Monday, September 26, 2005

NEEDS: A Vision or Development Strategy (I)

The National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) as its name implies suggests an attempt at detailing an economic empowerment and development strategy. It traverses all major sectors of human endeavour, from the macro-economy, public service and governmental reform, growing the private sector, value re-orientation and implementing a social charter, legal and constitutional targets in fact redefines the cultural direction of the state and its governance mechanisms. It is stated to be Nigeria’s home grown poverty reduction strategy; a plan on the ground and founded on a clear vision, sound values and enduring principles. It is a medium term strategy.

NEEDS proceeds from an understanding of the depth of the decay in the economy, social indicators, bad governance, including corruption and lack of transparency of previous decades. The statistics are intimidating: - a 32 billion dollar GDP with a 32 billion dollar external debt and local debts in excess of 1.3 trillion Naira, extremely low per capital income, low savings and investments, collapsed education and health systems and inadequate housing for the majority of the citizens and urbanization rate of 5.3% a year, high rate of unemployment and dependency on food imports. Although NEEDS states Nigeria’s GDP all at 45 billion Naira, the recent 2003 World Development Report rates Nigeria as a 32 billion dollar economy. NEEDS states per capital income at 300 dollars and this is 20 per cent less than the per capital income of Nigeria in 1975. It is stated to be a reasoned response to the challenge of underdevelopment in a bid to meet the millennium development goals.

The core values of NEEDS are to restore honesty and accountability, respect for elders, cooperation, industry, discipline, self-confidence and moral rectitude. The fundamental principles of NEEDS are found in sections 13 - 20 of chapter 2 of the 1999 constitution under the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of state policy.

NEEDS rests on the goals of wealth creation, employment generation (7 million jobs are promised), poverty reduction and value re-orientation. The goals are to be achieved through four key strategies namely: -reform of government and institutions, growing the private sector, implementing a social charter and value re-orientation.

NEEDS, as a development strategy does not fit into a clear and real concept of a development strategy. A development strategy is proactive rather than reactive although it must be informed by the experience and lessons of history and current circumstances. NEEDS apparently is a first aid measure in the face of an emergency, not a rare but a reaction to a shock. It is centred on removing what is considered to be distortions, imbalances and factors impending economic growth rather than being a development strategy. NEEDS does not centralize people as the objects, means, resources, agents and the end of development. This is in accordance with the 1986 UN Declaration on the Right to Development.

A development strategy must accept the background facts and conditions as they are and not as they ought to be. NEEDS’ romanticisation of the private sector is a far cry from the current state of the Nigerian private sector. The state of the private sector is a reproduction of the capacity, rating and achieving of the Nigerian state within the international system. Thus, the private sector is still beset by inefficiencies, lack of capacity, capital managerial experience, etc. It does not have the muscle to absorb the loads being transferred to it, not gradually, but through whole scale transfers as envisaged in NEEDS within a three-year time frame. The admonition necessary here is that we need to make haste slowly.

Yet to be resolved by NEEDS as a development strategy is the tension between accentuating marketing delivery systems in an underdeveloped, weak and poverty stricken economy while the production model of a sizeable number of the population, is to a great extent pre-capitalist. NEEDS, as a poverty reduction framework must proceed from a proper understanding of the nature, dynamics and raison detre of poverty. It must also proceed from a thorough examination of NEEDS to understand the consistency of its empirical and logical trajectory. Its policy thrust should be matched or aligned with the implementation strategies. A sample will suffice for now; the poverty reduction thrust versus 10,000 per cent increase in fees chargeable for bed space and introduction of school fees in universities, reducing the size of the public sector without clear cut alternative jobs and complementary mechanisms, tariff increase by utilities like NEPA with eleven semiautonomous “profit centres”, the lack of costing of the magnetization programme, etc.