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Introduction
At the start of 1997, just over three years after General Abacha seized power in Nigeria, the country seemed to be deadlocked, trapped in an ever deeper malaise. It was not just economically, but also politically stagnant. For the private sector, Nigeria's oil and gas reserves, and their economic contribution to the nation are significant. Yet the investment climate was increasingly uncertain, the fear in the background that things could fall apart once more. Some move was needed to break this deadlock, to shift the inertia, before political and economic reform could even be contemplated. A concerned private sector of Nigerian and foreign businesses, both large and small, felt it was worth a try. The scenario team of Royal Dutch Shell was approached for help, and I was asked, as a member of this team, to facilitate the process.
What the private sector sought to do in Nigeria's deeply divided society, was to bring together as many groups and individuals in Nigeria as were prepared to even contemplate being in the same room as each other, and to get them talking about a vision for their country and working on scenarios which would illustrate how Nigeria might achieve that vision, or how it might fail. A 'Vision 2010' steering committee was set up to prepare the ground, and the talk-fest that was envisaged, the first of the workshops that were to be held, took place in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, in January 1997.
Vision 2020
Our objective was to move towards the drawing up of a Vision Statement for Nigeria, along the lines of Prime Minister Mahathir's 2020 Vision for Malaysia, and then, in a subsequent workshop, to develop scenarios for Nigeria to 2010 which the various contending groups in the country could agree on. Beginning with drawing up a vision statement was therefore a means of securing 'buy-in' to the process of developing scenarios. To help us, a Malaysian government adviser was on hand to describe the rationale of the Malaysian 2020 Vision statement and the process followed to craft it.
It was recognized that this 'buy-in' would lack validity if it was only secured from a limited range of people and organizations. The aim in Abuja was therefore to get as...