Is Vision 2020 alive or dead?

This is supposed to be the magic year; the year we would see our way clearly to the great future of our dear country. I am referring, of course, to Vision 2020. The policy statement of this potentially great stride in our social and economic development posits that, “By 2020, Nigeria will be one of the 20 largest economies in the world, able to consolidate its leadership role in Africa and establish itself as a significant player in the global economic and political arena.”

Laudable sentiment; laudable ambition. The policy documents specified three stages for achieving this great vision. The first stage was “building a solid foundation for Vision 2020” and was billed to take off towards the end of 2007 and last until 2010. This first stage would “prepare a statement of national priorities that will form the core elements of the country’s development plans and budgets during the period 2008-2010 and constitute the foundation of Vision 2020.”

The second stage was titled, “Achieving the MDGs enroute to 2020 (2011-2015).” Various committees and stakeholders would “determine their areas of focus in accordance with their progress on the MDGs.”

The third and final stage would catapult us, breathless, to Eldorado; at least the equivalent of the mythical country. It was appropriately titled, “Becoming a top 20 economy by 2020 (2015-2020).”

I have not heard anything lately about Vision 2020. Given the silence on that front, it seems to me that the vision is not exactly clear now such that we can see our way clearly into the future of our economy and national development in general. It is more likely a blurred vision. Do not take my word for it.

It must be admitted that those who conceived of the Vision 2020, following on the footsteps of Vision 2010, based the policy statement on our country’s potentials – its enviable human, agricultural and mineral resources. If countries less endowed than Nigeria could grow their economy almost from nothing, it should be a breeze for our country to establish its place on that podium of the great economies of the world. It is only logical and accords with the natural order of things. There is something optimistic naivety here. It is one thing to have great human and natural resources and quite another to have the capacity to exploit and manage them towards wealth creation. You do know where Nigeria stands on this and had been there for as long as any would care to remember.

We have now stepped into the magic year 2020. It is time to ask the question: Where does our country stand among the 20 largest economies in the world today? Is Vision 2020 on course or has it suffered a policy abandonment? Since Nigeria displaced South Africa from the number one position, an achievement I thought owed more to voodoo economics to make a point about the greatness of our country rather than the realities of our economic situation at the time, we no longer know what number it holds among the biggest players in the world economy. I thought that for the health of hope, we should know.

Let me say for the nth time that I have always had sympathy for the managers of our economy. They are dealing with an economy with a bad attitude. They must naturally be stymied by the unruly behaviour of the monocultural economy. Their calculations often awry because the economy is so unpredictable.

There are indications that the Vision 2020 is not the magic we verily believed it would be. Whatever capacity it was imbued with to lift the country from the valley to the mountain top is progressively weakened by an economy unable to make up its mind one way or the other. There are several indicators that point to the fact that Nigeria’s place in the register of the big boys in the global economy is not about to be filled soon; not even in this magic year of Vision 2020.

Take the size of the 2020 federal budget: N10 trillion. That is the good news. The bad news is that it is a deficit budget. This means the government would not earn enough to make the budget the shot in the arm we need in the national economy. The government has to borrow to make up for the shortfall. Neither a lender nor a borrower be? Someone is not listening.

Take our rising debt profile. It currently stands at $84 billion. Servicing it takes a heavy chunk of the national budget. It further means that there would be even less money in the kitty for the government to finance its development projects and grow the economy.

Take the rising poverty in the land. About half of our 200 million population are classified as extremely poor. Such a large number of the poor can only be a drag on the national economy. Nigeria is the poverty capital of the world. That position is inconsistent with its ambition to qualify for admission into the league of the greatest players in the global economy. With the economy growing at the tortoise pace of about 2.2 per cent, the word ‘bleak’ would not be inappropriate in describing our current position on the global economy.

There are greater burdens on the economy today than when Vision 2020 was conceived. Power, the principal means of fuelling development in the private sector, remains shamefully elliptic, despite huge investments in it since the return to civil rule some 20 years ago.

The Romans said that civilisation follows the road. If so, given the deplorable state of federal and state roads, our country still has a long and weary trek towards civilisation.

From the above facts, we can reasonably conclude that Vision 2020 has become one more failed attempt to move our country from being potentially great to being actually great. As Vice-Admiral Murtala Nyako likes to say in matters of this nature – sorryness.