Pseudo Hope: A Discourse

Every four years, electorates hand out bouquets of promises to Nigerian citizens. Vision 2020 first featured in September 2009’s bouquet, as a long-term development plan to ultimately place Nigeria in the top 20 global economies in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2020. The plan was first put forward by the Obasanjo administration to achieve specific goals: structural transformation; to reduce the country’s overdependence on oil; and to improve Nigerians’ standards of living. The national development plan would use human and natural resources to achieve higher rates of economic growth and transform this into equitable social development across the country. Strategies linked to Vision 2020 would also further Nigeria’s progress in achieving seven of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2020. The MDGs were established in 2000 by the United Nations to eradicate global poverty and its consequences and increase pro-poor growth.

Vision 2020 was a 10-year plan; it covered a long period compared to development plans in countries that had faced similar problems in the past, such as China. China’s approach to national planning has been to map out and implement a series of Five-Year Plans (FYPs), with each FYP focusing on a set of objectives in the given period, to achieve incremental and sustainable economic growth and development in the long run. The Five-Year Plan was pioneered by the Soviet Union after the Russian revolution and focused on achieving rapid industrialization within five years. Other nations began to adopt FYPs because they had a relatively short timeframe during which leaders could track progress and recalibrate as required; ‘lessons learned’ could be readily incorporated into the next FYP. One of the more popular Chinese FYPs was the Great Leap Forward campaign (1958-1962) under Chairman Mao Zedong. The Great Leap Forward aimed to transform China from an agrarian economy to a communist nirvana to boost revenue and eliminate the urban-rural segregation across the nation.

Nigeria’s Vision 2020 could not have been introduced at a better time. The successful diplomatic efforts of President Obasanjo had reduced foreign portfolio debts and the political atmosphere was charged with hope and promise of the long-awaited Nigerian development. When I heard of Nigeria’s Vision 2020, I thought to myself, ‘something great is about to come forth from Nigeria.’ I was not alone in thinking this; Nigerians looked on in anticipation of the country’s unprecedented growth and its potential ‘bragging rights’ on the global stage.