. The SPF also ensures that a plan has implementation, monitoring/appraisal, review and termination phases.

In terms of planning theory, planning framework and assumptions, therefore, Nigeria has not been planning at all. African nations including Nigeria have been erecting infrastructure, practicing technology transfer, begging for foreign investments and pretending to have educational and training systems. Nigeria since 1986 has been implementing SAP and claiming to have adopted crude capitalism as economic philosophy. Federal and state governments in Nigeria have been borrowing heavily to erect structures without build-up competences for solving problems for building or maintaining the structures.

Youths have largely been unemployed or have been riding Asian motor cycles to earn money to buy food or selling imported articles everywhere. The Central Bank has been destroying the Naira and claiming to attract foreign investments, rationing the dollar earned from oil and gas explored and produced by foreigners among technology-transfer companies through the machinery of the mandatory foreign exchange market and moping excess liquidity at unnecessarily high cost to the people under the pretext of managing inflation.

History shows that nations build-up competences through learning; intensive learning: education and training, large employment and full employment policy, produces rapid growth and development. But organized learning has always been lacking in the Nigerian development planning. To save Nigeria, the nation must adopt intensive learning: education, training, large life-long employment and full employment policy to promote competences-building growth and rapid industrialisation.