While the average citizen is being urged to bear with ‘temporary’ hardships political operators are being paid humongous monthly wages (up to Naira 14million for the peoples representatives at the federal level, excluding their several allowances). This is besides the huge perks and double payments for political officers with exorbitant pensions for politicians who have retired from previous political positions. By contrast the masses receive a minimum wage of Naira 70,000 and collect their pensions after retirement with a lot of tears.

Fifth, another lost opportunity of the reforms is to rely on information to fight corruption and also build a better public image for the reforms—in an age of AI (artificial intelligence) and one in which social media facilitated by youths with which this country is greatly blessed. Most countries don’t use formal institutions or policing to fight insurgency or insecurity. What is required is the better processing of information.

The Federal Government could have used such information channels to track down the culprits and also name and shame the corrupt citizens. This would have reduced the gap between the government and citizens on the issue of improving the country’s economy and governance.

Sixthly, the opportunity exists to make this an intergovernmental engagement with the state and local governments as well as non-governmental organisations being mobilised to assist in tackling the social and economic challenges confronting the country. A recent communique from a meeting of all the 36 state governors read like the outcome of a meeting of federal officials. There were no strategic actions or projections that they came up with based on their diversified experiences.

They only commented on the actions of the Federal Government. It would have been an opportunity for them to try and provide to the citizens and even the federal government what they have done to change the economic suffering of their own people or the failures of the palliative programmes initiated by the federal government but implemented at the state levels. What worked and what did not work and what opportunities still exists for future collaboration to improve the lots of the ordinary citizen.

An Intergovernmental Relations Center was introduced as a part of the military transition programme in the 1990s but was cancelled for political reasons but served as a veritable research and consultation structure as exists in other federal systems. This might need revisiting.

Finally, as I would be showing in the next write up it is important to revisit the public service reforms that were undertaken under the military in 1988. The present government has made some positive efforts in, for instance reversing the unfortunate legacies of military rule and this could be an important area that would help to enhance the implementation of reforms. The Nigerian public service was commended globally for her past exceptional performance. For instance the public service enabled our country to fight a 3 -year civil war without the debt and to change from driving on the right to the left with minimal external assistance.

Not to mention the incredible performance of the state civil services in the first republic for instance in introducing free and compulsory education in one of the regions about five decades before the United Nations embraced this as a part of the Millennium Development Plan of 2000 for the rest of the developing world.

We would conclude this note by calling attention of three key facts. First, this year’s 2024 Nobel economic prize was won by three persons on their work on why nations succeed and fail.
The key explanation is that peoples’ living standards are mostly determined not by talents or hard work but by the success of the nations they come from or live in. Nations differ in the quality of their governments.

This quality is affected by the extent to which these governments operate inclusive (institutions that promote shared prosperity) as against those that promote extractive ones (where a small group collect rents). Inclusive institutions encourage investment in human and physical capital whereas extractive ones discourage these.

The second bit of good news relevant to this present write up is there are reports that the Nigerian President recently introduced a bill to return the country to Regional government with the following elements: greater autonomy, increased representation and the decentralisation of power from central to regional authorities.

The third and final point is to call attention to a small country in Europe whose political economy has continued to fascinate close observers: the Netherlands. It has less than one tenth the population of Nigeria but its GDP is 20 times larger. It’s a leading exporter of many agricultural and industrial products and has been a leading Nigerian trading partner in Europe and the world.

Even within its small geographical space it operates a federal economic governing system with each of the regions and local authorities spending huge sums of money to tackle the perennial challenges to the country’s environment—water and flooding.

These lower levels of government exercise so much discretion with nearly 70-80 per cent of all public revenues spent through them and with more public employees at this level, close to the citizens. This is the pattern across most of the rich industrialised nations of the world. Ours continue to be the exact opposite with most funds and employees located at the national levels and while the local levels are the most impoverished.
Concluded.

Olowu is a former Professor of Public Policy and Management and Continental Overseer Emeritus, RCCG. Netherlands.