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From 2003, a technocratic economic team implemented economic initiatives covering; (1) budgetary and fiscal process; (2) procurement and ''due process''; (3) pensions; (4) banking; (5) insurance sector consolidation; (6) power sector legislation; (7) ports concessioning; (8) downstream petroleum sector deregulation and auctioning of public assets, including global system for mobile phone communications (GSM) licenses; and (9) oil blocks and state-owned enterprises. These initiatives were in addition to the success in the telecommunications sector during President Obasanjo''s first term in 1999 to 2003. There were other initiatives such as: tax reform, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a new focus on the solid minerals sector and institutionalising fiscal prudence and due process through the fiscal responsibility and procurement commission bills. These measures obviously derive from a philosophical adherence to a market-oriented approach, and are driven by the conviction that a deregulated, liberal, free enterprise model based on private capital and competition, offers the best response to the poor economic conditions in which Nigeria finds itself. The ''manifesto'' for this reform agenda is the national economic empowerment and development strategy (NEEDS) document and the context is the desire to take Nigeria towards the achievement of the millennium development goals (MDG) and reduction of poverty. The note argues that having to some extent created a basic structural framework for economic reform, the Nigerian government must now increase its attention to the social sector: (1) education; (2) health; (3) unemployment; (4) rural infrastructure; and (5) urban squalor - otherwise, the ultimate goal of poverty reduction will not be achieved.