TRENDS IN DEVELOPMENT PLANNING IN NIGERIA: 1962 TO 2012

Development planning in Nigeria has suffered from lack of coordination and harmonization of programmes/policies both within the tenure of an administration and those succeeding it. In addition, experience show that this critical task which ought to draw input from critical sectors and be a bottom-up process operates in the reverse. These explain the very poor nature of plan articulation which also negatively affects implementation. The paper is subdivided into: Abstract; Introduction; Conceptual Discourse on Development Planning; History and Trend in Development Planning in Nigeria; Reasons for Development Planning failures in Nigeria; Conclusion and Recommendations. It concludes that the bad state of social and physical infrastructure, massive unemployment, widespread poverty and insecurity of lives among others, which successive development plans were targeted at, point to the dismal performance of development. planning initiatives in Nigeria. The paper recommends a multi-sector approach to planning and implementation of public sector programmes, and harmonization of planning initiatives in order to reduce the problems associated with plan implementation.