Revisiting Abacha’s Vision 2010
By AUWALU NAMADI GABARIROBBER L. Dilenschneiden described vision as “a clear course which propels organisations towards action while giving people a sense of purpose. In other words, vision is the total concept of what organization or their people are trying to become. Vision seeks to focus people in the future. Vision is the ability to see beyond our present reality. It is the ability to create or invert what does not yet exist. It is the ability to become what we are yet to become.
Vision clarifies purpose; gives direction, empowers us to perform beyond our resources; bind people together, becomes the constitution, the criteria for decision making, gives a sense of unity and purpose and provides great strength in times of uncertainty. The challenges for today’s leaders to find and communicate a vision of the society that is in way better than the old one and to encourage others to share that vision, creating motivating visions enable people to leave the relative safety of the past and present and enlarge on the new strategies needed to ensure survival in the future. Vision involves paying attention to the heart and minds of people. That is to say vision is value driven.
Values are the supporting principles that guide the vision unto a successful fulfilment. Value motivate and sustain performance, gives the society character constitute the anchor form any development programme; guide future actions, provide the society with a reference point by which it examines past practice.
Therefore, creation of vision comes from a considerable amount of exploring, analysing and routing around in the territory of a problem. Vision is the expense of leadership, says Father Theodore Hesburgh. , Knowing where you want to go requires three things, having a clear vision; articulating it well and getting your team enthusiastic about sharing it. Vision can be developed using three approaches. You can impose it, buy it or get it from consensus which usually produces the most enduring result.
The Vision 2010
Nigeria for the first time in the history decided to take its destiny into its hands by coming to terms with the fact that it requires a vision if it is to move ahead and gain its rightful place in the comity of nations. That visionary process tagged “Vision 2010” was a term to arrive at a consensus of a truly national vision. The team was led by the former head of state and chairman of the Interim government, Chief Earnest Shonekan. The head of state is mandate to the team was straight forward. It is to “redeem Nigeria”. Vision 2010 was conceived according to the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha “to embrace and institutionalize a culture of long term planning. It hoped to open new vistas of opportunities including seeking answer to Nigeria’s many sociopolitical and economic problems.
Its specific goals were to: define for the country’s correct bearing and sense of economic, political, social progress and forge a plan which will ensure that Nigeria is on its way by the year 2010, to becoming a developed nation, in terms of economic prosperity, political stability and social harmony. In particular, it was to focus attention on creating the right atmosphere and environment for sustained annual growth of 6%-10% of G.D.P., the attainment of high literacy rate and qualitative education levels for the country achievement, attainment of price stability and the achievement of an inflation rate of more than three to five percent by the year 2010. The attainment of an effective comprehensive and qualitative health care delivery systems; accelerated agricultural production to ensure food self-sufficiency and the provision of major raw materials. Other goals were: to attain a full fledged industrialization programme based largely on local materials input for enhancement of cultural direction.
* To examine all a aspects of national life which should be developed and fortified.
* Set appropriate goals target and time frame for achieving political, economic, social and cultural objectives and to propose the strategies and the institutional arrangements required to attain the set goals and target, exportation of manufactured goods, proper integration of science and technology into the country’s development plans and programmes.
* Design a comprehensive master plan which will launch Nigeria as a leading sporting nation in the world’
* Suggest comprehensive and practical solution for redeeming Nigeria’s external image.
* Prepare a plan that would launch Nigeria as a major economic power in the Africa region
* Prescribe specific roles for the public and private sectors in economic and social activities and devise the means of ensuring that each sector creditably performs the role assigned to it.
Furthermore, it was imperative for the whole economic sector to reduce poverty which is the fundamental objective of economic development. Writing in the foreward of World Development Report of 1990,, Barbar B. Conableobserves that “ a review of development experience shows that, the most effective way of achieving rapid and politically sustainable improvements in the quality of life for the poor has been through a two part strategy. The first element in the strategy is the pursuit of a pattern of growth that ensures productive use of the poor’s most abundant asset - labour. The second element is wide spread provision to the poor of basic social services, especially primary education, primary health-care and family planning. The first component provides opportunities, the second increases the capacity of the poor to take advantage of these opportunities. The strategy must be complemented by well targeted transfers, to help those not able to benefit from these policies and by safety nets, to protect those who are exposed to shock”.
The imperative to the financial sector is more creative financial engineering. The key to investors having access to what funds are more available is more creative, financing in structuring projects so that, they fit the market, the people and the realities. Money has neither a body nor a soul. Its ability to play its decisive role in economic relation depends on the futile imagination and dynamism of the people and institutions making up the financial system. But in most cases African small investors and indigenous small scale enterprises remain financially repressed, although they possess quite a large share of the deposit resources on which banks credit is based.
Efficient financial markets are absolutely essential to ensure adequate capital formation and economic growth in an economy. If there were no financial assets either than money, each economic unit could invest only to the extent that it is saved. Without financial assets, then, an economy would be greatly constrained in its investment behaviour. If the amount required for investment in a real assets were large in relation to current savings, an economic unit supply would have to postpone investment until it had accumulated sufficient savings in the form of paper money.
As a result of the absence of financing, many worthwhile investment opportunities would have to be postponed or abandoned by economic unit lacking sufficient savings.
It was therefore clear that for the vision 2010 to succeed, the financial sector must be sufficiently equipped to perform its proper function in an atmosphere untrammelled by conventional wisdom. As we all know, the Nigeria financial sectors embracing the capital and money markets, insurance and re-insurance companies, pension funds and a host of other financial players currently lacks breadth and depth.
For Vision 2010 to succeed, the Nigerian economy in general and the financial sector in particular must be linked to the global system. We can no longer afford to operate in isolation. The key to linking the Nigerian economy system to the rest of the world is technology and an enabling investment environment. As Short and Pocket point out, “The combined effect of new competitors and information technologies have produced a new dynamic global technology and enabled increasing competitive business environment. The growing demands of this environment have dramatically affected firm competitive positioning and the need to increase performance against growth, profitability, quality and market place and customers goals”.
According to an “MIT” research findings, four key business forces are changing the rules of competition, shaping the future of organization today and the planning choices they must make”. These are: ( i) increasing globalization (ii) growing world wide competition (iii) demand for greater productivity (iv) governmental, sociological and legal changes.
These factors are having far reaching effects on organizations. In all sectors new ways of improving performance and more effective methods of planning and control are crucial to survival.
Over the next 18 years, as Bill Gates of Microsoft predicts, the rate of change will be even faster than it has been in the last 22 years. T he imperatives for the financial sectors are essential. What are needed for the actualization of Vision 2010 are therefore six fold:
* Consolidation and recapitalization of banks should become truly global.
* Linking up to the worldwide information super high way and re-engineering its process to suit international standard.
* Defending the financial system (market) to become more responsive to the heightened demand for financial services from an expanding and growing economy.
* Growing of a highly trained and professionalised work force that can deliver services to the customers.
* Creating in conjunction with the investing public and government an enabling environment that will facilitate the country’s bid to attract foreign investment.
* Future deregulation.
In conclusion, it should be pointed out that, there cannot be economic growth under an unstable political atmosphere where there is no social justice. Given an enabling environments, the financial sector should be able to rise to the challenges of oiling the economic system through efficient and equitable distribution of financial resources. It is perhaps necessary to conclude with the immortal words of Theodore Roosevelt that “It is for better to aspire to great things, to win glorious triumphs even though chequered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither much enjoy but suffer much because they live in the great twilight where there is neither victory nor defeat”.

GABARI wrote in from Gabari quarters of Kano City.