PROBLEMS OF PLANNING IN NIGERIA

PROBLEMS OF PLANNING IN NIGERIA

Prior to independence, Nigeria has had plans planned by the colonial masters and after independence, Series of plans have been undertaken by various Governments in the country and yet, performances of the plans have not been very satisfactory, due to problem which the planning agencies have had to contend with.

The problems range from shortage of executive capacity to conflict in planning objectives, plan indiscipline and the advisory of planning Capacity

1.     SHORTAGE OF EXECUTIVE CAPACITY:

The shortage of Executive capacity in the area of project formulation and preparation in some federal ministry and corporation and even more at the state level can affect the integration of national plans. Ministries and agencies at both federal levels have only few of them had institution to under take planning function on permanent basis. Planning duties were undertake by administrative officers who were given ad-hoc training prior to the commencement of plan preparation.

Consequently, most of the projects that are submitted to the planning office by state ministry for inclusion in the plan reached their most of the time as mere ideas lacking the necessary ingredient required, hence a good number of ideas admitted into the plan as were not properly studies.

The inadequacy of plan integration can also be traced to the limitations in the technology of data collection and processing. The abortive attempts at population census since the country's independence, the establishment of several branches of economic data collection and even more so of the organization of the federal office of statistics all point in the direction of a weak of the data base of Nigeria planning

2          CONFLICTS IN PLANNING OBJECTIVES

Conflicts between federal and state governments particularly in planning objectives are supposed to be minimal once the guidelines are jointly prepared and passed through all the planning stages, but in practice, there seems to be conflicts in plan objectives due to;

a)     The existence of separate state plan documents apart from the national document which is conducive to distortion of objectives and indeed the distortion of the national plan itself.

b)    The deliberate deviation from the plan process and implement non-plan projects.

c)     The existence of communication and credibility gaps coupled with the attendant misunderstanding of objectives and such situations generate either conflicts or disruptions of activities planned,

3.        PLAN INDISCIPLINE

Plan indiscipline constitute as a major bane (problem) of Nigerian's planning efforts. A development plan is not supposed to be a rigid blue print rather as a flexible instrument. However, a situation where many executing agencies always introduce new projects, which compete for resources with the approved projects, the plan, is likely to be thrown out of focus and this has the effect of distorting the plan and indeed the national priorities.

4.       ADVISORY ROLE OF PLANNING MACHINERY

The question to be asked is that, why is it that planning machineries in other countries have been able to achieve some measure of effective coordination while their Nigeria counterpart, the national economic council has failed in spite of the fact that both bodies have been consultative in nature. In India, for instance its national development council is a consultative body. Its conclusions on any planning matter are as good government decisions because it has the prime minister as chairman and all the chief ministers as members, hence the council derives its authority from its membership rather than from the formal power assigned it to it. Also the India constitutions assign the power of planning to the central government and establishes institutions enabling cooperative participation of the states in the planning process while in Nigeria, the constitution places the states in a much stronger positioning matters relating to development planning by having assigned to the both concurrent and residual functions and there are quiet a number of inter-governmental institutions at both ministerial and official levels with specific responsibilities for coordination of policies e.g. of such institutions are: the National planning commission, The joint planning Board Conference of Ministers/Commissioners for economic planning and federal and state executing ministries. Most of these agencies are not really equipped to handle planning matters adequately.

5.     FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS

The most serious constraint to plan implementation is that of finance resulting from the following factors:

a)     The unexpected fight financial shortfall due to the decline in projected revenue, Nigeria has over the years depended for the bulk of its revenue on oil more than ninety percent of it's export earning on crude Oil and earning would throw even a well articulated plan completely

b)    b) Cost escalation due to such factors as inflation, under-estimation of project increases in scope and delays in designing and completion of projects.

6.     INSUFFICIENT AND POOR QUALITY OF DATA

The importance of data to the formulation of a national development plan cannot be underestimated. It is true that the quality of the plan depends to a great extent on the quality of information used in projecting the macro-economic variable on which policy measures are based.

The federal office of statistics which is a department of the federal ministry of national planning is suffering from serious manpower, accommodation and equipment problems which have greatly undermined its effectiveness and these problems have tended to limit the number of surveys which the department can carry out. It should be taken note that data problems faced by the planners but the poor state of record keeping in the economy as a whole, the unwillingness to respond to inquiries and even the failure of the successive population censuses are all part of the problem.

7.     LACK OF MASS COMMITMENT

This is another area of planning problem in Nigeria. One way of ensuring mass commitment for the objectives and programmes in the plan is through mass education. The objectives underlying the plan should be explained to the people through the existing media in order to obtain mass is suppose for their realization. 

8.      LACK OF ADEQUATE PUBLIC/PRIVATE SECTOR CONSULTATION

Under normal circumstances, the private sector is support to be properly consulted whenever a plan is being formulated so that various interests in the planning process could be accommodated.

Today, a visible gap in the institutional machinery for planning in Nigeria is the lack of forum for regular consultation with the private sector. A well-structured forum for discussing with the private sector on issues of planning and general management of the economy on a regular basis will certainly be a useful complement to the existing machinery of planning in the country.

Features of Nigeria Development Plants

Nigeria over the years has adopted systematic economic planning as a means of accelerating the rate of growth of the economy and improving the standard of living of her people. The 1946-56 Plan

Nigeria's experience in development planning started with the ten year of development and welfare for Nigeria's which was introduced in the 1946 by the colonial government, under the colonial development and welfare fund.

The then secretary of state for the colonies had in 1944 called on the government of all British colonies to formulate plans for the economic and social development of their territories over a period of ten years. This was Nigerian's first attempt at longer term planning.

Under the ten year plan of development and welfare for Nigeria, a total planned expenditure of about N110 Million for a period of ten years was envisaged from April, 1, 1946 to March 31, 1956. Out of this planned expenditure, N46m was to be met with funds provided under the colonial development and welfare act.

The main emphasis of the programme was on building the transport and communications system with little provision for industrial development. With respect to agriculture, attention was concentrated on a limited range of cash crops such as cocoa, palm products, cotton, groundnut and, timber log.

The formulation and implementation of the programme were centralized in the hands of a small central development board set up in 1944.

The ten-year plan could not be seeing serious sense. It was more of a list of projects, the selection and preparation of which did not take into consideration the participation of the population being planned for. The programme also suffered from the non-specialized colonial administrators approach to development planning the inadequacy of the planning machinery and the absence of clearly define national objectives.

Nigeria's development planning dates back to 1946 when a ten years development and social welfare was launched, this is not our concern because it was noting but colonial planning and it was highly biased. The development plans we are concerned with started since independence and from that time to date Nigerian Government has formulated and implemented four National development plans covering the period from 1962 to 1985. The philosophy behind creating the Nigerian development plans include.

                    i.            A just and egalitarian society

                  ii.            Great and dynamic economy

                iii.            Rise in par capita income

               iv.            A land of bright and opportunity etc.

In analyzing the Nigerian development plans certain things or concepts have to be noted e.g. the data used as regards to sect oral allocation. What percentage of financial resource is allocated to various sectors namely primary sector: mining, secondary sector-industries, Education etc? Tertiary sector-Transport and other series and finally the class interest in all the development plans.