Buhari unveils dev’t plan, expert says lacks action strategy

President Muhammadu Buhari has launched a new long-term national development plan, the Nigeria Agenda 2050 (NA 2050) with a target to create over 150 million jobs by 2050.

However, financial expert, Paul Alaje, in a reaction, said the plan is useless as the government was yet to show its implementation strategy.

Buhari launched the NA 2050 on Wednesday before the commencement of the meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in Abuja.

He said the plan, which has the vision of a dynamic, industrialised and knowledge-based economy that generates inclusive and sustainable development, also aims to ensure that the country attains a Per Capita GDP of $33,328 per annum, placing her among the top middle-income economies in the world by 2050.

“It is instructive to inform Council and indeed all Nigerians that I had on December 22, 2021 launched the first of the six number 5-year medium term plans, the National Development Plan (NDP), 2021-2025, that will be used to implement the Long-Term Plan.

“Council also on March 15, 2023 approved the Nigeria Agenda 2050 that we are launching today,” he said in a statement issued by his spokesman, Femi Adesina.

Commenting on the plan, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, said: “The plan is a long-term economic transformation blueprint designed to address these challenges.”

She also said with the expected improved capital accumulation, investment as a ratio of GDP is expected to increase from the current 29.40 per cent to 40.11% by 2050.

She explained that under the plan, the bulk of the investment is expected to be financed by the private sector while total employment is expected to rise to 203.41 million in 2050 from 46.49 million in 2020.

‘‘This implies that unemployment will drop significantly to 6.3 per cent in 2050 from 33.3 per cent in 2020. The corollary is that the number of people in poverty will drop to 2.1 per cent by 2050 from 83 million in 2020,’’ the finance minister said.

Plan useless without implementation strategy – Expert

While commenting on the new plan, a financial expert, Paul Alaje, stated that the plan would have any impact on the Nigerian economy or citizens if there is no clear implementation plan by the federal government.

He said, “Unfortunately, till now we have neither seen the impact or the execution of the development plan, the government has spent millions of naira for the plan and today there is no one speaking particularly of the plan or how much the government has spent towards the plans.”

“We observed that there seems to be no cohesion between the federal and the state governments and these are two key agents that will be partakers of the development plan. It became so obvious that with another development plan, it may be another assignment on paper that we may not get a significant result at the end of the day.”

“We saw a development plan that was supposed to materialize in 2015. In 2015, there was not much result that was received from the development plan.

While stating that the incoming administration need to be carried along on the new plan, he described the mid-term plan, Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) introduced after the first in recession 2017 was a failure as it failed in “unemployment target, inflationary target and it failed many targets including the exchange rate target.”