Human Capital Development: Empowering Nigerians for Global Competitiveness

Dahiru Ali

The growth and development of Third World economies are usually hampered, largely, by the extractive nature of their productive bases. This developmental challenge is quite rife in the African continent.

Take Nigeria as an example, the highest revenue the country ever recorded from the export of crude oil in a year was $35 billion in 2011. As an absolute figure, the amount may seem impressive but it peters out significantly if compared with the country’s productive potential per capita.

 Nigeria is often referenced in very superlative terms as a land brimming with abundant natural and human resources. Nigerians speak of their country with great pride. Of course, they deserve the bragging right. Nigeria is a rich country of very happy people. One in every four black people in the world is a Nigerian, it is claimed. With a GDP of $474.5billion as of 2019, and growing at 3.19 per cent in 2024, Nigeria has the largest economy in Africa.

Unfortunately, the Nigerian economy is dependent on the export of oil and other natural produce for its mainstay. In other words, several decades of pivoting Nigeria’s development effort on finite resources have not led to much. This has led successive federal administrations to promise diversification of the productive base of the Nigerian economy, with most, if not all of them, failing to walk the talk.

The most epochal decision to catalyse the economic potential of the Nigerian economy on a sustainable basis was taken in 2018 when the National Economic Council (NEC) initiated the National Human Capital Development Program to address poverty and ensure sustainable economic growth.

This decision may have arisen from the realisation that the most strategic growth plan is that which targets individuals as economic agents, or the engine room that drives much needed growth and development on a sustainable basis.

According to NEC, the, “HCD Program is an effort to accelerate more and better-streamlined investments in people for equitable and economic growth in Nigeria.” At this juncture, it is timely to address the subject matter of Human Capital Development.

The World Bank Human Development Project defines Human Capital as consisting “of the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate throughout their lives, enabling them to realise their potential as productive members of society.” In other words, HCD is the painstaking exercise of transforming the human population of a society from being a liability to an economic asset that is required for the transformation of such society along a positive growth trajectory.

According to the National Economic Council (NEC) HCD document, “Over the past decade, many of the key metrics relating to Human Capital Development (HCD) in Nigeria have been going in the wrong direction. Nigeria’s performance across all major global HCD indices, including the United Nations Human Capital Index, the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) Expected Human Capital Index, and the World Bank Human Capital Index, is below the global average, as well as below the average for developing economies in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).”

The reasons for this high rate of underdevelopment of the human capital are not far-fetched, taking into account the low level of budgetary provisioning for education, decrepit state of infrastructure, pervasive state of insecurity and global economic headwinds.

A lifeline for our nation

The race towards developing the human capital assets of Nigeria may appear belated but the next best time is NOW! It is the cornerstone from which the building blocks of the Nigerian economy, post-Covid shall be aligned in aid of the realising the overarching objective of establishing a knowledge-based economy.

According to the Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, Chairman of the NEC drives the Human Capital Development project, the “Program is a lifeline for our nation and built on the collective realisation that enough is enough.

Enough of the cycles that have held us back. Enough of the legacies of unplanned high fertility rates and alarming maternal and under-five mortality rates.”

Senator Shettima who spoke while launching the Nasarawa State Human Capital Development in Lafia declared that HCD is a treasure which contains solutions to Nigeria’s human “capital challenges by focusing on education, health, and workforce development.”

Nigeria’s Human Capital Development project is now in the second phase (HCD 2.0) with emphasis on gender and equal opportunities, climate change and sustainability, digital economy and financial inclusion as well as food and nutrition.

With steady progress being made in attaining the set targets in the three thematic areas of health, education and skills, labour force participation and livelihoods, coupled with the avowed determination of the Vice President, as well as the HCD Secretariat towards the attainment of these goals, the presidency is not just walking the talk this time, but resolved to surpass its own targets.

This is self-evident from the Vice President’s declaration that “The unemployment rates, the growing informal sector, and low labor force participation must be reversed. This is the dystopia our Human Capital Development Program is designed to abate, under the mandate of His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR. For so long, at the National Economic Council, we have debated the ideal nation we wish to build and the paths we are to achieve it.”