Economy: ‘Nigeria is reaping the consequence of poor planning’
By Princewill Ekwujuru
INTERVIEW IN BRIEF
The Institute of Planning Nigeria (IPN) is critical about the relegation of planning to the background, which the institute’s president, Dr McCarthy Ijiebo, says is responsible for the underdevelopment of Nigeria.
The Institute of Planning of Nigeria, what does it do?
Our slow pace of development can be directly traced to lack of planning. That is why some of us now came together to institutionalize the planning culture. Some professionals said we have failed as a nation despite all the endowed gifts from God.
What do you think are the developmental challenges confronting Nigeria, and how do we overcome them?
Dr McCarthy Ijiebo
We looked at everything and found out that lack of planning was responsible. Planlessness cannot be found in the dictionary. Planlessless in a planning language, which means absolute hopelessness. So, we discovered that we don’t plan, we don’t look before we leap, the way we do things in this country, we don’t have the people put on their thinking hats.
Your success in life depends on whatever you do, which is a function of your capacity to think, you cannot grow more than where your brain can take you. So, if you look at our country, it doesn’t have a clear cut developmental plan, we just see things happen in a disorderly manner.
That is why we came about this, and said, ‘let’s have the Institute of Planning of Nigeria (IPN). What is planning? Planning has so many definitions. Planning is a very big word, planning is a multi-disciplinary profession, is co-joined with other disciplines and, when they come together, they form an in-composite pack, that, whatever you do in life, whether you are a lawyer, an accountant, no matter what your discipline is, planning tools and techniques are necessity for us to begin to teach our people how to look before they leap, do cost and benefit analysis of what they are going to do. We are beginning to tell the people, they need assessment; before we engage in any project, we need assessment. Government might want to tar a road, they have to consult stakeholders whether they actually need road, the people in the village might need water rather than road, they might need school rather than water.
Does it mean that government doesn’t consult before carrying out projects?
Government doesn’t consult people, they just sit down in Abuja and formulate policies. And that has happened from 1960 to date. I was listening to the Minister of Finance, Okonjo-Iweala, she said over $400 billion has been made, and, if you want to equate it with what we have on ground, we have to bleed, bleeding is like we are a wasted generation. So, we now asked, ‘what should we do?’ What we do is to make sure that we carry the sensitization of telling our people the need for us to plan, and what is planning? There are many definitions for planning. Professor P.C. Egbon, who is the Deputy President of the Institute of Planning, said, “Planning is knowing where you are now, where you want to get to and how you are going to get there.”
I say,”Planning is the link between ideas and actions, so your action will have a well thought out logical rule to the expected destination”. It’s like the compass the pilot uses to navigate his way from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’. Before a pilot sets to fly from Lagos to Benin, first, he will have checked probably the weather, he will determine the fuel that will take him. Enough of this our running from pillar to post without a clear cut development plan.
Would you say lack of planning was responsible for the recent flood experienced in Lagos and other parts of the country?
Everything that happened was a as a result of change in weather. The rain was global this year. Other parts of the world experienced the same thing; even though they had their plans, they collapsed. Even now close to December, the rain is still failing, but you know the physical structure of Lagos was not properly planned, that is another problem. As a result,. the rain was too much and created serious flooding. Government should begin to prepare on how to put a physical structure in place to prevent such from happening next time.
You talked about professionals being IPN members. Who are they, and where are they drawn from?
They are drawn from all facets of life. We have military men, police bigwigs, the academia (professors), businessmen, bankers. We have our vice president, Mrs. Joyce Okele, Professor Jemila, Professor Orubu, Professor Peter, Rev Pius Ewohmieh, all coming from different disciplines to form the institute so that we can begin to sell the idea to the generality of the people, telling them there is need for them to look all the time before they leap. Wherever you find yourself, even in the media, before you start laying out your page, there is somebody that sits to do the planning. When Obasanjo was Head of State, we had Operation Feed the Nation. As beautiful as the idea was, where is it today? Shagari came and called his own Green Revolution, where is it today? If we had followed it, perhaps it would have taken us somewhere in terms of food sufficiency, because planning is very crucial in everything. I always tell people that ideas drive development, but the translation of ideas into action has always been our problem. We have laudable ideas, programmes. We proposed housing for all by year 2000. Today, we are talking about 2020. When you say year 2020, what are the parameters to achieve the goal? What is on ground.? Upon what basis are you going to build on that project? We are beginning to talk of the transformation agenda of the incumbent president. How do we transform? There are some basic factors to consider before you begin to think that you want to transform the country. We are talking about energy? Government is not telling our people the truth.
Construction of a power station is not like you go to John Holt Leasing and you buy a generator to install and you start generating power. It takes time. Somebody came the other day and said seven-point agenda. For God’s sake, ask them whether analysis was done on any of the points of the agenda. There was no analysis, somebody wrote it and somebody announced it and we are beginning to hold them to it, to account for it.
In the 1970s, 80s, planning was at the front burner, we used to have what we called development plan. When the military came, they discarded with the development plan, they brought rolling plan, but, today, even 12 months plan which is the shortest plan, the budget, may have not be properly operated. You go to all the states now, the local government chairman, if you ask him how many primary schools are there, he does not know. Ask him, how many public health centres are there, he doesn’t know, and you think that same person will plan for that local government.
In all facets of life, planning is necessary and it’s something we have to bring all professions into what are we trying to do.
