Issues
ERGP: How Far, So Far?
One of the key mandates of Federal Ministry of Budget and National Planning is to render policy advice to Federal Government on national development and national plans.
The ministry is expected to advise government in all aspects of national development and design national plans in form of long, medium and short terms to achieve economic sustainability.
It, therefore, designed a medium-term Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017 to 2020 to address the country’s economic challenges.
The plan was inaugurated by President Muhammadu Buhari on April 5, 2017 to lay the foundation for economic diversification, as well as inclusive and sustainable growth.
At the inauguration, Buhari said the ERGP had brought together all the sectoral plans for agriculture and food security, energy and transport infrastructure, industrialisation and social investments together in a single document.
According to him, it is a Strategic Implementation Plan and sets out ambitious roadmap to return the economy to growth and to achieve seven per cent growth rate by 2020.
He, therefore, urged state governments to draw aspiration and strategic direction from the plan to articulate their economic programmes, particularly in the development of the real sector.
The President said: “the Plan I am launching today therefore sets out what we, as government, are committed to do, to create the enabling environment for business to thrive.
“The Plan is national, hence the role of state governments is critical to its success.
“I, therefore, wish to appeal to state governments to draw inspiration and strategic direction from the Plan to articulate their economic programmes, particularly in the development of the real sector.”
After the launch of the Plan, economists take turn to commend government and expressed their hope that it would help the country to be totally out of recession.
A Professor of Development Economics, Mrs Sarah Anyanwu, commended President Buhari for inaugurating the ERGP, saying “the country needs the Plan to get out of recession so as not to prolong it.”
Anyanwu, former Head of Economics Department, University of Abuja, said that the Plan was very good for the country.
She, however, noted that its implementation would be the most important part of the plan as the country had produced many laudable initiatives before but had problems with implementation.
“We need political will to support those that will implement the Plan and bring out resources to do so.
‘“We also need experts to implement the Plan; people that are knowledgeable about economy not politicians that are not informed.
“Government must put politics aside and look for experts to implement the Plan and also people of integrity.
“Economy is different from politics; we need people with brain and expertise”, she said.
Similarly, an economist, Dr Aminu Usman, expressed optimism that ERGP would move the country out of recession and probably put the country on the path of sustainable development.
Usman, the Head of Economics Department, Kaduna State University, however, said the ERGP was announced without implementation of the Plan.
He said “It is expected that the Plan will impact on 2017 budget and even beyond.
“The Plan is a developmental road map and not revenue earning initiative; there is the need to, therefore, lower corporate taxes.”
Meanwhile, the concern of Dr Olusanya Olubusoye, former 2nd Vice-President of Nigerian Statistical Association (NSA), was that government should fill the gaps in ERGP to enhance its effective implementation.
Olubusoye advised Federal Government to incorporate constituencies in the implementation of the ERGP.
He said as a nation with 36 states and 774 local government areas, Nigeria needed to incorporate both states and local governments into the Plan for effective implementation.
The official explained that Lagos State being the 7th largest economy in Africa should have a key role to play in the ERGP implementation.
“How can you grow the economy by seven per cent in a Plan that does not assign any role for states like Lagos, Rivers, Kano, Akwa Ibom and Kaduna?
“Are these states not part of the plan to grow the Nigerian economy, how realistic will it be? Lagos Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2014 stood at N90 billion (about 15 per cent of Nigeria’s GDP).
“The same year, the GDP for Nigeria was N573 billion, so after Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt, Algeria, Angola, Morocco, Lagos economy is next.
“So, if these states with their constituencies are not taken along, the 774 local governments will not be part of it.”
At a news conference on the ERGP, the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Sen. Udoma Udo Udoma, said there was strong political will to implement the plan by the Buhari administration.
Udoma said that the ministry would use Task Forces to implement key priority areas and to ensure that all the gaps in the Plan were filled to ensure its effective implementation.
The key priority areas are stable macro-economic environment, agricultural transformation and food security, as well as sufficiency in energy.
Other areas are improved transportation infrastructure and industrialisation with focus on Small and Medium Scale Enterprises.
The minister said the Task Forces would monitor execution of projects and programmes in the respective sectors and report back to government.
He added that “some of these Task Forces may also have representation from the states and private sector; already we have task forces working on rice, power and tomato paste.
“We will be having regular and active engagements with the private sector on a sectoral basis, to be led by relevant ministers. In particular, the Minister of Investments, Trade and Industry will be meeting with manufacturers to try to replicate the success in the cement industry.”
Udoma said that the aim would be to seek self-sufficiency wherever possible in the basic products that the country needed and use.
According to him, the initial concentration is in areas where there are raw materials locally, such as petrochemicals.
