ABOUT ME

Dr Joe Abah is an internationally recognised expert in governance and institutional reforms, political economy analysis and change management. Between 2013 and 2017, he was the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms in the Nigerian Presidency. Under his leadership, he emphasised the need for public service reforms to focus on tangible improvements in the lives of citizens, not just administrative reforms.

Before his appointment as Director General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms in 2013, Dr Abah led several programmes for the UK Department for International Development (DFID) in Nigeria. These included the setting up of the Enugu State Waste Management Authority (ESWAMA), the Enugu SME Centre, the privatisation of waste management in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory, the reform of the Federal Capital Territory Water Board, and the creation of the Abuja Enterprise Agency that has empowered more than 73,000 Nigerians to start businesses, 90% of which are youth. He also supported the professionalisation of the Nigeria Governors Forum Secretariat and the development of the State Peer Review Mechanism, believed to be the first subnational peer review process in the world. Prior to returning to Nigeria from the United Kingdom in 2003, he was at the forefront of governance reforms in the UK, including driving public service reforms from the Prime Minister’s Office of Public Service Reforms in the UK Cabinet Office.

As Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms in Nigeria, he pioneered the thinking around focusing the national identity management system on the National Insurance Number (NIN), rather than having Nigerians wait for years for a National Identity Card which is expensive to produce. This has seen the enrolment database of the National Identify Management Commission (NIMC) database increase from 7 million records in 2015 to 100 million records in 2023. His work also led to improvements in the processing of drivers’ licences, international passports and tax clearance certificates, among others, and he led the institutional reform of dozens of agencies and parastatals.

Even out of government, Dr Abah continues to contribute to governance improvements in Nigeria and around the world. He was on the Presidential Steering Committee on Digital Identification and contributed to the development of Nigeria’s National Development Plan 2021-2025. He supports governance improvements in many Nigerian states, including his home state of Ebonyi where his contribution to public financial management reforms helped the state to achieve more than $60 million in performance-related grants from the World Bank and the Federal Ministry of Finance.

Dr Abah’s expertise remains in demand across the world. In November 2022, he joined the faculty of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University to train the new government of Brazil that took office in January 2023. He was also the 2023 Keynote Speaker at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) ‘Africa Innovate Conference’ in April 2023, following in the footsteps of President Ameenah Fakim of Mauritius and Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of the World Trade Organisation. In 2024, he was appointed a Visiting Fellow of Practice by Oxford University where he will be supporting cutting-edge research on improving government outcomes around the world.

Dr Abah is a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, and a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales. He holds a Ph.D. in Governance and Public Policy Analysis from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, where he currently serves as a Visiting Lecturer. He also has certificates from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and from the London Business School.

Dr Abah is currently Country Director of DAI Global, an international development company that works with a wide range of clients, including national and local governments, bilateral and multilateral donors, private corporations, and philanthropies in more than 100 countries.