Nigeria Vision 20: 2020: A Reality or a Mirage

Aims: The objective of this paper is to assess if Nigeria has achieved the path of economic development that will eventually lead to convergence and how long it will take her and at what rate she will be growing to reach her envisioned per capita income of $4,000 in the year 2020.

Research design: Nigeria aims to become one of the top twenty nations in the world in the year 2020. To know if Nigeria will achieve this we examine the per capita income and consumer price index difference between Nigeria and industrialized nations (UK, US, Germany, France and Japan) and newly emerging markets ( Malaysia, South Africa, South Korea, Singapore)

Place and Duration of Study: This study is centred on Nigeria and covers the period between 1960 and 2008.

Methodology: We utilise the Augmented Dick-Fuller test and modified Barro-type time series of cross section.

Results: The results showed that among the developed nations Nigeria can converge with USA and UK. While among the newly industrializing nations convergence is possible only with South Africa, South Korea and Malaysia. Also the results showed that Nigeria can catch-up with Germany, Japan, South Africa and Singapore in the long run. The Barro-type time series model yields evidence of conditional convergence in per capita income. The findings show that for Nigeria to attain the per capita income of $4,000 in the year 2020, she needs to be growing at 19.1% annually. If she is growing at the 2010 growth rate of 8 %, it will take her about 27years to attain the dreamed per capita income.

Conclusion: Nigeria is growing but the rate of growth is lower than it is expected to attain a targeted per capita income in the year 2020. In this regard, more support ought to be given to the manufacturing sector where most growth is expected to come from.