Abstract
Over the decades, there has been a recurrent and sustained argument that the Nigerian state, like its counterparts in Africa and other countries of the developing world, underperforms due to lack of state capacity to deal with the contemporary complexities of governance. This article examines the state of governance in Nigeria and assesses the factors militating against the promotion of public good and effective service delivery in the country. The article draws data from secondary and primary sources, which include the authors’ close observations of events in Nigeria. Governance and political leadership in Nigeria have been driven by self-interest and other primordial considerations, which take priority over that of the public. The state has failed in three major areas: security of lives and properties, promotion of the rule of law, and provision of visionary leadership. In conclusion, the nature and characters of the political leadership explains the Nigerian state incapacity for effective governance.
Introduction
Over the decades, there has been a recurrent and sustained argument that the Nigerian state, like its counterparts in Africa and other countries of the developing world, underperforms due to lack of state capacity 1 to deal with the contemporary complexities of governance. The nature of the state, the public institutions through which legitimate power is exercised and enforced, is germane to the study of politics in any state (Smith, 2003, p. 108). Therefore, the issue of state capacity is central to understanding the African socioeconomic malaise. Clapham (2002) draws particular attention to the inherent challenges of state maintenance in weak societies and offers probable explanations to states’ incapacity, especially during the era of globalization. Of greater concern is his identification of structural and contextual variables that enhance the vulnerability of most African states like Nigeria. Bayart (2009) examines the African sociopolitical and economic realities and attributes state’s failures to Africa’s historical heritage: history of weak political leadership, corruption, conflicts, and wars. There is no controversy about the series of symptoms of state failure and state collapse in Africa; the point of debate remains the extent of state’s incapacity displayed by the Nigerian state.
The “petroleum-rich” Nigerian state, confronted by sociopolitical instability, high degree of corruption, mass hostility to the “public,” and poor macroeconomic management, continue to display the attributes of a state in crisis (Akinola, 2008). Successive governments in Nigeria, like in many African states, lack the political will to initiate or sustain policy or structural transformation, or to embark on sound economic reform to reposition the state for greatness (World Bank, 1997). No matter the upsurge of globalization and the prospects of the borderless state, the expectation is for states to take a decisive role in economic transformation, growth, and development and jettison every act that is inimical to improved livelihood as well as socioeconomic and political development of the country. With the weakness of the Nigerian state and its ineffectiveness, it has become challenging to eradicate impoverishment, engage in infrastructural development, and stem the tides of insurgency and terrorism, which have the potency to derail the country’s moderate political development.
The article supports the assertion that the critical and central issue of governance, from the utilitarian perspective of British lawyer and political thinker Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) to the African idea of communalism among such others, should be people centered. Deploying, as a launch pad, the well-known African philosophical and sociopolitical thoughts enshrined in
Without doubt, the Nigerian state stood in between exhibiting attributes of state collapse and state failure. According to Mimiko (2010), the Nigerian state has degenerated to the point where it is unable to provide minimal social security for its vulnerable population. This explains why the mass of the people continues to regard a low pumping price of oil as a social security and birthright. The article takes a holistic approach to understanding the role of successive political leadership in Nigeria and assesses their responses to the pressures and demands for sustainable democracy. The rest of the article is structured into three main sections. These are, namely, conceptual discourse and the state of literature, selected governance issues in Nigeria, and conclusion.
Conceptual Discourse
Classical and contemporary understandings of government emphasize the existence of the sociopolitical structures and processes that authoritatively determined the allocation of societal values (Easton, 1953). Stretched further, the institution called government is necessary to resolve or manage conflicts between groups within a society by making decisions, which are enforceable without necessarily using force. This makes for the organization of society for the ultimate good of all-
Almost every society is made up of economic, political, cultural, religious, and professional groups. The activities of these groups are often managed in an institutionalized system, in which three main organs are prominent in most modern societies. The three organs, known in many places as legislature, executive, and judiciary, are in charge of formulating policies, implementing such policies and rendering advice as well as relevant suggestions, and adjudicating as well as interpreting for reconciliation in cases of conflicts respectively. Although societies vary as to how these important organs operate, it is common, especially in democracies, for them to have distinct spheres of operations, so as not to concentrate all powers in a single institution or individual. However, this does not imply acrimony as these arms of government and other relevant agencies, which operate in between, primarily exist for the good of all.
The government of a democracy is accountable to the people. It has the responsibility to fulfill its end of the social contract, while public officials (political office holders and civil servants) are social servants; they serve society and the population. The government has the responsibility to ensure equality and promote fundamental human rights. Heyman (2014) refers to the logic behind the historical
Drawing from this, governance presupposes a power structure with its own hierarchical categories, incorporating the economic, social, cultural, and political tensions within the society, and thus spreading out an inherent dynamism which absorbs the ebbs and flows of pressures toward ensuring peaceful and effective solutions to existential problems confronting the society and its people. The attempt by Nzongola-Ntalaja to isolate three main types of governance is quite apt and relevant here. First, political or public governance, whose authority is the state, government, or public sector. It relates to “the process by which a society organizes its affairs and manages itself” (Nzongola-Ntalaja, 2003). According to Manning, Kraan, and Malinska (cited in United Nations, 2007, p. 3), public sector is defined as “activities that are undertaken with public funds, whether within or outside of core government and whether those funds represent a direct transfer or are provided in the form of an implicit guarantee.” Second, economic governance authority is the private sector and relates to “the policies, the processes or institutional mechanisms that are germane to service delivery.” Then the last, social governance, whose authority is “the civil society, including citizens and non-profit organizations and relates to a system of values and beliefs that are necessary for social behaviours to happen and for public decisions to be taken” (Nzongola-Ntalaja, 2003).
From the above functional analysis of governance, it should be noted that governance transcends politics and the traditional notion of government. Its various aspects and subsystems are also highly interconnected for effective administration. In other words, government, business, and citizens—through civic engagement—“play different but profoundly complementary and collaborative roles,” so as to engender economic productivity, competitiveness, and development, in general (Ezekwesili, 2011, p. 19).
For obvious reasons, of the three sectors that interact to crystallize the productivity and competitiveness of nations as well as to improve the people’s living conditions, namely, government (public sector), business (private sector), and civil society, it is the public sector that is ultimately most responsible for how well the country performs. Thus, the latter is the main focus of this article. It is important to note that the public sector comprises of two main layers. These are the political leaders, who are subject to more frequent turnover based on constitutionally mandated electoral processes that promote democratic competition, and the tenure-track civil service of technocrats, with a considerably longer term mandate to manage the public bureaucracy. Although the former formulate laws and policies in the interest of the people they represent and the public in general, the latter implement such policies for the same purpose of public good. Whereas the political actors are subject to the electoral test in deriving their legitimacy, the civil servants in the wider spectrum, consisting not only the ministries and departments of the core civil service but also the agencies and parastatals, derive their legitimacy from a competitive professional process that recruits them on the ground that they are capable of implementing programs and providing concrete deliverables in terms of efficient and effective services (Ezekwesili, 2011).
These two key layers contribute in different ways to the processes that lead to each other’s formation. It is instructive to note that the Nigerian civil service is politicized to the extent that most top bureaucrats and junior officers openly support political parties of their choices. In Nigeria, civil servants always ascribe political meanings and prejudices to government activities, policies and programs on the basis of primordial, religious, ethnic, and regional sentiments. As it obtains in advanced democracies, the civil service is subjected to the authority of political office holders. The political leadership can, to a significant extent, determine the quality of the leadership of the public service through the appointments they make regarding the heads of the civil service as well as commissions, agencies, and parastatals, among others. However, the electoral commission, for instance, oversees the operations and other activities of the political parties which, in particular, lead to the selection of candidates for electoral offices. In other words, the processes of constituting political leadership are supervised by a commission that is expectedly apolitical. Dissatisfactions that may arise and lead to petitions at the end of electoral exercises are addressed at elections tribunals and, if need be, other judicial levels, all headed by unelected officials whose appointment at one point or the other is approved by the political leadership. In Nigeria, this is with the support of the National Judicial Commission (NJC), and in South Africa, the Judicial Service Commission.
In this article, governance development is evaluated by the extent to which there are improvements and sustainable development on issues such as security of life and property, poverty level, accountability, transparency and corruption, party and electoral systems, rule of law, leadership, human rights, gender, and political participation. The combined effect of these issues, which in several ways affect human security and social justice in any society, also makes them the cardinal points of the United Nations’ adopted Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as well as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that commenced in 2015, 15 years after the pronouncement of the MDGs scheme.
Overview of Governance Development in Nigeria
The specific issues examined in this section are, namely, security of life and property; rule of law; accountability, transparency, and corruption; and electoral system. However, in view of the pivotal role of leadership, it is also analyzed as part of the key factors in Africa’s governance problem. Before this is done, it is useful to draw some broad instances of governance crises from across Africa. Take for example, since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, and despite the growing embrace of democratic governance processes, the African continent has had to grapple with multiple of challenges of insecurity, poverty, injustice, and underdevelopment, in general. These range from civil wars (Liberia and Sierra Leone), postelection violence (Cote d’Ivoire, 2010, and Nigeria, 2011), coups d’etat (Mali and Guinea Bissau, 2012), large scale uprisings, and the associated migratory flows (Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya since 2011), xenophobic attacks (South Africa and Zambia), to the growing threats of transnational crimes, violent extremism, and terrorism across the continent.
According to Aning (2016), most of these security challenges have emerged partly as a result of “multiple socio-economic injustices,” including but not limited to “marginalization, social inequality, political exclusion, corruption, economic deprivation, unequal allocation and distribution of state resources, among others” (p. 4). In examining these issues, it is important to adopt one or more of the strategies often adopted by scholars on governance and development. In Nigeria, there is the epoch by epoch examination of regimes as it is found in Adamolekun (1986), or a taxonomy which utilizes constitutional order (Simbine & Oladeji, 2010; Suberu, 2009). These two are related in a way but slightly different. Based on constitutional order, three main epochs can easily be identified as far as governance in postcolonial Nigeria is concerned. They are parliamentary system, also called the Westminster model, military autocracy, and the presidential system.
For the regime or tenure-based classification, five main categorizations are identified. They are namely, First Republic (1960-1966), First Coming of the Military (1966-1979), Second Republic (1979-1983), Second coming of the Military (1984-1999), and Fourth Republic (1999-till date). The Third Republic, which is omitted in the categorization, was quite unique as it combined the features of a military autocracy and a democratic dispensation. It was between 1992 and 1993, with a military Head of State and a full-fledged ministerial cabinet as well as a national parliament of representatives of the people and elected state governors and assemblies also at the state levels.
In examining these issues, it is important to consider one or more of the strategies often adopted by scholars on governance and development for the analysis of this study. In Nigeria’s First Republic, the country practiced a parliamentary system that was patterned after the British model. The government, at this period, was largely democratic and federal in character. Powers and resources were essentially decentralized, with the effect that subnational units were strong, relatively independent and largely self-financing (Otobo, 2002; Simbine & Oladeji, 2010). This system which, in terms of its impact on the living conditions of the generality of the people and evidence of physical infrastructure was relatively functional, was curiously replaced with the presidential system in the country’s Second Republic.
It should be recalled that Nigeria’s multiethnic nature fragmented its multiparty system and legislature, during the First Republic, so much that the prime minister had to seek help in a political alliance to garner the necessary authority to rule. Since the enactment of the 1946 Richards Constitution of Nigeria, that provided the basis for Nigeria’s federalism, the politicization of the multiethnic groupings has become a bane to Nigeria’s national unity, effective governance, and development. The militarization of power and its accumulation for personal and prebendal interests further deepened ethnic divisions and hostilities in the country. Despite strong optimism that a return to democracy in 1999 would abolish ethnicity and ethnoreligious conflicts, the country continues to be driven by tides of ethnic hostilities with devastating consequences (Kwaja, 2009). Babangida (2002) enumerates such consequences as a “waste of enormous human and material resources leading to fragility of the economy and its political process” (p. 11).
