**Make Nigeria Top Middle-Income Economy
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
A new long-term national development plan, the Nigeria Agenda 2050 (NA 2050), designed to make the country the top middle-income economy in the world by 2050 and reduce the unemployment rate to 6.3 per cent from 33 per cent in 2020, has been launched by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The economic plan was unveiled on Wednesday by the President shortly before the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting. He said the aim is to ensure Nigeria attains a per capita GDP of $33,328 per annum by then, noting successive administrations will find the document useful in delivering electoral promises.
“You will recall that in March 2020, I approved the development of successor Plans to both Nigeria Vision 20:2020 and the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), 2017-2020. The Plans lapsed in December 2020.
“To give effect to this approval, I inaugurated the National Steering Committee in September 2020 under the leadership of the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning and a distinguished private sector operator, Mr Atedo Peterside.
“The Steering Committee is to superintend the preparation of the Nigeria Agenda 2050 and the National Development Plan (NDP), 2021-2025 to succeed the Nigeria Vision 20: 2020 and Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), 2017-2020, respectively.
“At the inauguration, I charged the Steering Committee to prepare inclusive Plans that would cover all shades of opinion and ensure even and balanced development, as well as put in place necessary legislations for continuous implementation of Plans even after the expiration of the tenure of successive administrations.
“This was achieved with the preparation of Volume III of the NDP, which deals with Legislative Imperatives for identified binding constraints to Plan implementation in Nigeria.
“It is instructive to inform Council, and indeed all Nigerians, that I had on December 22, 2021, launched the first of the six number 5-year medium-term plans, the National Development Plan (NDP), 2021-2025, that will be used to implement the Long-Term Plan.
“Council also, on March 15, 2023, approved the Nigeria Agenda 2050 that we are launching today,” President Buhari said.
He praised the Finance Minister, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, and the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Mr Clem Agba, for the plan.
Mrs Ahmed, in her remarks, stated that the plan was not only participatory and consultative but inclusive, involving all critical stakeholders such as all Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory as well as the representatives of Local Government Areas (LGAs).
“The Nigeria Agenda 2050 is formulated against the backdrop of subsisting economic and social challenges facing the country, including low, fragile and non-inclusive growth, insecurity, high population growth rate, limited concentric economic diversification and low productivity.
“The plan is a long-term economic transformation blueprint designed to address these challenges,” she said, adding that under the initiative, the bulk of the investment is expected to be financed by the private sector while total employment is expected to rise to 203.41 million in 2050 from 46.49 million in 2020.
“This implies that unemployment will drop significantly to 6.3 per cent in 2050 from 33.3 per cent in 2020. The corollary is that the number of people in poverty will drop to 2.1 per cent by 2050 from 83 million in 2020,” the Finance Minister said.
