Nigeria's federal government has begun gathering input to validate a draft National Regional Development Plan covering the years 2026 to 2030, a framework intended to promote inclusivity in how the country grows. The work is being coordinated through the Ministry of Regional Development, which is collecting data from stakeholders before the plan is finalised. The aim, officials say, is to ensure that development reaches every part of the country rather than being concentrated in a few areas.
The initiative was disclosed by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Dr. Mary Adajo Obwe, in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, during a regional technical validation workshop. The session was held with the support of the United Nations Development Programme, alongside the North East Development Commission and the Borno State Government, bringing together the actors responsible for shaping and implementing the policy on the ground.
Organisers framed the workshop as a genuinely consultative exercise rather than the unveiling of a fixed plan. Officials stressed that they had not come with a finished document, but had come with what they described as an open source of clarity to gather inputs from participants. Those inputs, they said, would have to be captured in a strategic roadmap that sets out how the policy will be operationalised across the regions.
The broader purpose, according to those involved, is to rethink the way development is planned, coordinated, financed and delivered throughout Nigeria. The event was presented as a statement of the country's determination to move away from a fragmented approach toward a more grounded form of regional transformation. In that sense, the workshop was cast as both timely and preliminary, a first step in aligning policy with the realities of different regions.
The discussion also laid bare the depth of the challenge facing the Northeast in particular. The Managing Director of the North East Development Commission, Mohamed Alkali, highlighted the progress the Commission has made over the past seven years, while pointing to figures that underline how far behind the region remains. He noted that output per person in the area stands at around 1,200 US dollars, a level far below the national figure.
Alkali argued that such numbers are more than a statistical gap. He said the policy rightly classifies the Northeast as a region carrying the weight of fragility and post-conflict reconstruction, and stressed that these are not abstract statistics but the daily realities of the communities the Commission was established to serve. For officials, that framing is meant to ensure the new plan responds directly to the needs of areas still recovering from years of instability.