YEAR 2020 is one Nigeria has looked forward to for a very long time. People in development circle had expected the year to usher in a new era of human development and economic prosperity. Development plans were drafted, targets were set, and agencies were established. Now 2020 is here, how well can the country be said to have performed using the scorecards it created for itself?

In November 1996, then military head of state Sani Abacha set up the Vision 2010 committee and mandated it to come up with “a blueprint that will transform the country and place it firmly on the route to becoming a developed nation by the year 2010”.

The committee envisaged that, by 2010, Nigeria’s GDP growth rate would average 10 per cent every year, inflation rate would be less than 5 per cent, poor people would constitute no more than 20 per cent of the population, all able-bodied persons would be employed, rate of out-of-school children would be zero per cent, a minimum of 26 per cent of government budget at all three tiers would be devoted to education, and so on.

But, as you would have guessed, none of these was eventually achieved.

In 2009, Nigeria came up with another ambitious blueprint “designed to propel the country to the league of the top 20 economies of the world by 2020”.

The ICIR, in this report, flashes back to over 10 specific targets set in the document, as well as the National Population Policy, while contrasting them with the latest statistics.

Among top 20 economies
Top among the goals set in the Vision 20:2020 document is that Nigeria will be “among the 20 largest economies of the world by 2020”, and it was, in fact, this that informed the choice of name.

“By 2020, Nigeria will have a large, strong, diversified, sustainable and competitive economy that effectively harnesses the talents and energies of its people and responsibly exploits its natural endowments to guarantee a high standard of living and quality of life to its citizens,” the document stated.

On the contrary, latest World Bank statistics show that Nigeria is today the 31st economy in the world in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), despite a 2013 rebasing exercise that nearly doubled the figure. Nigeria’s current position, 32nd, is only slightly better than its ranking back in 2009.

Double-digit GDP growth rate
“The desire to achieve the goals of NV20:2020 compels the economy to achieve broad-based double-digit growth rates,” the 2009 document advised.

“During the vision period, the economy is expected to grow at an average rate of 13.8 per cent per annum, to be driven by the agricultural and industrial sectors over the medium-term while the manufacturing and service sectors are expected to drive the economy towards the end of the Vision period.”

Instead, however, Nigeria’s GDP growth rate has declined significantly. According to data from the World Bank, it was 8 per cent in 2009 and 2010 and has not gone any higher sine then. In 2018, the figure was 1.9 per cent, less than a quarter of what it started the decade with. And for a year, between August 2016 and September 2017, the country, in fact, slipped into a recession owing to negative growth rates.

The World Bank’s 2019 Global Economic Prospects Report forecast that Nigeria’s GDP growth rates in 2019 and 2020 are 2.1 and 2.2 per cent respectively. By 2021, it is expected to rise to 2.4 per cent.

Income per capita
The plan was for income per capita (often measured as GDP per capita) to have risen to $4,000 “from the current (2008) estimate of US$1,230”. It was not a very ambitious plan considering that the global average back in 2008 was already $9,412.

Nevertheless, not much has changed since then for Nigeria. The country’s GDP per capita, according to the World Bank, in 2018 was $2,028, the same amount it was between 2009 and 2010. Today, the global average is $11,312.

READ MORE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/reality-check-10-things-nigeria-planned-to-achieve-in-2020-but-has-so-far-failed-to/

I heard of that so-called vision 2020 then. Am not surprised it failed.

With Bubu, it will never ever be achieved. Even if u stretch it to two decades more