The Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) as Developmental State Paradigm: An Introspection

Abstract

Nigeria’s quest for sustainable development road map has been a tortuous one since independent with various plans and policies developed to fast-track the economy. Sadly, however no meaningful change had been witnessed thus making all successive government to come up with different development blueprint on how to rejig the economy. The Buhari administration came up with the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), a Medium Term Plan for 2017 – 2020, builds on the Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) for the purpose of restoring economic growth while leveraging the ingenuity and resilience of the Nigerian people – the nation’s most priceless assets. The focus of the ERGP, which comes on the heels of Nigeria’s slump into recession for the first time in 25 years and the sharp fall in oil prices from highs of about $112 a barrel in 2014 to below $50 in 2016, was targeted at propelling Nigeria back to sustainable, accelerated development and restoring economic growth in the medium term, 2017-2020. Suffice to say that the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) is a medium term all-round developmental initiative focused on restoring growth, investing in people and building a globally competitive economy. This paper; thus examine the potentials and performance of the Plan as a likely developmental state paradigm for the Nigeria economic recovery. The paper recommends among others that, the restructuring of the economy through diversification of the economy to agriculture needs to be seriously sustained to reduce the over dependence on oil and the need for adequate funding, budget implementation, tackling security challenges (specifically in the North-East, North West North-Central and Niger Delta).