“We will seek to establish what constraints a particular sector has and how government can help to remove the bottlenecks.
“Our role as government is to provide the enabling environment to implement the Plan.”
For instance, Udoma said, Federal Government would provide at least 15 million jobs for Nigerians by the year 2020 as captured in the ERGP.
Udoma added that the implementation of the plan would deliver some key outcomes, including generation of at least 10 gigawatt of electricity by 2020.
“We want to bring down the rate of unemployment by creating over 15 million direct jobs by 2020 in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, services and particularly among youths.
“We want the manufacturing sector to grow at an average 8.5 per cent, peaking 10.6 per cent by 2020.
“We want agriculture to also grow by 6.9 per cent over the Plan period; we want self-sufficiency in rice and wheat in 2018 and 2020 at the end of the Plan period.
“We want 60 per cent reduction in imports of refined petroleum products by 2018 and to become a net exporter of refined crude by 2020.
“We expect an average of 4.6 per cent average real GDP (Gross Domestic Growth) growth rate over the Plan period with seven per cent by 2020; we want to achieve single digit inflation rate by 2020.
“We want to increase crude oil output from 2.2 million barrel per day (mbpd) to 2.5 mbpd by 2020.
“We also want to achieve 10 gigawatt of operational electricity capacity by 2020.”
To effectively implement the Plan, the ministry organised a Stakeholders’ Engagement on the ERGP implementation Roadmap in May.
Udoma told the stakeholders that government had laid out the roadmap for step-by-step delivery of each of the strategies.
He said each strategy would be further broken into component activities, sub activities and actions.
“Each action will be supported by clearly assigned responsibilities, which will be sequenced against clear milestones and timelines for easy monitoring.
“We have also commenced the process of establishing a Delivery Unit, as well as Implementation Units to facilitate effective implementation of the Plan.
“This will start with the establishment of special task forces on the key execution areas of the Plan.”
However, the minister attributed the exit from economic recession to the implementation of the Plan as the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) made the announcement in September.
The minister, while reacting to the Second Quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) said various policies of government toward reflating the economy as set out in the ERGP were yielding results.
According to him, the major focus of government is to reflate the economy through spending in strategic sectors like infrastructure, agriculture, solid minerals to galvanise economic activities and empower the people.
He, however, said that effort had also been concentrated on increasing revenue generation to meet with the challenges of the economy.
Udoma said it was gratifying to note that the growth recorded was broad-based, as the non-oil sector showed improvements in the last two quarters.
“For instance, the agriculture sector continued to grow in 2017, recording a 3.01 per cent growth in the second quarter of 2017.’’
To consolidate on the achievements, Udoma announced at the 23rd Nigerian Economic Summit (NES) in October that government was committed to faithful implementation of the ERGP.
The minister said government had set up special implementation unit to ensure effective delivery of the Plan and had also engaged staff to drive the process.
He explained that government would be running sector-focused Malaysian style labs, noting that “the labs would enable stakeholders to brainstorm on practical steps to overcoming identified challenges in selected areas.
“The central objective of the labs was to bring in private capital to finance projects across the country.
Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, also said Federal Government had incorporated policy linkages between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the ERGP.
Ahmed said specific programmes and projects aimed at achieving the SDGs had been integrated into the 2017 National Budget, and would be included in future budgeting frameworks.
She said even with the progress made so far, government had much work to do in terms of empowering and building the capacity of local governments to own the SDGs implementation process.
She added that the ministry would continue to explore opportunities to strengthen and formalise collaboration with state and local governments, having recognised that progress at the sub-national level was key to ensuring implementation.
Nevertheless, the ministry at the 16th Meeting of the National Council on Development Planning held in November, appealed to state governments to complement the efforts of Federal Government in the implementation of the Plan.
The ministry also urged planners and experts to develop measures that would accelerate the momentum of activities in the country’s economic recovery and growth efforts.
Ologuangba is of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
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Cecilia Ologuangba
This is an open letter to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Chief Nyesom Wike.
Your Excellency,
Sir, ordinarily, I would not be writing an open letter to you, but like a wise man once said, “Silence would be Treason.” So I prefer to stay alive than face the consequences of silence in the face of crime. With each passing day, and as the socio-political tides continue to turn, it has become more pertinent that more people speak up in a concerted MANNER to prevent the death of our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as we appear to be, in the words of W. B. Yeats, “turning and turning in the widening gyre” heading for an end where the falcon will no longer hear the falconer
It is unfortunate that since losing control of the Federal Government, with the loss of President Goodluck Jonathan at the poll in 2015, our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has continued on a downward spiral. It is much more painful, that where it is expected that leaders within the party should rise to the challenge and put an end to this decline of our great party, some have instead taken up roles as its undertaker.
