The year 2020 will be gone in less than 48 hours and barring any last miracle, three critical national targets Nigeria was supposed to meet by the end of this year will be carried over or simply tossed away for new targets.
Meeting these targets has various implications for the Nigerian economy, which is currently in recession and has seen multiple currency devaluations. For instance, providing access to 80 percent adult Nigerians could help the government widen its revenue streams and improve the income per capita of the average Nigerian as well as pull millions out of poverty.
Unfortunately, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has had to move the target.
80% financial inclusion
In 2012, when the number of Nigerians without access to financial services was at 46.3 percent, the CBN pledged it was going to do something about it. Nigeria is among 25 priority countries where almost 70 percent of all financially excluded people in the world live.
Hence, the apex bank set a 2020 deadline in the National Financial Inclusion Strategy document. The two overall financial inclusion targets were 80 percent overall financial inclusion and 70 percent formal financial inclusion by 2020.
The CBN target aligns with the World Bank’s push for global financial inclusions. In 2011, World Bank projected that while 1.2 billion people have opened a financial account since 2011, there were still an estimated 1.7 billion adults worldwide (or 31% adults) who did not have a basic transaction account. While in 2017, it set a target of reaching 738 million new account holders as part of measures to include 1 billion people.
By enforcing different measures, the CBN and its partners were able to reduce the number of financially excluded adults to 36.8 percent in 2019, less than 10 percent seven years after setting its target.
However, that same year the central bank revised its strategy by increasing the target to 94 percent by 2024. It still maintained that achieving the 80 percent target in 2020 was still possible as it slashed banks’ online charges in January 2020 as part of measures to incentivise adoption. In February, the Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access (EFInA) projected that CBN is unlikely to meet the 80 percent target in 2020, as its data show that Nigeria’s exclusion gap was widening.
Not long after EFInA’s projection, the COVID-19 broke-out across the world forcing Nigeria and countries around the world to shut down in order to contain it. The shutdown affected banking as the CBN ordered skeletal services and the use of online payment channels throughout the period. With an inadequate payment infrastructure driving Nigeria’s payment industry, many Nigerians were practically shut out of the financial system. EFInA noted during the pandemic that more Nigerians who had access before were at risk of becoming excluded due to the pandemic.
The number of financially excluded adults stands at about 40 percent currently, an indication that the country has retrogressed in its push for inclusion. But the 80 percent financial inclusion won’t be the only target that failed to click in 2020.
$4000 income per capita through Vision 2020
Vision 2020 is arguably Nigeria’s most ambitious project yet compared to financial inclusion that will likely be heading to the wastebasket because the government is in the process of creating a replacement.
The Vision was first put forward by the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration and was finally born in September 2009, as a 10-year development plan to place Nigeria in the top 20 global economies in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2020. To achieve that, Nigeria will have to meet a target of no less than $900 billion in GDP and a per capita income of no less than $4000 per annum. To attain that milestone, the economy would have to grow at an average of 13.8 percent during the vision period.
Unfortunately, the country’s GDP has failed to meet this target, only managing to grow at an average rate of less than 2 percent in the period leading up to 2020. The recession in 2020 means that the growth rate will dip further. The income per capita as of 2019 amounted to an estimated $2,229, which is way off from the target of $4000. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 and the economic headwinds Nigeria has been under, financial experts expect the income per capita to shrink further and growth in poverty levels.
Regardless, the government seems not perturbed as it is presently preoccupied with achieving the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) it started in 2019. In September 2020, it also set up a committee to create a 30-year vision known as the Agenda 2050.
27% family planning target
In 2012, the Nigerian government set about addressing the challenges it faced due to rising population. One of the ways it resolved to tackle this was through the growth of family planning. A Nigeria woman gives birth to an average of 5.5 children in her lifetime. Family planning adoption in Nigerian families is very low.
The 2012 target set out to increase contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) by 2 percent on a yearly basis to achieve 36 percent by 2018. This will avert 31,000 maternal deaths and 1.5 million child deaths and save more than 700,000 mothers from injuries or permanent illness due to childbirth. The target was revised in 2017 to achieve 27 percent of modern contraceptive prevalence rate (mCPR) among all women by 2020.
The Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH), following the new target, obtained approval from the Federal Executive Council to renew the Memorandum of Understanding with UNFPA, which will ensure provision of $4 million annually from 2017 to 2020 for procurement of contraceptives for the public sector (an increase from the $3m committed from 2011 to 2014).
The ministry will also commit to ensuring the disbursement of $56 million to the states through the International Development Association (IDA) loans and Global Financing Facility from 2017 to 2020.
Years after the government failed to meet up with the commitments experts now see the attainment of the 27 percent target as a miracle. In 2019 only 25 percent of the committed family planning budget was allocated and released by the Federal Government. This January 2020, the federal allocated fund was N1.2 billion for family planning. The revised budget of August 2020 preserved this figure. However, as at September 25, the government is yet to release any funds. The country’s current contraceptive prevalence rate is presently at 12 percent about 60 percent off from the target.
The current minister of health, Osagie Ohanire, realising the futility of meeting the target in 2020, indicated at a conference on December 11 that the target had now been moved to 2024.
“I must commend UNFPA, USAID and others for their support in the procurement and distribution of family planning baskets as well as funding since 2011. I believe achieving the 27 percent CPR by 2024 is possible with their support,” Ohanire said.
