Nigeria’s government by memo and gramophone, but little action

Last week, an interesting opinion poll revealed the trajectory of President Muhammadu Buhari’s popularity with the Nigerian people. The poll, conducted by NOI Polls, an independent polling agency, and published in BusinessDay on July 25, showed that the president’s popularity has nose-dived considerably since he assumed office on May 29 last year. According to the poll, Buhari’s approval rating in June 2015 was 70 percent, peaking at80 percent in October of that year. But,a year later, in June this year, the president’s rating dramatically dipped to 39 percent. Clearly, while Nigerians gave President Buhari the benefit of the doubt for much of his first year in office, the long honeymoon is now over, as his once sky-high approval rating has begun todip to precipitous levels. And it’s not difficult to know why. Just take a look at how Nigerians rated the Buhari government’s performance on key governance indicators. The highest rating was for national security, at 48 percent, followed by corruption, at 45 percent. After those middling ratings, everything went downhill. Agriculture was rated 21 percent, health (20%), education (18%), the economy (15%), infrastructure (13%), job creation (13%) and poverty alleviation (11%).

For a government that has been in office for over a year, the abysmal performance ratings on the critical issues of education, health, job creation and poverty alleviation is inexcusable and beyond belief! It’s as if Nigeria has no functional government at all. There will, of course,be denial (unlike in the West where leaders take polls seriously, Nigerian leaders are likely to dismiss or ignore them). There will also be finger-pointing and blame game. The president and his party will, as a matter of course, blame the economy and the previous government. Some may even agree with them. But I won’t join that chorus. For me, this is not so much the state of the economy as lack of effective government. Even with the economic and other challenges, a reasonably competent government can still do better than the Buhari administration has done so far.

To be sure, Nigeria has an appalling record on government effectiveness. For instance, according to the World Bank’s Government Effectiveness Index (2013), Nigeria ranked 129th out of 141 countries. It was in the bottom 12 with countries like Niger, Zimbabwe and Togo. The truth is that the operation of government and public administration in Nigeria – that’s the way government works in this country –is mediocre. There aremany aspects of this malaise that one can talk about, but I want to focus on two here. The first is the role of the federal executive council and the use of ministerial memorandum in policy-making. The second is the habit of making policy announcements without followingthem through. I call the former governance by memo, and the latter governance by gramophone!

Let’s start with the first. Now, every ministerial policy proposal must be submitted to the Federal Executive Council (FEC)in the form of a memorandum, and only when the FEChas approved the proposal can it be implemented. That seems like a straightforward process, but it is not. The politics of Council memo is, indeed, one of the mystiques surrounding governance in this country. First of all, there are gatekeepers that can act as fork in the road. The Office of the Secretary to the Government of Federation is charged with receiving and placing memos on the agenda of the Cabinet meeting. Again, that’s not a simple process. If the SGFdoesn’t like a memo’s “prayers” or recommendations, or if a minister is not in the SGF’s good books, the memo may die prematurely before reaching the Cabinet meeting or be atrophied.

Even if the memo makes it onto the agenda, it could still be sabotaged by ministers, whose ministrieshave no interest in the subject matter, but are simply motivated by politics or fronting for some powerful interests. In her book, “Reforming the Unreformable”, the former Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, tells a story of how she had to withdraw a memo setting out a reform proposal because of unexpected stiff opposition to it within the cabinet even though the president had previously expressed support for the proposal. Thus, assuming a memo doesn’t suffer in the hands of the gate-keepers, it could stillbecomea victim of vested-interestpolitics in the FEC. Or, indeed, face undue delay due to the administrative complexity of the approval process.

The truth is that there is excessive concentration of policy-making power at the heart of Nigeria’s government that stifles the governance process. Yet Nigeria’s constitution does not require such centralisation. For instance, section 5(5) says thatthe FEC shall determine “the general directionof domestic and foreign policies of the Government of the Federation”. Surely, the “general direction” of policies is different from specific policy proposals. It is a misuse of language to conflate the two. There is hardly any serious country where a full cabinet is needed to give anything other than broad policy direction.

In the UK, the cabinet meets weekly to discuss “the most important issues” for the government. Policy-making is almost entirely a matter for individual government departments and the relevant cabinet committees, each of which consists of only the ministers whose departments have a strong interest in the issues covered by the committee’s terms of reference. Once a department formulates a policy proposal, its minister will seek the collective agreement of members of the relevant committee through a process known as “write round”. If no member of the committee objects to the proposal, the cabinet committee will authorise the department to implement it. However, if any member disagrees with any aspect of the policy, the sponsoring department must resolve the differences with the department(s) concerned. It’s only when – and this happens rarely – the policy differences cannot be resolved by the cabinet committee that the matter gets escalated to the prime minister for resolution, but hardly ever to the full cabinet.

The cabinet committee process works very well and ensures effective governance. There are no gate-keepers or politicised cabinet to frustrate or delay departmental policies. The write-round process usually takes a maximum of two weeks, and much of the policies initiated and implemented by UK governments never go to the cabinet committees either because they are technical in nature or do not impact on the policies of other departments. By contrast, in Nigeria, a minister can hardly implement a policy without navigating through the politics of Council memo.

Which brings me to the problem of governance by gramophone! You would expect, won’t you, that once the Council has approved the proposal in a memo, it would then be implemented speedily. Far from it! Of course, ministers, who President Buhari famously described as “noise makers”, will make endless noises about the policy, but, usually, nothing will happen. President Buhari described the 2016 budget as marking “a historic milestone for us as a nation”, but, recognising that Nigerians are sceptical about such promises, he said,“I know many people will say ‘I have heard this before’”. He then added: “Our actions will speak for us”. So, what have the government’s actions spoken, eight months on, since the budget? Well, if the opinion poll is any guide, the budget has hardly improved the lives of ordinary Nigerians.

This is clearly a failure of governance, and it arises because Nigeria’s government makes policies on the hoof without giving them serious thought: no research, no analysis; just some untested ideas! Then, there is hardly any credible commitment by the government to its stated policies, which requires having serious implementation or action plans. For instance, in the UK, the government publishes its National Infrastructure Delivery Plan annually, with specific focus on improving delivery and performance as well as monitoring and reporting progress. Furthermore, every UK government department publishes its business plans on its webpage, whichallows the public to track the department’s progress in implementing the actions set out in the plans. By contrast, go to the websites of Nigerian ministries, you can hardly tell what their plans are, let alone track their progress.

Nigeria must adopt global best practices in policy formulation and implementation. Being at the bottom of global league tables on government effectiveness shames this country. To repeat: the Buhari administration’s current underperformance is less about the economy and more about government effectiveness. There is too much government by memo and gramophone, but little action. Government effectiveness is central to good governance. We must improve how government works in this country!

Olu Fasan