Professionals under the aegis of the Institute of Planning, Nigeria (IPN) have said that going forward, the new world order will shape the way business and governance will be done.
Richard Mayungbe, who made this observation as a keynote speaker at a two-day conference hosted by IPN in Lagos recently, highlighted how internet and data sciences will shape stakeholder interactions in future.
He added that the impact of Covid-19 in this complex situation has created a tough position in achieving seamless service delivery, customer satisfaction and, by extension, adequate revenue for reward and recognition in most businesses.
The conference with the theme, ‘Nigeria’s post-pandemic Economy and Business Development: The Way Forward for Planners at National and Sub-national levels’, also drew the attention of the government to some pressing political and socio-economic issues, and made recommendations.
McCarthy Ijiebor, president of the institute, stressed the need for planners at national and sub-national levels of to see their vocation as being pivotal to the success of Nigeria’s programme.
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He commended some state and local government institutions that have deployed strategic planning tools and human resources to define the desired future and have begun implementing workable plans while stressing that the country needed more at the national level.
In a communiqué issued at the end of the conference, the Institute stated that because disasters were part of human endeavour, it was expected of humans to put in place policies and preventive actions to absorb whatever shock any break-out may pose.
They stated that the government needed to be up and doing in formulating policies and implementing them, stressing that the approach to be adopted should be bottom-up, where major policy inputs emanate from the populace whom the intending policies were meant to serve.
“Just like what is obtainable in the West where examples are hurriedly cited, policymakers should learn to use policy instruments like referendum, opinion polls etc. which reflect the government’s commitment to developing ‘homegrown’ solutions.
“Streamlining of agencies should continue to be non-negotiable as is observed by the current administration. This will help to reduce the burden on our yearly recurrent budget and channel resources to other sectors where they are more useful.”
They advised that the government should discontinue the habit of responding to issues in the polity by hurriedly launching parallel agencies that had hitherto been in existence.
Citing the case of the EFCC and ICPC, they said that both agencies had overlapping functions which, in some cases, resulted in intra-agency friction, economic and manpower wastage, and duplication of efforts to mention a few.
