Politics as service delivery

It is in the nature of scholarly thought that you are never sure of what you are thinking until you are forced by time constraint to accept the extant version of your thought to be what it is. Thus, I was not sure of the title of this address until about 2 am yesterday when it struck me that its focus is the way the concept of politics affects service delivery. So, in the last minute, I changed its title from “Governance as Service Delivery” to “Politics as Service Delivery.” This title, of course, recognises other arenas of politics, to be specific, non-state arenas such as the university and private sector as sites or agents of service delivery. My concept of politics as service delivery applies, then, to non-state arenas of politics in the thought process of this address.

Having partially settled the issue of title, I have to wrestle with the high risk of the audacity of standing before the fathers of political science discipline in Nigeria in the likes of Emeritus Professor ‘Bayo Adekanye, Emeritus Professor ‘Bunmi Ayoade, Emeritus Professor Adele Jinadu, Professor (Ambassador) Tunde Adeniran and my other former teachers and eminent professors in the audience to engage in the conceptual discourse of politics, a core concept of our discipline. I derive encouragement from knowing that they would never have wished for a still born child if those who introduced them to the discipline did not.

Titles are in varying degrees, representations of the idea. Some accurately represent while others misrepresent the idea. “Politics as Service Delivery,” which I have chosen as the title of this address, least represents its idea as will be clearer soon. This title, then, is one of the possible titles or representations of the idea this address is about. Others are “Politics Ought to be Service Delivery” and “Politics is Service Delivery.” Although the title, “Politics is Service Delivery” captures the idea of this address as the raison d’etre or one of the most important reasons for having a government, the Nigerian context of its discourse or analysis makes it, to say the least, a misleading title based on what we know about the feelings of the youth from power supply, to road development and maintenance evident from the japa undertaking that reached an upsurge in recent times.

Although the title, “Politics Ought to be Service Delivery” also accurately captures the idea of this address, it was not chosen because I want to momentarily play along the sensibilities of the science in our discipline, Political Science, to avoid outright prescription at the outset though I do not believe in purposeless science of politics – one that theorises and explains without the purpose of improving the condition of people. I settled for the title, “Politics as Service Delivery” even though it inaccurately represents the idea of this address precisely because it allows me to problematise rather than prescribe the role of the concept of politics in service delivery.

Concepts are often thought of as mere meanings and seldom, if at all, thought of as ideas. I doubt all academics for whom concepts are buzz words, especially political scientists who believe that a good science of politics does not permit it to have a value-borne purpose, see concepts as ideas that drive action. But consciously or unconsciously, concepts are ideas in terms of action. To illustrate, our concept of our environment is more than meaning in terms of our idea of our environment.

It reveals what we do and will fail to do about our environment. To be clear, it will reveal whether we will leave our environment dirty/hideous or nurture it for ourselves and for our offspring born and unborn. Ideas that bother and do not bother about our environment have different courses of action and consequences for our environment and ourselves (see Isumonah 2023).

The action content of concepts is evident from the colonisation of Africa as well as the struggle for self-determination by Africans. In 1656, Geographer Royal France claimed that Africa is the southern part of Europe. Specifically, the French saw Algeria as an extension of France. A variant of this European concept of Africa came to be Africa is a geographical fiction. In a symposium in 1960, Melville Herskovits unambiguously referred to Africa as a geographical fiction.

To make Africa real would then mean Africa needed to be adorned with Europe’s image. This was the driver of mercantilist and capitalist invasion of Africa. So, various European powers embarked on annexation, colonisation, domination, and exploitation of various parts of Africa in the late 18th to early 19th Centuries. On the other hand, African nationalist leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania conceived Africa as a fact based on autochthonous identity. This counter European concept of Africa was the motivation for the demand for self-determination and struggle for independence of Africans from European powers. So, concepts are more than definitions. They are action drivers of individuals, groups and nations.

Let us now walk from the present back to the past history of conceptual development to see whether political scientists influenced the world for the better with prevailing and dominant concepts of politics. In this backwards tour of history of the development of the concept of politics, our background check will be the potential of each dominant concept for addressing the issues that predispose society to development on the one hand and to underdevelopment or conflict and violence, even disintegration on the other.

A related background check will be the potential of the concept to lead to efficient service delivery. As Norton E. Long (1991:672) argues, “evaluation of knowledge claims will ultimately rest with reference to their demonstrable contribution to the maintenance or improvement of the human condition.”
To be continued tomorrow.
Isumonah, Ph.D., is of the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. He delivered this Address at the 3rd Conference of the Nigerian Political Science Association, Southwest Zone held recently. He can be reached via: [email protected]