ZHUL-QI’DA 6, 1429 A.H.
MONDAY NOVEMBER 3 2008
Print This Page 
Is Vision 2020 achievable?
By Adebayo Lamikanra
IT is absolutely impossible for anyone to pick up a Nigerian newspaper, any Nigerian newspaper these days without encountering at least one of the following, but more probably all of the following phrases; 'Vision 2020', 'seven-point agenda', 'due process', 'respect for the rule of law' and 'our nascent democracy'. These as well as a few other choice phrases fall from our leader's lips with the regularity of rain drops at the height of the raining season and which have come to be standard fare. As it is usual with human beings who have an astonishing facility for relegating noise, however irritating to the distant background, many Nigerians must by now encounter those phrases without internalising them.
I do not speak for other people when I confess that the phrase Vision 2020 has assumed this position with me but it is true that I no longer have a conscious awareness of it. Like many other people, I know that Vision 2020 is no more than a fashionable slogan which, in the course of time, like its predecessor Vision 2010, will be forgotten so that nobody will be taken to task when, come 2020, Nigerian would still be mired in the marshes of underdevelopment and all its attendant indices.
I was really forced to look under the thick blanket of Vision 2020 when a student group at OAU, probably worried about the future career prospects or rather, the lack of it of its members invited me, on the occasion of their 'week' to talk to them on the subject of the relevance of their discipline 'in the realization of the Vision 2020'. The immediate impact of the subject was a realization on my part, of the fact that many people out there are beginning to take this Vision thing very seriously indeed. On second thoughts however, it became apparent to me that the implied seriousness was born out of ignorance of and the worries generated by it. There is a great deal of noise about Vision 2020 but there is very little substance attached to it by the people that are supposed to benefit from its success.
The mission statement and guiding principle of this grand design is 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 (I prefer herself) as a significant player in the global economic and political arena.' My first problem with this is that there is nothing to suggest that indeed the Nigerian economy of 2008 is not already one of the largest economies in the world, given the fact that nobody has more than a faint idea of the extent of the Nigerian economy. After all, as far back as 1975 the reigning head of state of Nigeria was reported to have stated without equivocation that the problem of the Nigerian economy was not money but how to spend it and one of his more slippery successors was forced to voice his puzzlement as to what kept the Nigerian economy afloat in the face of the battering which his asinine policies were delivering to the Nigerian
economy or what passed for it. There are no signs that things have changed since that remark was made.
The Nigerian economy, for all the noise that is made about it, is like an iceberg with 90% of it under water since it is impossible to factor into any figures concerning the economy, the army of young men selling pure water on the streets of Lagos or the middle aged ladies offering boli and roasted groundnuts for sale by every road side all over the country. And that is to mention only two of an army of groups involved in Nigeria's shadow economy.
Unlike what many Nigerians who have taken the trouble to take Vision 2020 seriously may think, the concept of this project does not have an indigenous origin but is the prediction, on mainly demographic principles mixed with crude oil revenues contained in the 2006 report of a Wall Street Investment Bank, Goldman Sachs, one which has been doing profitable business since 1869 and a company with annual earnings in the region of $10 billion. I suppose that given such economic power and savvy, every word proceeding out of the mouth of the hallowed offices of Goldman Sachs must be draped with the cloak of infallibility by the Directors of Nigeria PLC.
The prediction by Goldman Sachs sounded like sweet music in the ears of the leaders of Nigeria but what sounded even more musical were the caveats with which the Goldman Sachs prediction was ringed round. What the report was emphatic about is that the prediction would only come to pass if the government was to maintain the tempo of its reforms, that is, privatization of everything and the promotion of market forces , recognition of the rule of law and due process, pension reform and the eradication of corruption. Obasanjo and his Reformers Band immediately saw these caveats as a collective vindication of their policies and straight away began to use it as a heavy plank in the building of their disreputable third term (or elongation of tenure ) platform.
Although the platform collapsed under its own considerable weight, the Goldman Sachs plank is still available to the succeeding government which because of a candid confession of illegitimacy by its servant-leader is in dire need of all the planks at its disposal. Unfortunately, the Goldman Sachs plank is completely rotten and therefore spectacularly useless but like a drowning man, the current Directors of Nigeria PLC, like their fabled predecessors, must cling to it with the force of desperation.
It is still a long way to 2020 but already the conditions on the ground are becoming hostile to the Vision 2020 dream. The driving force behind Vision 2020 is crude oil but the situation around the oil producing platforms out there in the Niger Delta are too restive to be reliable and there are believable rumours that as much as 300,000 barrels of crude oil per day is being leaked into the cavernous pockets of bunkerers who must be extremely powerful people, perhaps so powerful that they are untouchable. The price of oil has gone through the roof in recent times but we have not been able to derive maximum benefits from this since the unstable situation in the Niger Delta is one of the indices driving up oil prices relentlessly. From this point of view alone we can see Vision 2020 begin to unravel even before it is properly packaged.
By far the most contentious issue in the Goldman Sachs report is that of reforms, if only because it gave overt support to the government stand on reform. It was reform, reform and more reform; reform whose benefits did not percolate down even to the members of the so called middle class, not to talk of the proverbial man in the street or those members of the 70% group who must somehow make a living on less than $1 a day. The benefits of reform have been strictly for the super rich, those people who have no need of more money to put a glow on their faces but who must have money in the same way that an addict must have his fix. But the conventional wisdom remains that Nigeria must continue to chase the chimera of the unattainable perfect vision (2020) and this is not likely to change. Even then, the questions must continue to flow even when there are no answers.
Nigeria will, in the words of the Vision 2020 statement be one of the twenty largest economies in the world by the year 2020, but what would be the significance of this to the ordinary man in the street? Do the promoters of Vision 2020 stop to think that there can be an expansion, a tremendous expansion in the nation's economy without a corresponding increase in development? Nigeria already has by far, the largest economy in West Africa but can it be said that we are better of in real terms than people in other West African countries? Nigeria may have a large economy and a much larger one by 2020 but will this mean that our educational system, reeling at it is from many years of cynical neglect be any better placed to guarantee good education to the children of Nigeria? Nigeria may be a regional economic super power but what does this mean to the 99 Nigerian children out of every 1,000 who must die before the age of one or the roughly 200 who
will not be alive to celebrate their fifth birthday? Are we right to start talking about the size of our economy when as many as 10% of all women round the world who die during childbirth are Nigerians?
The strength of any economy is predicated on the nation's productive capacity but can the nation boast of any meaningful capacity when according to the Manufacturer's Association of Nigeria (MAN), 30% 0f the country's companies are moribund, 60% are distressed and only 10% are operating at meaningful capacity? The situation is compounded and rendered almost hopeless by shortage of power, decayed social infrastructure, lack of an organized public transport system, massive youth unemployment, lack of security of life and property and so on and so forth. There is so much wrong with Nigeria right now that fiddling with imported strategies like Vision 2020 is comparable to the action of the irresponsible Emperor Nero who continued to make ghastly music and dance in the light of the garish flames which consumed his capital city of Rome before his unseeing eyes.
Professor Lamikanra teaches pharmacy at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife.
