(I wrote this piece sometime in 2009 at the height of the Vision 20-2020 hype. Once more, the propaganda juggernaut of NIGERIA: THE LARGEST ECONOMY IN AFRICA is well and truly in motion. For me, this is merely a rehashing of the Vision 20-2020 saga with a dubious intent to garner political capital. The issues are still the same, only now, the WELL BEING of the masses of Nigerians has since deteriorated.)
(I wrote this piece sometime in 2009 at the height of the Vision 20-2020 hype. Once more, the propaganda juggernaut of NIGERIA: THE LARGEST ECONOMY IN AFRICA is well and truly in motion. For me, this is merely a rehashing of the Vision 20-2020 saga with a dubious intent to garner political capital. The issues are still the same, only now, the WELL BEING of the masses of Nigerians has since deteriorated.)
Let me begin by rehearsing what I think Vision 20-20-20 is. It is President Umar Musa Yar’adua’s grand ambition of placing Nigeria among the 20 largest economies in the world by 2020. I’m thinking he intends to achieve this through the instrumentality of the overly-publicized 7-point agenda. The 7-point agenda is a nebulous and elusive topic that is best left out of the present discussion.
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For a long time, I did not hold an informed opinion about this so-called vision. So in order to form one, I needed facts and figures. That lead me to the internet, and specifically to Wikipedia; that incomparable source of largely reliable information. The largeness of an economy is synonymous with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP represents the total market value of all goods and services produced by a country in a given year. Wikipedia has a list of countries by GDP published in 2008 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The values are presented in millions of USD but I prefer to exclude those figures from this piece. Positions of countries on the list will suffice.
If I knew Nigeria’s position and also the countries in the first 20, I could then figure out if we are realistically in a position, not only to move up on the list, but also to upstage at least one country in the first 20. I think that is what they call the G20; the one whose meeting Nigeria wasn’t invited to recently. The list of 20 has the USA on top with Belgium at the other end. In between are countries with intimidating democratic, economic and industrial credentials. Nigeria occupies the 41st position which I think is not too bad. Oh we might just be able to inch our way up and, just maybe, knock off one of them. I believe in miracles. That miracle will certainly rank as the greatest of all times! At no 32, South Africa is predictably the highest ranked African country.
At this point, I was neither elated nor disenchanted. So I knew I had to take my enquiry to another platform. I recalled that every year, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) publishes a report where the Human Development Index (HDI) is the paramount basis for the comparative analysis of member countries. Nigeria has never fared well on that platform so I knew that was where I had to go.
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The HDI is a comparative measure of LIFE EXPECTANCY, LITERACY, EDUCATION and STANDARD OF LIVING for countries worldwide. It is a standard of measuring WELL-BEING especially CHILD WELFARE. It is used to distinguish whether a country is a developed, a developing or an under-developed country, and also to measure the impact of economic policies on QUALITY OF LIFE. Countries are grouped into 3 broad categories based on their HDI: high, medium and low. The index ranges from the highest value of 1 to the lowest, 0. Wikipedia also had this list of countries by HDI that was part of a UNDP Statistical Update released on Dec. 18, 2008 and compiled on the basis of data from 2006. What I saw in this list both stupefied and infuriated me.
The first reality that came crashing on me is the naked fact that GDP and HDI are two very different parameters. While GDP focuses exclusively on the size of economic activities, the HDI is the one that that relates this size to measurable well-being. And the list shows unequivocally that size does not automatically translate to good for the man on the street. The first 3 countries on this list are Iceland, Norway and Canada with indices of 0.968, 0.968 and 0.967 in that order. Their comparative positions on the GDP list are 101st, 24th and 11th. The USA which is 1st on the GDP list is a distant 15th on the latter list. It is obvious that size does not exactly translate to quality of life. Of the 177 countries assessed, 73 are on the ‘high’ category, 78 on ‘medium’ and 26 on ‘low’.
Shockingly, Nigeria is in the ‘low’ category: 154th on the list and with a paltry HDI of 0.499! I forgot to mention that Nigeria is the no. 1 in this category! It was equally shocking to find out that the two highest-ranked African countries are Libya (no. 52, HDI 0.840) and Mauritius (no. 74, HDI 0.802). These two are of course in the ‘high’ cadre! South Africa, the undisputed African GDP champion could only manage the 125th position; in the ‘medium’ category and HDI of 0.670.
While Nigeria is 1st on the ‘low’ category, Sierra Leone with HDI of 0.329 brings up the absolute rear. I leave the rest of the list up to your imagination. Nigeria recently granted a soft loan of $30 million to Sao Tome & Principe. Sao Tome is firmly in the ‘medium’ category at no.128 and HDI 0.643! You cannot possibly appreciate the enormity of the situation until you peruse these lists yourself. I therefore encourage everyone who can to do so.
At this point in time, nobody should be talking about the size of our economy. We might as well be talking about accelerated procreation, because with that, our population will explode. What with such a burgeoning size and the concomitant economic activities (legal and otherwise), we will most certainly catapult ourselves into the big league! No, no and absolutely no! Size is not, and should never be the issue. Quality of life is it. For as long as the size of our economy will not afford us unfettered access to the good things of life, and there’s ample evidence it won’t, we should stop fooling ourselves with this 20-20-20 crap. It is mischief and deceit of gargantuan dimensions. 2020 is barely 10½ years or 126 months away, and I’m certain when we get close enough and stark reality begins to stare us in the face, some smart aleck (certainly not Yar’adua) will engineer a shift to, probably 2050!
All persons of goodwill must arise and take up every legitimate weapon to chase away these charlatans frittering away our hard-won commonwealth. We must insist on the enthronement of a regime that guarantees the highest good for the greatest number. I don’t care what the size of our economy is, as long as we can all eat, go to work, send our little ones to school, come back to sleep in decent houses with our two eyes closed. Whether that scenario will place us in the ranks of the G2, G20 or G200 is of little account.
OLUGU OLUGU ORJI mnia
[email protected]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters
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