THE CENTRALITY OF HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT TO THE ATTAINMENT OF NIGERIA’S VISION 202020 DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

                                                                                            ABSTRACT 

This article examined the centrality of human capital development as a way of achieving Nigeria’s vision 202020 development program. The paper argued that human beings are the greatest wealth and resources of a nation, which will coordinate all other resources to achieve development, therefore any country, which fails to lay the foundation of its development on its human resources, will also fail to achieve development. The author described human capital development as the totality of efforts aimed at developing and grooming of human beings so as to present them fit and qualified to be productive to themselves, in particular, and the society, in general.  The study also looked at the concept of vision 202020, which is aimed at making Nigeria one of the 20 largest economies in the world by the year 2020.

It established that Nigeria state has not demonstrated serious commitment to human capital development since its independence in 1960. Indeed, the state has consistently under-funded education, research, and health care. Globally, Nigeria is ranked 158 out of 182 countries assessed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 2007 in the area of human development index. The paper argued that it was serious commitment to human capital development that brought the East Asian countries (popularly called the “Asian Tigers”), to the limelight in world development profiling. Consequently, the researcher recommended, among other things, that the Nigerian state should embark on proper manpower planning, drastically increase budgetary allocations to education and health care, and ensure that funds that are allocated and released must produce intended results. 

Keywords:    Human capital development,      vision 202020,      national development,      socio-economic development, commitment, lip-services, centrality.

INTRODUCTION

Successive administrations in Nigeria, since independence, have designed and conceptualized various development programs to make the country one of the developed countries of the world. The development programs in the country include First National Development plan (1962-1968), Second National Development plan (1970-1974), Third National Development plan (1975-1980), and other policy statements, such as education for all, health for all, and housing for all by the year 2000, vision 2010, National Economic Empowerment, and Development strategy (NEEDS), and the seven point agenda of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. However, all of these efforts have not yielded the desired development for the country. Hence the shifting of the period within which the country is expected to achieve substantial development from 2010 to 2020, with the proposal of a new development program tagged “Vision 202020”. The Vision 202020 program is intended to achieve a level of development that would make Nigeria one the twenty most developed nations of the world. This paper will argue that to be one of the twenty largest economies in the world, Nigeria must make human capital development its priority.  

Related Posts: