Early in life we discover the meaning of past, present and future in linear terms, and we structure our life around those words, but most of the events we experience in daily life occur in cycles. There are several obvious examples. The four seasons, weather patterns, and business transactions, affect our present linear life just like the past and the future are always experienced in the present.

When a nation is going through a business cycle boom international capital flow increases; An increase in capital flow will cause a country’s currency to appreciate, but if a country is going through the bust cycle of the business cycle, capital investments will disappear and currency values depreciate. The business cycle continues in one direction or another until it’s saturated through market developments or government action.

Suggest the way forward for our dear baby (Nigeria) at 50

Any government that wants to excel and meet the needs of her citizens without strategic planning seems to be building a castle in the air. Modern day politics has far evolved from partisan politics to tackling issues on ground and if we in Nigeria allow ourselves to be left out in the wind of change, we would be like the proverbial 5 maidens that forgot to buy kerosene for their lantern awaiting their masterâ's arrival.



Project Planning takes short term, medium and long term dimensions, and what dimension a government should take at any point in time should be based on the issues facing the economic and social environment of such government.

At one time in 2008, when the economy of Nigeria seemed to be booming, the stock market, financial institutions and insurance companies were all reporting elephant profit maximization and investments of private individuals and firms were fast recouped in a little short time. Only few people like us envisaged the problems that were posing around by the sudden sky rocketing price of oil in the international market. Then the foreign investors who made up huge portion of the Nigerian stock market took their money to make quicker and huger profit from oil in the international market. HOW MANY NIGERIANS SAW IT COMING, even the ones in control of the NSE? Most of our reports and forecast were based on speculation. It is pitiable that a country as big as ours has no solid data house that can allow statisticians and experts to come together to digest events that happened yesterday, the ones that are happening today, so as to be able to know what would be our fate tomorrow. Little wonder we have been the way we are. Little wonder it does not take us anything to build but takes us everything to maintain what we built.



The global meltdown has engulfed even the countries that we least expected and here we are running, beating about the bush talking about job creation and bailout for companies. The question is; should we have been affected in the first place, should the impact be up to what it is now and still going to be, if we had a proper strategic and economic planning? These questions would have easily been answered and the answer would have been NO.

When Peter Drucker was writing America on the economic problems they would face “blue collar jobs”, no one took him serious.

The same problem has gone beyond what we think in Nigeria today and we still can’t learn our lessons and differentiate between partisan politics and good governance. The present government of Alhaji Yar’aduaâ's VISION 2020 is indeed a good project planning if well defined and implemented. There are certain questions that need to be answered if we wish to make headway;



First, what are these set goals we want to achieve?

Second, to this current government who obviously will not be in power to see the accomplishment of these project, it has automatically made it a long term project, so the question the president needs to ask here is how do we accomplish a long term project even after we have vacated the sits? Will the VISION be a regime portfolio? That would be devastating.

Third, what are the materials to work with to see to these set goals? These include human, financial and other raw materials that are viable to the accomplishment of the set goals.

Forth, are the materials we have chosen relevant and coherent with the projects?

Fifth, what plans do we have on ground to take care of short term and minor projects that would raise their heads on our way to achieving the long term projects?

Based on the above questions, we have to applaud the government for realizing that we have problems which need to be attended to by setting up the goals. But thatâ's not all, how can we appraise the steps so far taking to achieve these goals?

From the look of things, there is no clear and definite view of what the VISION 2020 project is focused on, we keep talking about power, roads, employment, improved standard of living, structural improvement, agriculture, education, good health and lots of them. Every issue that emanates from the system so to speak seems to draw attention. ‘WE CAN’T BE JACK OF ALL TRADE’, therefore the first wrong step the government has taken on the project is trying to encompass all problems that pose ugly head by the way.

The second wrong step is that the government has blatantly refused to separate national issues from party issues.

Project as huge and demanding as the VISION 2020 should make effective and efficient use of the best materials in the country to execute it and should not be seen as an avenue to compensate politicians, individuals and party members. How on earth do we have a committee of 452 members for the execution and implementation of VISION 2020 project? Sir, we don’t need too many hands to strategize the project. We need just a few hands, just a few professional hands, experts, who shouldn’t be more than 14 people. We need just a good strategic planner, an economic analyst, a civil engineer, a town planning analyst, an educationist, an industrialist, an agriculturist and health personnel. They can be paired to bring about quality deliberation before reaching a final conclusion on the project execution.

They should be given a specific period to tender their report which should be passed to the house for deliberation before they are signed into law by the president. Sir, a committee of 452 members will only create problem rather than solving one.