Former Senate President, Ken Nnamani said that vision 20: 2020 is not achievable in Nigeria given the prevailing developmental and leadership lapses in the country.

Mr Nnamani said at best, Nigeria can strive to achieve a great measure of industrialization by the year 2020 but cannot become one of the top twenty economies by that year.

He said although it is progressive and encouraging to set high targets and objectives, hoping to be a top twenty economies in eight years is reckless optimism at best as there are many other countries which are highly industrialized and developed even now.

“By vision 20: 2020, we are saying that we are going to join the top 20 industrialized nations in the year 2020. Some of us are thinking that rather than indulge in what we call reckless optimism, we should work harder to get ourselves together and plan on joining industrialized nations. But the idea that it will be done in the next eight years is not feasible,” the former senate president said.

Vision 20:2020, a brain child of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and adopted by Goodluck Jonathan is aimed at taking Nigerians to the position of the 20th economy in the world by the year 2020.

However, critics have used achievements of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with the target year 2015 as a yardstick to measure the feasibility of vision 20:2020.

They have wondered if in three years Nigeria can achieve all or even at least some of the set MDGs with poverty rate still increasing, people languishing in extreme poverty and hunger and are living far below one dollar per day; children dying of hunger, diseases and infection because of lack of proper healthcare services, the removal of fuel subsidy which is said to improve the standard of the people which has only brought more hardship and struggles for the people.