It will be hypocritical to claim aloofness to what I believe is your grouse with the PDP and I am not a hypocrite. It will be uncharitable on my part to discountenance the role you have played in strengthening the PDP from 2015 up until the last Presidential primaries of the party. It is my belief that your grouse against certain members of the party who you perceived worked against the party and abandoned it in 2015 and then came around much later to take control of the party, is justified. Also know that your decision to remain in the Party and stifle its progress on the other hand, as a sort of payback, stands condemned. For a man of your pedigree and stature, it is a dishonorable act, highly dishonorable and stands as testimony against all you claim to stand for.
At least, it can be argued that those who you hold this grudge against, abandoned the party completely and did not sit back while actively working to destroy it from within. But what then can be the argument on your own part, seeing that those you are currently working with against your party are the same people who set in motion, and executed surgically, the plans that not only ended our Party’s leadership at the centre, but ended up dislodging the first Niger Deltan to occupy Aso Rock as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Is this not akin to “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face?” That will be worse than folly. Let us not throw away the baby with the bath water because we do not like the soap used in bathing the baby. It will be a grave mistake.
Honourable Minister, sir, it is rather unfortunate that of all people, you have also decided to play the role of an undertaker not only for our party, but for our dear Rivers State.
I will like to take you down memory lane a little. Let me remind you of your emergence as Guber candidate of the PDP in Rivers State, against all fairness and justice in 2014. You will remember that despite the reality being that you as an Ikwerre man was poised to replace a fellow Ikwerre man in Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi in our multiethnic state, Rivers people overwhelmingly stood by you and pushed for your emergence as Executive Governor of Rivers State in 2015. I dare say that your popularity in the entire Niger Delta region was at an all-time high at this point.
I want you to understand why you were loved across board leading to your eventual emergence as Governor of Rivers State in 2015; it was because when it looked like all were against the second term ambitions of the first Niger Delta man to emerge as President of Nigeria, you became not just a pillar but a beacon of resistance by standing for Goodluck Jonathan. Rivers people, as grateful and rewarding as they can be, paid you back by ensuring your electoral victory against the incumbent All Progressives Congress (APC) led by your predecessor. On your emergence, where there were second term Governors in the region, you, a first term Governor, was seen by the people as not just the leader of the PDP, but the leader of the entire Niger Delta region. You earned it, and no one could dispute it.
In 2019, when your re-election bid was being challenged ferociously, Rivers people once again stood solidly behind you. Many were killed in the process of defending your votes. Do you remember Dr. Ferry Gberegbe that was shot and killed while trying to protect your votes in Khana Local Government Area? There are many more unnamed and unrecognised sons and daughters of Rivers State who sacrificed their lives so that you could emerge as a second term Governor of Rivers State.
In 2022/23, Honourable Minister, you oversaw a party primary across board that saw some candidates imprisoned and internal party democracy jettisoned for your wishes, leading to the emergence of flag bearers of our party all singlehandedly picked by you. You have on more than one occasion publicly stated that you paid for all their forms. Even those shortchanged in this process licked their wounds and continued to play their roles as party members to ensure the success of the party at all levels. In what will go down as one of the most keenly contested elections in recent Rivers history, with formidable candidates like Senator Magnus Abe of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Mr Tonye Cole of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the vibrant youth driven Labour Party (LP), PDP emerged victorious across board except for Phalga Constituency 1 that was lost to the Labour Party. (Not that you did not loose in some other LGA’s but let’s stick to the official figures declared by INEC).
It begs the question, why then do you want to burn down Rivers State, when everyone who now holds political office emerged through a process designed and endorsed by you? Is it that you do not care about Rivers people and you are all about yourself? If so, I am forced to believe that those around you are not telling you the truth. The truth being that in a state where your words were law; where houses and businesses could be demolished or closed down without any recourse to legalities, where Executive Orders could be deployed to stifle the opposition, that your popularity is now at an all-time low. Probably because they are afraid of you, or of losing the benefits they gain from you, they fail to tell you that what you might perceive as a battle against your successor, has slowly but gradually degenerating into a battle against Rivers State and Rivers people. You know, there is a popular saying that, a man can cook for the community and the community will finish the food, but when a community decides to cook for one man, the reverse is the case.
LEAVE FUBARA ALONE
You have gone on and on about being betrayed by Governor Siminalayi Fubara. You point fingers forgetting that some of those same fingers quick to spot betrayals point straight back at you. It is not Governor Fubara that has betrayed the PDP by working against it in the just concluded General Election, and working with the opposition at the State and Federal level to destabilise the party. It is you, Honourable Minister. It is not Governor Fubara that betrayed Rivers people by instigating a political crisis with propensity to escalate ethnic tensions in Rivers State. It is you Honourable Minister. It is not Governor Fubara that has declared himself God over all in Rivers State and has no qualms with burning the state to the ground to prove a point. It is you Honourable Minister. It is you Honourable Minister who told the world that the APC was a cancer and you can never support a cancerous party. It is you Honourable Minister who ended up facilitating the emergence of the same “cancerous” APC that has accelerated the economic decline of this country and further impoverished our people with no remorse. All so you can be a Minister of the Federal Capital Territory? The lack of self awareness is gobsmacking.
Some days back I came across a video where you talked about death and how you do not cry when you hear about the death of some people because you have no idea what might have caused it considering many a politician swear “over dead bodies” and still go back on their words. Those words made me think, and I could see the reason behind them. You see, in chosing to be God in the affairs of Rivers people, you have closed your eyes and ears to reason; you see nothing and hear nothing that can cause you to rethink on the path you have chosen. In your quest to “show Fubara” you have unwittingly united a vast majority of Rivers people behind him, so much that even those who despised him because of you, now like or love him, because of you too. In your scheming, I will advise you not to forget that “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.
Note that the war which you have or are waging against Governor Fubara, has gone beyond being merely political as you might see in your minds eye. It is now one that, fortunately for some and unfortunately for others, has evolved into a war against Rivers people. It is good to point out that no one has taken a stand against Rivers people and won. No one has gone against God and won. In your defiant characteristic manner, it will be unfortunate if you believe your own hubris and that of those around you on the possibility of you being the first to successfully go against Rivers people. It will be a needless gamble; one where if you win you create more enemies for yourself than you can withstand on your political journey, and if you lose, your legacy becomes an inglorious and irredeemable one in Rivers State, the Niger Delta, and Nigeria at large. For your sake as regards posterity, it is my greatest wish that you have a moment of sobriety and a deep reflection and introspection on this path you have chosen.
Honourable Minister, sir, what is left of your legacy is on the brink of being completely desecrated and relegated to the dustbin of our political history, and it will be a sad end to what I will say has been a wonderful political career that many can only dream of. The ball is in your court, and may God Almighty have mercy on us all and forgive us for our shortcomings.
Gabriel Baritulem Pidomson
Dr Pidomson is former Chief of Staff, Government House, Port Harcourt and former member, Rivers State House of Assembly.
In 2015, I made a conscious decision to invest my financial resources, my time, and energy into supporting Nyesom Wike’s gubernatorial campaign. I poured my heart and soul into ensuring Nyesom Wike emerged victorious even at the risk of my personal safety.
Again in 2019, I doubled down on my commitment. I invested a significant amount of money to procure campaign outfits for all twenty-three Local Governments Areas of Rivers State. I spared no expense in supplementing Wike’s election efforts in my own local government, and once again putting myself at great risk to safeguard the fairness and transparency of the electoral process.
However, despite my unwavering loyalty and sacrifices, I found myself abandoned and forgotten by Wike. Throughout his eight-year tenure, he failed to acknowledge my contributions or fulfill his promises and agreements. Even as a former Deputy Governor, Wike denied me my severance benefit.
My investment in Wike’s governorship was not just financial – it was a commitment of passion, dedication, and belief in a better future for Rivers State. Yet, his leadership style of dishonesty, greed, drunkenness and rash abuse of senior citizens brought me nothing but disappointment, misery and losses.
By the grace of God, today I speak not as a victim, but as a hero. I have accepted my losses, and I have moved on. And as I reflect on my experience, I cannot help but urge Wike to do the same and allow peace and development to reign in Rivers State.
Nyesom Wike, when you speak of investing in Governor Sim Fubara’s election, remember those like me who also invested in you. Remember the sacrifices I made, the risks I took, and the promises and agreements you left unfulfilled.
It is time for you, Wike, to let go of the past and allow Governor Sim Fubara the breathing space he needs to lead Rivers State forward. Allow him to focus on the challenges of good governance and the aspirations of the people. Spare him these unwarranted and ill-conceived political manoeuvrings founded on personal agenda and not for general good of Rivers State and her people.
I may have lost my investment on Wike, but I have not lost hope in the future of Rivers State. And together, we will continue to strive for a brighter tomorrow.
Long Live the Governor to Rivers State, Sir Siminialayi Fubara!
Long Live the Good People of Rivers State!!
Long Live the Federal Republic of Nigeria!!!
Engr Ikuru is former Deputy Governor of Rivers State.
Tele Ikuru
