Of Yar’Adua and the race to 2020
In our nation, it has
become the practice
for every government to come up with a series of policies which never provided concrete benefits for the people. Nigerians are ever blindfolded with the inauguration of such policies. What, for instance, came out of Operation Feed the Nation, Green Revolution, the series of National Development Plans, vision 2010 and several others that only impoverished the nation? For all these programmes, several billions (or trillions) of naira went down the drain without results.
Following the trail of these past failures, the presidency of President Umaru Yar’Adua came up with its own policy which he tagged “Vision 2020”.
The aim of this Vision 202020 (vision again!) is to make Nigeria one of the 20 economic leaders of the world by year 2020.
By a simple calculation, this expected and miraculous economic transformation and astronomical development is 12 years away.
Seriously speaking, 12 years is still a long time and gestation period for any programme to be initiated and implemented by and in a country where the foundation for execution is well laid or is sure of being properly laid. In Public Relations, the basic requirement for the successful implem-entation of a programme is to have in view and appreciate the problems on the ground through research in order to determine the type of measures to put in place during the implementation of planned remedies. In all these, being specific about intended objectives and the timeliness of the necessary action(s) are very important.
All programmes are time bound.
My worry in our own case is that the government has not shown that it has done enough to appreciate the enormity of the problems at hand, not to talk of the solutions.
Maybe, the government feels that all is well. Rather than take the bull by the horn in addressing the voluminous socio-economic problems staring us in the face, the president and his team are grandstanding to be one of the top 20 countries by the “fanciful and figurative” 2020.
As a matter of fact, Nigeria is blessed as a nation with human and natural resources to even achieve the projected feat in 10 years or less, but the situation we find ourselves today cannot sustain the dream. I may not be an economic expert to sustain my arguments here, but I know for sure that a nation cannot realise a developmental dream without the necessary and basic facilities that drive the economy of any nation at the micro and macro levels.
Omotunde Awe, omoelewe@yahoo.com |
