THE National Planning Commission has indicated that the Nigerian home grown long-term economic development blueprint, National Vision 20:2020, which targets to make Nigeria one of the top 20 economies in the globe by 2020 will not be realised if all the tiers of government and the private sector are not involved.The Secretary to the commission at the Joint Planning Board/National Council on Development Planning, Mr. Ntufam Fidel Ogbu, who spoke to newsmen at the Manpower Development Centre in Dutse Jigawa State yesterday indicated that since the Economy of Nigeria is one then all the stakeholders cooperation is expedient for the vision to be achieved.He said the days meeting was the technical session of the National Council on Development Planning, which is meant for the experts, the permanent secretaries and the technical experts in development planning, adding that yesterday was the council meeting where the minister of National planning presidedAccording to him, 'The intention is for us to be able to properly coordinate activities of planning at both federal and state levels, including the local government councils. We believe that if we are doing planning, we should be doing the same thing and if we are doing the same thing at the federal, state and local levels then we will be able to give Nigeria a robust planning environment which they can trust.'The secretary pointed out that at the national planning they normally compute the National Gross Domestic Product (GDP), however, he said being a federation operating a federal system of government there are States which are units of Government that need to know what they are doing.'We can not go from the federal set up to go and compute the gross domestic product of a state so what we are telling the states is that they should prepare to generate their own gross domestic product. When they generate their own GDP we will add up what all the States are generating and on the average we put together to make up the national domestic product,' he reiterated.He said even though it has not been the practice but this is the best time to start.Ogbu said the knowledge of the GDP is enough for investors to come to the states because they compare between states; since they will be in the position to look at their GDPs to know their strengths and weaknesses.He pointed out that the commission is strategizing to bring about reforms to upstage it for better output in its mandate.'At the National planning, we are currently implementing reforms aimed at improving the effectiveness of the commission to reposition it for better service delivery,' he stated.
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