Beyond tenure politics: Why medium-term plans still matter
Nigeria’s Medium-Term National Development Plan (MTNDP) 2021–2025 was conceived by the Buhari administration as a bridge between short-term crisis management and the long horizon of Agenda 2050. It promised to deliver faster and more inclusive growth, diversify the economy beyond oil, strengthen infrastructure and human capital, and reduce poverty through employment and social protection. Its ambitions were bold, almost utopian: 21 million full-time jobs created, 35 million people lifted out of poverty, and GDP growth rates consistently above five percent. With the plan now lapsing, two questions are unavoidable: how much of this has been achieved, and how well do its priorities align with President Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope” agenda? In fact, there’s an even more fundamental quagmire as to the usefulness of designing plans that outlast the tenure of the government that births them.
The intent of the MTNDP was clear. It was designed not as a wish list but as a framework to align annual national budgets and state governments’ development priorities around a shared vision. Its pillars—economic stability and diversification, industrialisation via infrastructure and energy, human capital development, governance and security, and poverty reduction—were intended to discipline government action and reassure investors that Nigeria was pursuing a coherent direction. Yet its implementation quickly collided with familiar obstacles: weak revenue mobilisation, ballooning debt service, FX dysfunction and perennial fuel subsidies. Furthermore, delivery capacity was constrained by poor coordination between federal and state governments.
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As a result, the MTNDP underperformed. Growth was volatile, investment remained cautious, unemployment and underemployment were sticky, and poverty indicators showed little movement. Nigeria struggled to translate policy pronouncements into outcomes that citizens could feel. The plan’s lofty social promises—to lift tens of millions out of poverty—remained more on paper than on the ground.
Yet the final years of the plan coincided with a sharp turn. Within months of assuming office, the Tinubu administration removed the fuel subsidy, began unifying exchange rates, tightened monetary policy, and launched revenue and energy-sector reforms. These politically costly measures addressed structural imbalances that had long crippled investment and productivity. The economy responded: non-oil activity strengthened, investor sentiment improved, and output indicators in 2024 and 2025 signalled a fragile but real rebound. Oil and gas, a sector central to both fiscal and external balance, saw renewed momentum through the implementation of the Petroleum Industry Act, a clearer investment climate, and new drilling projects that lifted production after years of decline. Theft and vandalism were still concerns, but the direction was more hopeful than the stagnation of the preceding decade.
“In a country where electoral cycles are four years, revenues are volatile, and political discontinuity is common, long-term planning can appear futile.”
The cost of these reforms, however, was borne by ordinary Nigerians. Inflation soared, food prices climbed relentlessly, and real wages fell. For many households, the macroeconomic reset meant immediate pain rather than promised prosperity. While the plan’s final years showed stronger macro indicators, the lived reality was harsher. Progress was visible in charts and reports, but less so in markets and kitchens.
This tension between reform progress and social outcomes underscores both the strengths and the limits of the MTNDP. On one hand, it provided a framework whose priorities proved coherent with Tinubu’s Renewed Hope agenda. Actually, the overlap is quite striking. Tinubu’s eight priority areas—macroeconomic stability, job creation, infrastructure and power, agriculture and food security, oil and gas reform, security, social investment, and governance—mirror the MTNDP’s pillars almost exactly. The distinction lies not in the “what” but in the “how” and “when”. Tinubu chose to front-load politically risky adjustments, betting that painful short-term corrections would lead to longer-term growth. The plan, for its part, assumed a more gradual trajectory, perhaps too cautious given the scale of Nigeria’s imbalances.
Coherence matters only when it translates into execution. For plans to deliver, four gears must mesh: a realistic macroeconomic framework, a pipeline of bankable projects, institutions capable of coordinating implementation, and a monitoring regime that rewards delivery and penalises drift. The Tinubu administration has strengthened the first gear—returning to macroeconomic realism—though not without hardship. It is now pushing on the second and third through new PPP frameworks, InfraCorp’s mobilisation of capital, and performance compacts for ministries. The fourth—transparent monitoring—remains underdeveloped; yet without it, Nigeria risks repeating the cycle of plans that sound impressive but fail in practice.
Sceptics ask whether there is any point in drafting plans that extend beyond the political life of their authors. In a country where electoral cycles are four years, revenues are volatile, and political discontinuity is common, long-term planning can appear futile. Yet to dismiss medium-term frameworks would be to compound Nigeria’s volatility. The MTNDP’s most valuable contribution has been to provide the scaffolding for continuity. It linked budgets and the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework to a broader long-run vision. It offered investors and state governments a reference point beyond electoral rhetoric. Most importantly, it allowed the incoming Tinubu administration to adapt priorities rather than discard them entirely, thereby preserving coherence across political cycles.
Still, the MTNDP’s shortcomings highlight just how future plans must be redesigned. Forecasts must be conservative, not aspirational, with buffers for oil price swings and security shocks. Structural reforms in power, taxation, and competition policy should be legislated, not left to administrative discretion, so that reversals carry explicit political costs. States and local governments, which deliver most social services, must be treated as co-owners of national plans, incentivised with results-based financing and matching grants. Transparency must become routine, with project pipelines published and tracked quarterly. And cushioning for the poor must be credible, transparent, and time-bound—otherwise the politics of hardship will undermine the economics of reform.
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For Nigeria’s business community, the real question is whether a durable policy spine is finally taking shape. The signs are encouraging: macro stabilisation is underway, the oil sector is regaining investor confidence, the infrastructure pipeline is thickening, and the presidency has begun tying ministries to performance. At the same time, headwinds remain formidable: high inflation, insecurity, weak administrative capacity, and fragile household incomes. The opportunities lie in sectors where reform and demand intersect—distributed power, agribusiness value chains, logistics and port services, digital infrastructure, and value-added processing. For investors, the next decade may finally offer an environment where medium-term plans provide real signals rather than empty promises.
So, was the MTNDP 2021–2025 worth the effort? Yes, if judged as institutional infrastructure rather than a miracle blueprint. It offered continuity across administrations, provided justification for difficult reforms, and created a shared vocabulary around diversification, infrastructure, and human capital. However, it failed on the grandest promises—poverty reduction and mass job creation—because reforms take time, fiscal space was limited, and execution was weak. But the proof of its worth is precisely that its framework has survived political transition and shaped the agenda of its successor.
Nigeria does not need a new economic doctrine every four years. It needs fewer U-turns, longer horizons, and disciplined execution. The MTNDP nudged the country in that direction. The task for the Tinubu administration is to lock in that discipline, hardwire reforms into laws and institutions, and sustain the momentum long enough for Nigerians to experience the gains not as mere policy documents, but as tangible improvements in daily life.
Dr Hani Okoroafor is a global informatics expert advising corporate boards across Europe, Africa, North America, and the Middle East. He serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of BusinessDay. Reactions are welcome at [email protected].
