This year, Nigeria marks 20 years of unbroken democratic rule, the longest in its history. This is a big deal, particularly as military rule, which Nigeria was under for a large part of its history, does not ordinarily lend itself to accountability and due process. Democracy provides an opportunity to ensure that government focuses on what citizens want. After all, free and fair elections are the ultimate accountability mechanism in a democracy. It gives citizens the opportunity to reject the leaders that they do not want and get others that they want, an opportunity that citizens are denied under military dictatorships.
However, although accountability and due process are important aspects of governance, they are not the only ones. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation defines Governance as “The provision of political, social and economic goods that citizens have a right to expect and that a state has the responsibility to deliver.” Similarly, Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution prioritises the welfare and security of citizens as the primary purpose of government. Governance is generally measured against three main criteria: how government delivers public goods to its citizens; the checks and balances through which government is held accountable for its actions; and the ability of citizens to participate in the process of governance. Quite often, particularly in a ‘young’ democracy with a high incidence of corruption, a lot of the focus is on the second measure: accountability and checks and balances. Apart from physical infrastructure, specifically roads, citizens and civil society organisations do not focus sufficiently on the first measure: how government delivers public goods like education, healthcare, sanitation or policing. The third measure, the ability of citizens to participate in the process of governance is often narrowly defined to mean the right to seek elective office, rather than the wider right to have a say in the way that society is governed.
Over the last 20 years, Nigeria has made some progress on all three fronts but that progress can often appear reluctant, half-hearted and ambivalent. In terms of how public goods are delivered, we undertook much-needed pension reforms, particularly as many people were retiring without any guarantee that they would actually ever receive a pension. We also undertook a process of privatisation which relieved government of the burden of spending huge amounts of money on moribund and unproductive state-owned enterprises. We strengthened our tax administration system, put in place a due process and public procurement regime, embarked on limited reform of the civil service, and reformed some previously-underperforming organisations and created vibrant new organisations. Recently, we have put in place an ease-of-doing-business regime that is beginning to change how some public goods are delivered. For instance, it is becoming easier to register companies, obtain tax clearance certificates and clear goods at the ports. The visa-on-arrival regime also makes it easier for businesspersons to come into Nigeria. However, the process of obtaining a Nigerian passport is still tortuous and the passenger experience at our international airports remains variable.
Our civil service remains weak. Although a Federal Civil Service Strategy is in place, its effectiveness is constrained by the non-adoption of the National Strategy for Public Service Reforms. Many of the issues bedevilling the civil service, including appointment, promotion, discipline and pay, are outside the control of the Head of the Civil Service. There is still no link between government priorities and the job descriptions of individual civil servants, so people are not clear what they are coming to work to do on a Monday morning. Without focusing on the external levers that affect the civil service, the effects of any civil service reform efforts will be limited.
We have made some process in revamping our transportation system. Trains are beginning to run again, we are expanding the use of our inland waterways, airports are being remodelled and upgraded and major roads are being built. However, we have focused more on building roads than on building people. Our education system has not seen much beneficial reforms and our healthcare system is heavily underwhelming. Water provision is poor and sanitation is one of the worst in the world. Insecurity remains a major source of worry for many citizens and it is clear that major reforms are required in the security sector. Despite many attempts at reform, very many promises and the expenditure of trillions of Naira, Nigerians still do not have adequate and stable electricity.
In terms of checks and balances through which government can be held accountable for its actions, we embarked on a deep process of public financial management reforms. These include making the budget publicly available, putting in place a national chart of accounts, introducing a Government Integrated Financial Information System, computerising the government payroll, and publishing allocations to states and local governments. Our civil society organisations have grown in competence and confidence and are now able to ask searching questions on how public money is expended. We also started the process of reforming the justice sector to enable it to fulfil its proper role as an independent arm of government. On the other hand, until recently when it passed an Audit Act, the National Assembly had not taken seriously the role of audit as a tool of accountability. Reports from NEITI are not taken seriously and the National Assembly does not itself often comply with the Freedom of Information Act that it passed in 2011. This means that, save for the annual ritual of budget defences, the National Assembly has largely left its key role of external accountability to civil society organisations.
On the third measure relating to the ability of citizens to participate in the process of governance, a number of electoral reforms have been undertaken. Significantly the “Not too young to run” Act was put in place in 2018, which reduced the age at which people could seek elective office. Nigeria also joined the Open Government Partnership in 2016, a key element of which is the co-creation, with civil society, of a national action plan for reforms. In this way, civil society organisations can participate directly in the process of governance by helping to design reforms, track implementation and report progress against agreed actions. Through the commendable efforts at the National Bureau of Statistics, people now have access to important and credible national statistics. Procurement reforms mean that citizens should be able to bid for government contracts through an open, competitive process. The planned introduction of electronic procurement and ‘Open Contracting’ will make this easier. A whistleblowing policy is in place and has recorded some success. However, citizens still do not get sufficient opportunities to contribute to such governance processes as development planning, budget development by ministries, departments and agencies, or the setting of government’s spending priorities.
In some cases where we were seeing steady improvements, there have been setbacks. For instance, after years of improving elections, electoral violence is back with us. The effectiveness of some organisations that were doing well has greatly waned and some important reform gains lost. As an example, the zest that followed the reforms in the administration of the Federal Capital Territory a few years ago seems to have fizzled out. The SERVICOM regime of a few years ago is still struggling to regain its relevance after years of virtual inactivity. It seems that the Audit Bill, which was eventually passed by the National Assembly after years of effort, would have to start from scratch again, since it was not assented to by the President before the 8th National Assembly was dissolved. Anticorruption efforts have become routine in nature, with a focus on catching offenders, rather than being founded on research about corruption trends and putting in place preventative measures supported by technology. Agency reform seems to have been completely abandoned, along with the Oronsaye Report. Every new day, a new agency seems to be created without any ever being abolished, steadily increasing the cost of governance. Agenc report is important. Public perception about government effectiveness is often based on how agencies and parastatals perform, rather than on how ministries perform. If citizens get a good service from a government hospital or the police, they will say that the government is doing well. They care less about the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Interior. Many people in government miss this point.
Overall, important progress has been made but significant challenges remain. The biggest gap, for me, is the lack of a sense of a ‘movement’: the feeling among the populace that something good is happening. The feeling that the reform is greater than the sum of its parts and is on an upward trajectory heading in clear direction. That sense of ‘movement’ needs to come from the Federal Executive Council. While individual reformers within government can make efforts within their mandate areas, the interconnectedness of government often means that those efforts are constantly undermined by other parts of the same government. The Federal Executive Council needs to create and sustain the feeling in the minds of Nigerians that something is changing, and that it is changing for the better. Sporadic, ad-hoc, ambivalent, uncoordinated efforts will not do it. It requires a whole-of-government movement led personally by the President himself.
*Dr Joe Abah is a development practitioner and the immediate past Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms.