Business
‘Policy Failure, Bane Of Nigeria’s Economic Dev’
A management consultant, Obed Nwanwa, has stated that the unfolding realities in recent times have affirmed that the most important reason Nigeria is still struggling to deliver on the demand of human/capital development, is policy failure.
Nwanwa who made the remark in an interview with The Tide in his office in Port Harcourt on Thursday, said policy failures can occur at two different levels. The levels of formulation and implementation.
“Ideally a policy must first be good as a correct statement on the problems on the ground and their solutions, also the policy must be properly implemented to achieve the set goals,” he opined.
Nwanwa who is the Managing Director of Onwa Consult, noted that in Nigeria, it is taken for granted that the end of every public policy is to advance the common good as articulated through the process of popular participation in political governance, but pointed out that it is only when a policy meets the foregoing criteria that we have policy integrity.
He lamented that the crash-landing of our industrialization policies has been one of the tragedies of Nigeria’s post independence history, saying that the fundamental causes are leadership and management failure, resulting in underperformance and under delivery.
According to him, “to thrive, industries required stable policy, predictable economic, fiscal and financial regime, because their planning horizon is long-term and returns trickle in over long periods. Industries in Nigeria are not fly-by-night businesses, neither are investors portmanteau businessmen and that decision making in the sector is rational, logical, based on facts and figures and not on sentiments,” he added.