The Young Men’s Christian Association of Lagos (YMCA) has blamed the country’s poor national development plan on a complacent and inactive citizenship.

The group made this known in Ikorodu at opening ceremony of its annual week with the theme: Active Citizenship And National Development: Are You Ready For The Change.
   
Guest speaker, Kehinde Adesoye Abiola, who is also the General Secretary of the Association, stated in his paper that national development was the process of reconstruction and development in various dimensions and development of individuals in a country.

He said: “It is a holistic approach that includes full growth and expansion of our industries, agriculture, education, electricity, petroleum development, application of science and technology in production and all other sectors of the economy. It is all round and balanced development of different aspect facets of the nation.”

He pointed out that Nigeria had implemented several development plans, which included the colonial development plan of 1958–62 and the post-independent development plan of 1962– 68, which focused on health, education and employment.

Abiola noted that the independent plans failed because 50 per cent of the resources planned for their execution were expected from external sources, while only 14 per cent was realised.
  
He explained that the second national development plan of 1970–74 focused on agriculture, industry, water supply, transportation, manpower, defense, electricity, communication and provision of social services.
   
He further explained that while the third national development plan of 1975– 80 focused on rural development and agriculture, which midwifed the Olusegun Obasanjo’s Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) programme, while the fourth national development plan of 1981–85 focused on improvement in income and living condition, necessitated by the Green Revolution.