Can Nigeria's Problems be Solved in Four Years?

Can Nigeria's problems be solved in four years?

This is a question Nigerians have asked repeatedly during election seasons, when political promises are often packaged as solutions to everything that is wrong with the country. Perhaps the better question is not whether Nigeria can be completely fixed in four years, but whether a government can make foundational changes in four years that another administration can build upon.

What Singapore and South Korea Teach Us

Look at Singapore. When Lee Kuan Yew became Prime Minister in 1959, Singapore faced high unemployment, poor housing, labour unrest and a struggling economy. The government responded with rapid industrialisation, job creation, housing and institutional reforms. Within eleven years of coming to power, Singapore had achieved near full employment and manufacturing had become a major driver of growth.

Lee did not transform Singapore in four years. He served as Prime Minister for 31 years, from 1959 to 1990. But he had his bearings right in the initial years. Singapore's transformation was therefore not a four-year project. It was a sustained process in which early governments laid foundations that subsequent governments continued to build upon.

South Korea tells a similar story. In the early 1960s, it was a poor, largely agricultural country. The government adopted an export-oriented development strategy, invested in infrastructure and education, and deliberately built its industrial capacity. Between 1962 and 1994, real GDP growth averaged about 10 percent annually, according to the World Bank.

Again, the transformation did not happen in one administration. It happened because policies were sustained long enough to produce structural change.

Lessons from Rwanda and Botswana

Then there is Rwanda. Between 2000 and 2019, its economy grew by an average of 7.2 percent annually, while poverty fell substantially and access to healthcare improved. Rwanda's experience shows that significant progress can happen within a relatively short period, but even that progress unfolded over nearly two decades, not four years.

Botswana offers another useful lesson. From independence in 1966 to the early 2000s, its economy grew at more than 7 percent annually. Yet its later dependence on diamonds exposed the limits of relying on one successful economic model.

So perhaps Nigeria's problem is not that four years is too short. The problem may be that we expect four years to produce the results of forty years without demanding the foundations required to get there, or without continuously building on the foundations already established.

What Four Years Can and Cannot Do

Four years can be enough to initiate improvement in electricity supply, repair critical infrastructure, reform institutions, strengthen public systems, expand opportunities and establish policies that create jobs and investment. It can also be enough to demonstrate whether a government actually has a workable direction.

What four years cannot reasonably guarantee is the complete resolution of problems that have accumulated over decades.

Nigeria's insecurity, education challenges, unemployment, infrastructure deficit, weak institutions and economic difficulties are not isolated problems that can be permanently eliminated by a single administration. They are interconnected problems that require continuity.

Rethinking How We Measure Progress

Perhaps this is where our expectations need to change. We should not measure every government only by whether it has "solved Nigeria." We should ask what it inherited, what it changed, what became measurably better, what institutions it strengthened, and whether the next government inherited a stronger foundation or another collection of unattempted promises.

Singapore did not become Singapore in four years. South Korea did not become South Korea in four years. Rwanda's progress did not happen in four years either. But all of them demonstrate something important: a country can look noticeably different after four years if its government knows what it is trying to change and actually builds systems that can outlive its tenure.

So, can Nigeria's problems be solved in four years?

Probably not.

But can Nigeria be significantly better in four years?

That is a different question. And perhaps that is the question we should have been asking all along.