Nigeria and Goals unachieved, a perspective.
Ambition has no limit and it is free, so anybody, a group of people, a company, or even a country can have any ambition to be anything they want to be. The biggest unraveller of ambition however is time. Once we put timing to ambition, the optics to that ambition starts to change. Despite the pressure that time puts in, it can actually help with the form, especially when it is in form of a timeline.
The importance of breaking goals into timelines cannot be over-emphasized, but sometimes, for political expedience, it is not the right thing to do. We would rather focus on the biggest possible outcomes and less on the steps to achieving them. The Political class is conscious of their followers and that is what drives this behaviour. The people are not interested in the how, or milestones, but in the final outcome, so the political leadership shares the outcome. This approach also reduces accountability, as they are not being held accountable at each step. Final outcomes are a culmination of the milestones. If we are not tracking the milestones, we are not easily able to see progress and make all necessary adjustments quickly.
Another key determinant of achieving these goals is a lack of proper engagement of the key stakeholders. Oftentimes, Government engages stakeholders as an afterthought, and not necessarily in the ideation, creation or goal-setting stage. Almost from time immemorial, the Federal Government (FG) has always had huge economic aspirations for the country, but hardly has any been met. FG by virtue of its set up is to be a Policy organ, as the execution of these policies can be further actualized by tiers of Government closer to the people, either by the State or Local Government and substantially by the Private agents in the economy. The FG still attempts to play beyond policies to execution.
A deeper view of the set up in the economy shows why the Government's economic goals are rarely met. In businesses, visions and goals are often Top to Bottom, however, in Government, this should be different, as the relationship between Federal Governments and other tiers and the private businesses is different from that of the Executive of a listed company and the team there. The FG would normally set their economic goals, focused on sectors and commence implementation to bring them to life. States are not involved with this, so their contributions to achieving the goals are unclear.
The most critical parts of any country are the private individuals and corporates who contribute most significantly to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country as the FG’s expenditure is barely 6% of GDP. These groups make the economic decisions that they believe are best for them, thus, any Government goals should start from these groups. This engagement is not expected to commence from the FG. This should be driven by the State Government because the FG’s vision and goals should be a culmination of the State Government’s goals. It would be genuinely interesting to the linkage between the goals of the 36 States and FCT with the set goals of the FG at any point in the past.
The vision 20:2020 was that Nigeria was planned to be one of the top 20 economies in the world by 2020. Unfortunately, this goal did not come to fruition, but not surprisingly so. That vision did not include the States, as I could not see how each State would contribute to that target. Due to this approach, it is difficult to know what states contributed to Nigeria missing the target. The targets were focused on each sector’s contribution to the GDP and not necessarily each state's. It makes it relatively difficult to know where we failed and how to address the failure.
Statistics made available by the Lagos Bureau of Statistics posited that Lagos’ GDP is over $100b (some estimates say $136b, we would use $100b). That is clearly more than 25% of the country’s entire GDP. It is not a good sign that if in a country of 36 states, only 1 of those states contribute a quarter of total productive activities in the country. Given that Lagos is the commercial nerve centre, it is expected that Lagos would be more productive than other states. However, if we assume that Lagos, which is largely a city-state would contribute triple other states, implies that each state’s GDP is at $33b per annum (an average), this would imply that other states can contribute $1.2trillion and maybe 1.3trillion if we add Lagos.
Another perspective would be using the population spread. Whilst we are aware that population spread is not equal to human resources, we make the assumption in this context that they are. Nigeria is estimated to have 200million people, with 10% of that population living in Lagos. So, if 10% of Nigeria can produce $100b in Lagos, then 100% of Nigerians should be able to produce $1trillion in Nigeria. It is clear that Lagos, though a standard in Nigeria, is not fully exploring all her potential to have an economy bigger than $100b. Obviously, the 2 examples (state contributions and population spread) are only analogies, but I hope it provides context to the points being made.
The question then is, What should we change about goals in Nigeria? I believe strongly we need to change how our goals are being set, as I believe there will be more value using the Bottom-up approach. The State Governments have a very critical role to play due to their proximity to the businesses that produce Goods and Services. State Governments should engage the biggest players in each of the categories in their State and ask them what their goals are. These goals would feed into the economic goals of the States, and the States can be more deliberate in supporting the companies in meeting those goals.
Governments alone do not have sufficient resources to solve any major problem in Nigeria, and that is why it is important that this joint planning is done with the Businesses in order to help improve the allocation of resources in the market. This forum would provide the deepest insights into what and how the Governments (at all levels) are thinking. If the Businesses in the State meet their economic objective, it would invariably imply that the State meets theirs. The more States meet theirs is the more the Country meets hers.
In conclusion, it is important that the Government and her agencies at all tiers know they are not in competition with the Businesses, thus, the requirement to step-change the level of engagement is needed. The glory of businesses rubs off on the State, as more investors would be interested in setting up there. In countries where jobs are tracked, the numbers of jobs created by the businesses are credited to the Government. So, that aspiration of Government creating jobs can still be achieved through expanding and growing businesses and not necessarily by having some phoney employment schemes that further perpetuate poverty.
Olamide Eyinla Shares his thoughts from Lagos, Nigeria.