The Second National Development Plan (1970–74) was launched by the Gowon administration in November 1970, eight months after the formal end of the Nigerian Civil War. The headline commitment was ₦3.0 billion (then roughly $4.6 billion at the official rate of ₦1 = $1.52), of which ₦1.6 billion was federal capital expenditure, ₦0.78 billion was the twelve states' capital programmes, and ₦0.62 billion was projected private-sector investment.
The plan organised expenditure under the official mantra of Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation. The largest single allocation was to transport (roads, railways, ports and the new airports at Kano and Lagos) at ₦613 million, followed by manufacturing and crafts (₦423m, including the cement, steel, sugar and pulp-and-paper projects that became the public-enterprise spine of the 1970s economy), agriculture (₦389m, with substantial sums for the river-basin development authorities), and education (₦284m, financing the Universal Primary Education preparation that launched in 1976).
The plan was massively over-funded almost from launch. The 1973 OPEC oil-price quadrupling (Bonny Light moved from $3.56/bbl in 1972 to $14.69/bbl in January 1974) gave the Federation oil revenue of ₦3.7 billion in 1974 alone — larger than the entire four-year plan envelope. The successor Third National Development Plan (1975–80) ballooned to ₦30 billion, ten times the size of the Second, locking the federal budget into the procurement, contracting and import patterns that the Cement Armada (1975), FESTAC (1977) and the indigenisation rounds (1972, 1977) crystallised.