Adapting multi-criteria planning to the Nigerian economy

Techniques of development planning involve physical and financial aspects. Financial planning refers to the allocation of monetary resources; in Nigeria the previous development plans and budgets, which had been based on the incremental approach, contained various shortcomings, resulting in the deliberate inflation of estimated expenditure, and consequently it has been associated with retarded growth and conflicts between ministries. In addition, the approach does not adequately relate national objectives to their priorities. Conventional mathematical programming models are unable to allocate resources effectively in a conflicting environment. This paper proposes a goal programming model for allocating a country’s scarce resources among competing sectors during a planned period. The goal programming model is shown to be adequate for allocating resources under the conflicting conditions of national planning. The model can help to determine all the priorities for the goals.