The Federal Government says it is committed to producing national development plans for the country. The Minister of State for Finance, Budget and National Planning, Clement Agba, made this known at a news conference on the Medium-Term National Development Plans (MTNDPs) 2021 to 2025 and perspective plan, Nigeria Agenda 2050 on a virtual meeting in Abuja.
He says Nigeria Vision 2020 would end on December 31, and President Muhammadu Buhari was aware of the terminal dates. “And to avoid a vacuum, hence approved and directed the ministry to prepare successor plans from which governments can derive its policies going forward,’’ he said.
He explained that the plan required the involvement of critical stakeholders and the ministry adopted participatory and inclusiveness of all arms of governments and the Private Sector. He said stakeholders such as the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), Opinion Leaders, Public Commentators, Religious Organisations, Traditional Leaders and various pressure groups among others were involved.
The minister said that six state governors, one from each of the six geopolitical zones, representative of major political parties were involved at the Steering Committee (SC) level for the development of the plans. “We are in the process of engaging the grassroots through the states and the local government in the planning process, which shall take place via town hall meetings where memoranda from town development associations and traditional rulers shall be received,” he said.
Agba said that 25 Technical Working Groups (TWGs) comprising experts with diverse experiences had been engaged to identify thematic areas for the plans. He said that they were working on Macroeconomic Framework and Growth Diagnostic to identify the policies and provide macroeconomic projections for the new plans, the performance of the outgoing plans and sector policy documents in the past periods.
