L-R: Wale Edun, Hon. Minister of Finance; Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, Chairman, Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation; Ofovwe Aig-Imoukhuede Executive Vice-Chair, Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation; Mrs. Didi Esther Walson-Jack, Incoming HOS; Sen. Abubakar A. Bagudu, Hon. Minister. Budget and Economic Planning; Dr. Bosun Tijani, Hon. Minister, Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy

Nigeria over the years has continued to grapple with institutional challenges, like insecurity, interagency rivalry, battered international image, and increasing poverty, which many have said to be the fruits of failed reforms in the country.

Even though there have been several reforms developed by the Nigerian leaders since independence, the country still lacks some basic deliverables of well-formulated and implemented reforms. Which Section 2 of the 1999 Constitution mandates?

According to Section 2(16)(2) of the constitution, the state is mandated to direct its policy towards ensuring the promotion of a planned and balanced economic development and that the material resources of the nation are harnessed and distributed as best as possible to serve the common good.

It also states that suitable and adequate shelter, suitable and adequate food, reasonable national minimum living wage, old age care and pensions, unemployment, sick benefits, and welfare of the disabled are provided for all citizens.

However, several years later, the government is yet to deliver on most provisions of the constitution, and this has left most citizens impoverished. According to the 2023/2024 Human Development Index report, Nigeria recorded a 22 percent increase in 19 years but remains low at 0.548, categorising the country as having low human development.

The report emphasises Nigeria’s significant loss in HDI due to inequality; gender disparities persist, with a notable gap between male and female HDI values and a Gender Inequality Index (GII) ranking placing Nigeria poorly. Furthermore, Nigeria’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) indicates that 33 percent were multidimensionally poor in 2021.

“The greatest bane of any reform is discontinuity; any break in continuity of reforms often leads to the end of such reform,” Olusegun Obasanjo, a former President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, said at the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation workshop.

Speaking at the workshop themed ‘Why Many Reforms Fail in Nigeria and What We Can Do About It’, the former president blamed discontinuity and lack of training for public officials, among others, for the continued failure of reforms in the country, adding that for a reform to deliver on expectations, it must be accepted and owned by individuals including the initiator, the owner, the executor, the driver, and the sustainer.

He noted these characters as ‘principal elements’ required to ensure that reforms are sustained and driven from governments to another.

“Now, the best thing for any reform you have will be the initiator, the owner, the executor, the driver, and the sustainer. If possible, the same personalities. If you can get that, you are lucky.

“And one of the things I observed when I had the opportunity to look at the civil service and public service closely is inadequate training. And that was why we built what we built in Badagry. I don’t know how much it’s been made use of when you talk about training,” he said.

For Oby Ezekwesili, a former Nigerian minister of education, politics has distorted the good governance score of a country in a time series that is dependent on the quality of growth, human development index, and income per capita, all of which she said shows the impact of politics on the development of a strong, effective, and efficient public service that delivers basic goods and services.

She noted that whether a country is rich or poor, the role of government is consistently about improving the quality of life of the citizens.

“That’s why the countries with the highest indicators are continually figuring out new ways of doing things. Because that’s the reason for the government being in existence. And so this purpose must be served, and to serve it, we must go a little back in our studies and look at what it is about our politics that trumps everything.

“These reforms, according to her, cut across restructuring of the public service, fiscal governance, decentralisation, enhancing accountability, and legal and corporate regulation frameworks, adding that there are a proliferation of reforms in the country.”

“We need to correct it. And correcting for our politics, especially at a time of interest in seeing the country be governed better, would require candour, and that candour means that we’ve got to ask ourselves, What is the philosophy of any reform that we embark on in this country today? Is there a philosophy governing it? There has to be a philosophy underpinning it; what is the philosophy on which Nigeria stands?”

According to Ezekwesili, driving effective reforms in Nigeria requires a shared value, a national vision, and an agreed identity, especially in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-plural society.

“These are so that you don’t have these identities that sort of contradict when they should actually cohabit. Being a Christian, being a Yoruba, and being a Nigerian should not be irreconcilable; we should be able to have that sense of a common identity on the basis of which we anchor our national vision and our shared values. Then you have pointed the public service in the direction to build.

“You can have the public service being given the burden to make the country great when the superstructures go in the opposite direction. That is an unkind expectation, so we do need to correct this.

In his remarks, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, Chairman of the Aig-Imoukhuede’s foundation, noted that an efficient and motivated public service is critical for governance, production and distribution of public goods and services, formulation and implementation of economic policy, as well as management of public expenditure, adding that without these, no nation stands a chance of attaining even medium levels of human development.

“This is why all nations of the world have a continuing focus on ensuring that their government works. That is the objective of government reform: to create a government workforce of the size and with the skills, incentives, ethos, and accountability needed to provide quality public services and carry out the functions stated in Chapter 2 of the Nigerian Constitution.

