Obinna Chima
National planning in Nigeria is once again at crossroads. On Thursday, the National Economic Council (NEC) endorsed President Bola Tinubu’s five-year Renewed Hope 2026–2030 Economic Plan. The development has raised fresh questions about whether the country can embrace continuity in development strategy or remain trapped in its cycle of abandoned blueprints.
The NEC rose from its monthly meeting with the endorsement of the framework for the five-year Renewed Hope Development Plan from 2026 to 2030. The plan, according to the NEC, is aimed at consolidating Nigeria’s reform agenda and actualise the $1 trillion economy target of the administration of President Bola Tinubu.
Chairman of the Council, Vice President Shettima, said the new national development plan will build on existing policies, deepen continuity, and align Nigeria’s growth trajectory with the long-term goals of Nigeria Agenda 2050.
He described the transition as critical to sustaining the country’s economic trajectory and consolidating the administration’s ongoing reforms.
“Another major consideration today is the expiration of the National Development Plan 2021–2025 and the preparation of its successor, the Renewed Hope Plan 2026–2030. This, to us, is no ordinary transition. It is the bridge between lessons learnt and ambitions pursued.
“The Renewed Hope Plan will consolidate ongoing reforms, deepen policy continuity, and align our medium-term strategies with the long-term horizon of Nigeria Agenda 2050. It’s a practical roadmap towards a $1 trillion economy by 2030,” he explained.
The Vice President emphasised that the plan will be participatory rather than top-down, engaging multiple tiers of government, civil society, and private actors.
This comes about two years after the late President Muhammadu Buhari launched the Nigeria Agenda 2050 (NA 2050). Then, many Nigerians had heaved a sigh of relief that, finally, the country now has a long-term development framework, drawing lessons from the failed Vision 2010 and Vision 2020.
Nigerians were told then that the NA 2050 was not conceived in isolation. That it was meant to succeed the Nigeria Vision 2020 and the National Development Plan 2021–2025, thereby forming a continuum of policy strategies. Crafted by a broad range of experts under the National Steering Committee, chaired by former Finance Minister and former central banker, Shamsudeen Usman, NA 2050 set ambitious but measurable targets.
The NA 2050 was projected to transform Nigeria into a modern, industrialised, knowledge-driven economy and place the country among the top middle-income nations of the world by mid-century. It aimed to ensure that the country attains a per capita GDP of $33,328 per annum and was designed to place Nigeria among the top middle-income economies in the world by 2050.
Precisely, on May 3rd, 2023, during the launch, the late Buhari had said the plan has the vision of a dynamic, industrialised, and knowledge-based economy that generates inclusive and sustainable development for the country. According to him, given the measures already in place for continuous plan implementation, successive administrations would find the document useful in the delivery of electoral promises.
But barely months after President Bola Tinubu assumed office, he unveiled his own signature economic framework, the Renewed Hope Agenda, which has now morphed into the Renewed Hope 2026–2030 Economic Plan.
Even though the government of the day has said the plan addresses urgent fiscal, agricultural, energy, and technological challenges, its very emergence has sparked renewed confusion: What becomes of the NA 2050? Is Nigeria truly committed to long-term planning, or do successive governments merely prefer to stamp their own political identity on development frameworks? This question is critical because development planning is not an academic exercise but the backbone of transformation.
Countries that have lifted millions from poverty, built competitive economies, and achieved political stability did so by adhering to long-term, consistent, and coherent plans. China’s consistent five-year plans since 1953, Malaysia’s Vision 2020, Singapore’s structured urban and industrial policies, Rwanda’s Vision 2020, and South Korea’s deliberate planning since the 1960s all testify to the power of consistency. Each successive government in these countries sustained what it met, refined where necessary, but never discarded national visions for partisan reasons. That is why they achieved industrialisation, human capital development, and global competitiveness, while Nigeria, despite its enormous resources, remains stuck in cycles of poverty, unemployment, and underdevelopment.
Nigeria’s perennial abandonment of such blueprints is a key reason why the country remains trapped in cycles of poverty, infrastructural decay, wasted potential, and widening inequality.
At its core, national economic planning is about direction and discipline. It is the conscious alignment of a country’s resources, policies, and institutions towards clearly defined long-term goals. When well designed and faithfully implemented, a development plan reduces policy somersaults, attracts investor confidence, ensures continuity across political administrations, and provides measurable benchmarks for assessing progress.
In fragile economies like Nigeria’s, with its volatile oil dependence, weak infrastructure, and demographic pressures, planning is an existential necessity.
Indeed, Nigeria’s greatest weakness lies not in designing plans but in abandoning them. Vision 2010 collapsed with the change of government. Vision 2020 was sidelined before its targets matured. Now, the NA 2050 appears to have been thrown into the trash can, with huge resources committed to its development now a waste.
Certainly, if this trend continues, the Renewed Hope Plan may also suffer a similar fate when another administration arrives with its own slogan. The National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) introduced by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, as well as the Transformation Agenda, the 5-year development plan of former President Goodluck Jonathan were all discarded.
Such discontinuity erodes investor confidence, creates duplication of effort, and wastes scarce resources. Worse still, it betrays citizens who look to these plans for improved livelihoods, jobs, and better infrastructure. A country that improvises its economic direction every four years cannot hope to break free from underdevelopment.
What Nigeria urgently needs is not another plan for the shelves but a commitment to continuity and execution. The Renewed Hope 2026–2030 should not stand apart from the NA 2050 but be firmly integrated. Doing so would harmonise immediate reforms with long-term transformation, ensuring that every administration contributes to a shared national vision rather than resetting the clock. This would also align urgent stabilisation with long-term transformation, ensuring coherence across decades. Nigeria must also institutionalise planning beyond politics by empowering the National Planning Commission to monitor implementation and hold governments accountable regardless of political shifts.
Citizens, civil society, and the media must insist on this continuity because national development is too important to be left to the whims of political branding.
Without discipline, Nigeria risks repeating the mistakes of the past, with each new leader substituting national vision for political branding. No nation develops by discarding its plans midway. For Nigeria, the choice is between embedding continuity into its planning culture or condemning another generation to the frustrations of abandoned promises. China, Malaysia, Singapore, Rwanda, and South Korea all testify to the power of discipline, consistency, and commitment. Nigeria must learn from these examples if it hopes to break free from cycles of poverty and underdevelopment.
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