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Here we go again. Last Monday, we took another giant step in our national pastime of running around in circles in our quest for development. On behalf of President Umar Musa Yar’Adua, Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan inaugurated the National Council and National Steering Committee of the Yar’Adua administration’s Vision 2020.
With the exception of the short-lived Ernest Shonekan and General Abdulsalami Abubakar’s administrations, every government in the past 23 years since that of Ibrahim Babangida in 1985, has tried to engage in some kind of grand visioning and strategising for development for Nigeria. Each of the governments has also done the following in varying degree: set up a constitution review committee, probe the preceding administration and revoke or review some of the contracts it had entered into, jettison some of the policies or policy planks of the government it has succeeded and witch -hunt some of the leading lights of the previous government. This is largely what has gone on in the name of governance in our country in the past nearly a quarter of a century. And this accounts for why in some sectors of our national life we are worse off today than we were in 1960 when we gained independence. In a word, we have been running in circles. And if we sound cynical about Vision 20020 it is because we have traveled this visioning road several times now and it has not taken us any where. Our sights seem to have been blurred by the multiple visions we have been made to have. There is no doubt about it that every nation needs to have a plan or vision about where it wants to go to and what it has to do to be able to arrive at that destination. It is clear however that we have not been able to get anywhere because of lack of continuity with the laudable policies, programmes and projects of preceding administration. Each government thinks it should re-invent the wheel. Take for instance this visioning thing. There is a broad agreement among the political and business elite who understand such matters that the late General Sani Abacha may have been a dictator but that the Vision 2010 which his government sponsored has many good ideas which if implemented with vigour and patriotic zeal, can take Nigeria somewhere. It is doubtful if the Obasanjo administration, which more or less succeeded the Abacha’s, took any look at the Vision 2010 documents before it came up with National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) and it is doubtful if this government has had a cursory look at them before it has come out with the idea of another visioning committee. It is sad that the serious task of planning for the growth and development of a nation with so much promise like Nigeria has become something of an ego project for those who preside over the destiny of the nation. It has also become something of providing jobs for the loyal and favoured boys of the man in power. This administration has spoken about its desire to bring back the National Development Plan strategy that was jettisoned by the Rolling Plan idea of the Babangida Structural Adjustment Programme of the 80s. What, if we may ask, is the difference between this development plan idea and the Vision 20020 project whose committee was set in motion last Monday? What, if we can ask further, is the difference or relationship between Yar’Adua’s much touted Seven-Point Agenda and the vision to come? From what we can see, we engage in perpetual visioning because our governing elite either lack the capacity or the patriotism or both to arrive at a broad consensus about the urgent things that need to be done and how to galvanise the broad masses of the citizens to engage in nation building.
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