“You would agree that there is a correlation between the strength of a country’s public sector and its strength as a nation. As a result, the most important competitive advantage a nation can have in the 21st century is an effective and efficient public service.

“Since our inception in 2016, we have achieved significant milestones in our quest to transform public service delivery. We are building a critical mass of public sector leaders who are equipped with skills, knowledge, and tools to drive and sustain reforms. We aim to ensure that within the next 20 years Nigeria regains its post-independence reputation for having one of the strongest public services in Africa,” he said.

He explained that a key element of the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation theory of change is to ensure that every Nigerian citizen takes ownership of the critical need to reform the public service.

Speaking further, Imoukhuede disclosed that the foundation has continued to provide technical support and funding for the digitalisation efforts of the federal civil service, noting that technology is a critical strategy in transforming public service delivery.

“Through our support, the OHCSF was successfully able to digitise thousands of files, automate over 300 processes, and acquire hundreds of new digital devices. In addition, in collaboration with Microsoft Philanthropies, we are upskilling thousands of workers in the civil service. Another key area of our support for the civil service is the culture change program; to change the mindset of this key constituency, we provide communication training and a culture change campaign,” he said.

Also speaking at the workshop, Folasade Yemi Esan, the head of service of the federation, noted that since the dawn of Nigeria’s fourth republic under the current democratisation, there have been at least 48 documented reforms with the objectives of improving sectoral services and performance.

These reforms, according to her, cut across restructuring of the public service, fiscal governance, decentralisation, enhancing accountability, and legal and corporate regulation frameworks, adding that there are a proliferation of reforms in the country.

According to Esan, poor funding and inadequate budgetary provisions to fund the implementation of reforms, a lack of skilled manpower, and poor communication at the planning and implementation stages, among others, have continued to impede the success of reforms in the country.

“In the world’s most developed countries, challenges that pertain to public sector reform implementation abound. Hence every system has its own inherent challenges, and it is instructive to point out that there are no infallible systems anywhere in the world. Challenges will eventually arise, and so reform is continuous.

“As the challenges arise, there is a need for reform action to deal with those challenges, and there are quite a number of impediments that successful reform programs always face. The first is a lack of an inclusive implementation strategy framework, poor funding, and inadequate budgetary provisions in MDAs to fund the implementation of reforms.

“Some others include the lack of political will and ownership to support reform implementation, resistance to change, poor ICT infrastructure, political interferences in bureaucratic processes, dwindling supports by partners, the lack of legislation to legalise and institutionalise reforms, lack of institutional capacity, and weak governance structures around the reform processes,” she said.

Esan further explained that the government has remained committed to investing in the training of officers across all the ministries geared to ensure that the civil servants now know their role in each ministry.

According to her, the investments in the workforce are targeted at developing an enabling environment and a crop of skilled, motivated, disciplined, and innovative civil servants who can drive reforms effectively to fast-track Nigeria’s socio-economic development.

According to her, the office, in trying to do things differently, has promoted constant monitoring of reform processes. “In addition to several other monitoring processes, the permanent secretaries of each ministry are mandated to submit quarterly reports on implementation of reforms in their ministries, and there are also unscheduled visits to be sure that the report the permanent secretaries are sending in is the correct report.”

She noted that the government has introduced enablers for reforms in MDAs, including culture change, change management, leveraging partnerships, leveraging technology, consequence management, effective communication, and political buy-in.

“I wish to state that with this attempt to maximise the potential of these enablers, the office has been able to develop a number of laudable initiatives, and this includes the development and launch of a culture change handbook that the chairman like democratic foundation talked about.

Esan further explained that the government has remained committed to investing in the training of officers across all the ministries geared to ensure that the civil servants now know their role in each ministry.

According to her, the investments in the workforce are targeted at developing an enabling environment and a crop of skilled, motivated, disciplined, and innovative civil servants who can drive reforms effectively to fast-track Nigeria’s socio-economic development.

According to her, the office, in trying to do things differently, has promoted constant monitoring of reform processes. “In addition to several other monitoring processes, the permanent secretaries of each ministry are mandated to submit quarterly reports on implementation of reforms in their ministries, and there are also unscheduled visits to be sure that the report the permanent secretaries are sending in is the correct report.”

She noted that the government has introduced enablers for reforms in MDAs, including culture change, change management, leveraging partnerships, leveraging technology, consequence management, effective communication, and political buy-in.

“I wish to state that with this attempt to maximise the potential of these enablers, the office has been able to develop a number of laudable initiatives, and this includes the development and launch of a culture change handbook that the chairman like democratic foundation talked about.

The report indicated that declining trust in public officials is one of the significant challenges facing contemporary Nigeria. It also showed that bribery and corruption (including embezzlement), indiscipline, nepotism, lack of incentives, reporting and accountability lapses, and over-centralisation were major disables of performance in the public sector.

Article from Business Day