Advisers and political advising

The Office of Adviser does not exist in a parliamentary system. It became part of the Nigerian political process with the adoption of the presidential system. It is fraught with a lot of unanswered and even unanswerable questions.

Advisers are the personal staff of their principals. They are not subject to the scrutiny of the political party or the legislature. The principal appoints them to advise him/her on the critical programmes of the administration. The appointment of Advisers is a critical pointer to the seriousness of any principal. Any principal at whose table the buck stops and bears the burden and responsibility of any decision is well advised to appoint advisers that can add value to his/her performance and political future. It is for this reason that the rule is relaxed to enable the principal to scout for, screen and appoint Advisers that can deliver.

Ideally, an Adviser is a professional in his/her field set apart for his neutral technical competence. He may or may not have a loud party affiliation, but must believe in the mission and vision of his principal.

Partisanship may colour his/her advice negatively or, to put it more bluntly, affect his/her professionalism. In fact, for Advisers who are licentiates of professional bodies, their poor performance may jeopardise their professional standing and/or licence. The post of Adviser is not for novitiates. It is not a field for trial and error because errors at that level are too expensive both for the principal and for the system.

An error in the national public advisory system could be tantamount to mass murder. Unfortunately, policy errors in the public domain are difficult to reverse and, if ever reversible, costly in time, effort and credibility of the administration.

Advice must therefore be professionally targeted. Advisers must not only be sharp-shooters, but also great marksmen. Anything less than that is a policy liability or even a disaster. Nigeria has witnessed a gross abuse of advisers over the years in terms of quality and quantity. First, there is the alibi that there are no set constitutional or statutory qualifications for advisers.

The principals therefore unfortunately solely decide the qualifications which have turned out to be, in most cases, a potpourri of sorts inadequate for the governance of human beings. Ordinarily, advisers constitute an elite corps of professionals at the core of governance. They are to augment and complement the elected officers whose qualifications may be as low as being ‘educated up to school certificate level’.

It is not impossible that some of them may not even be that endowed. Even if the elected principal is a universal genius, he would be so distracted in office that he needs the assistance of less pressured people. It is therefore a disservice to both the principal and the system to appoint family members and friends for such posts.

Who are Advisers? Political Advisers are people appointed by public officeholders to guide them to initiate, fine tune, monitor and re-order public policy for the maximum political advantage of the principal and the welfare of the electorate. The political adviser is therefore a vote maximiser and a political image maker. Without saying so, he is a technical expert to apply the mechanics of policy to add value to social service delivery to the advantage of the electorate and the electoral prospects of the principal.

No matter what fields they cover- economy, energy, security, legislative relations, intergovernmental relations,- they are all, broadly speaking, political advisers. They must have basic education in the respective fields and be professionals in their own right. For peer recognition, approval and credibility, they must, before appointment, attain a level of professional and social visibility.

Their status will also be enhanced if they engage in continuing education within their area of expertise because currency in theory and praxis is critical to the investment of political trust. Furthermore, the Adviser must not only be proficient in his field of practice, but equally able to equip his principal to convince and influence the public. He must be an able instructor to transmit the kernel of policy to his principal because the reception of policies is not only based on quality but also on presentation, delivery and timing.

The practice of political advising requires not only continuing education, but also a multi-disciplinary exposure. An adviser must be a psychologist, possibly a social historian, a logician, an experimentalist, a behaviourist and a visionary. Since policies are normally polygonal and polycyclic, the policy adviser must be competent in the analysis of complex issues.

More importantly, the Adviser must understand the basics of national politics, regional sensitivities and professional proclivities. Although he is not a politician, he must be able to smell politics from the distance and analyse politics in an apolitical fashion even though policy is ultimately political. The Adviser must be conversant and agree with the project vision which he must align with project scope as well as human and material project targets.

Every Adviser is as good as the methodology of political advice he gives. On this note, an Adviser must be a competent researcher with a good mastery of archival, primary and secondary sources. He must also be able to tease out relevant information through interviews, questionnaires, focus group discussions, participant and non-participant observations.

Any method of getting relevant and useful information must be employed because information is the most critical input of policy. It is also important for the Adviser to obtain information from all strata of relevant stakeholders because the electorate is a composite group with varying and even conflicting needs.

The interaction of needs within the electorate generates demands. For example, salary awards for a section of the electorate has a tendency to spike demands in other classes of the electorate. The reality is that the electorate is not monolithic. The Adviser must therefore be aware that the various classes of the electorate are connected and interconnected.

Even if the electorate were monolithic, the solution proffered by a policy creates a new problem either in its details, content, context or application. An Adviser must devise anticipatory positive insulation techniques to avoid or counter a resultant chain of demands and/or complaints arising from any and all policies.

No matter how good a policy may be, an Adviser must expect and be alert to its consequences. He must, therefore, be adept in policy consequence management because poor or careless consequence management can frustrate the best policy. Policy consequence anticipation is part and parcel of policy design. A policy should be simulated ahead of its finalisation.

The simulation takes place in a social incubation laboratory where, according to Murphy’s law, whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Failures at the level of simulation afford the policy adviser a golden opportunity to either backtrack or review the policy itself. Policy simulation is confidential and performed out of public view. In the case of policy failure at that point, there are neither public nor systemic casualties. Simulation is a policy cost-saving device. In addition to simulating a policy, the policy adviser can also trouble shoot in the process of deciding on a policy.
To be continued tomorrow

Prof. Ayoade, mni, is Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Ibadan. Nigeria.