Thus, unlike the postcolonial adoption of cabinet system of government, it was conceived that a popularly elected president, under presidentialism, would symbolize unity and rise above the weak party system (Adamolekun, 2016). In the adoption of the U.S. presidential model, in which the chief executive evidently has more powers than a prime minister, in the British type of parliamentary system that Nigeria hitherto adopted, a two-term limit was also introduced for the chief executive. The country has had a long encounter with military rule, starting in 1966 with the momentary revocation of the federal system. However, despite the presidential system and its constitutional provisions on the principles of checks and balances, Nigeria operated a “military/command federalism” (Osaghae, 2002, p. 24). This, according to Simbine and Oladeji (2010, p. 809), has over the years been characterized by “complete unitarism and absolute fiscal centralism.”
In the 17 years of the Fourth Republic, since the 1999 reintroduction of civil rule, governance in Nigeria has been more civil than democratic. The centralization of power and resources in the hands of one person—the president—has continuously fueled apprehension over exclusion and the agitation for better representation from across the different socioeconomic and political groups. This has worsened the country’s age long clientelistic and prebendal politics, in which largely personalized public institutions have not only failed to uphold a necessary culture of accountability and transparency but have also pilloried the vast majority of ordinary citizens who are unconnected to the political elites in abject poverty (Abiola, 2006; Yagboyaju, 2007).
Incidentally, considering the gap between the political elites and those they supposedly represent, the former can hardly empathize with the latter who currently battle with the effects of the country’s economic recession amid various forms of security threats (Tella, 2016). Yet, the cost of governance in view of the increasingly expensive and ostentatious lifestyles of many public office holders has unduly continued to rise. It is on this premise that an analysis of the impact of governance in Nigeria since the country’s independence in 1960 is undertaken. A combination of the two approaches—the epoch by epoch examination of regime types and the classification by constitutional order—is adopted for robust discourse.
Selected Issues in Nigeria’s Governance Project
Evidently, time and space are constraints even if an attempt is made to analyze all indicators of governance in Nigeria. In the light of this, issues concerning security of life and property, poverty alleviation and the fight against corruption, rule of law, and development-oriented leadership are carefully selected for analysis.
Security of Life and Property
The place of security in the development aspiration and agenda of any country is quite pivotal. Scholars have persistently reinforced the security-development nexus (Akinola, 2011; Shanum, 2003). Without security, other socioeconomic goals are unattainable. Shanum (2013) argues that No nation can enjoy lasting peace if her citizens live in abject poverty particularly if that nation is acknowledged as having the ability and substantial means to provide development and guarantee a good standard of living. Unfortunately, that is the tale of Nigeria. It is a tale of poor governance, insecurity and poverty in the midst of plenty.
Evident poor governance led to the categorization of Nigeria among “the 19 poorest, unhappiest, unhealthiest, and most dangerous nations in the world” (“National Assembly’s Amendment of CCB Act Cannot Stand,” 2016, p. 24).
Therefore, the security-development convergence explains why every successive government, since Nigeria’s independence in 1960, has reiterated the importance of security as the core goal and primary purpose of government. Over the years, different administrations and regimes have always integrated the subject matter of security in their vision, mission statements, and agenda. Although every newly established military regime pronounced security of life and property as one of its key purposes for intervention, Nigerian past and present constitutions also emphasize this. For example, Section 14(2b) of the 1999 Constitution, upon which the Fourth Republic operates, clearly states this.
However, public security institutions and agencies saddled with the responsibility of providing security in Nigeria include the “371,000 police personnel; 130,000 in the Army; 18,000 and 15,000 in the Navy and Air Force respectively” (Yagboyaju, 2016a, p. 52). Other prominent institutions controlled by the federal government include the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Department of State Services (DSS), Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Federal Roads Safety Corps (FRSC), Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Nigeria Prisons Service (NPS), Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Federal Fire Service and National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), among others. This is apart from other specialized agencies such as the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON) as well as several others that are in charge of quality control for perishable and other categories of processed and manufactured items.
This aside, there is the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme, in which fresh graduates from the tertiary institutions are involved in different exercises that include security-related matters. There are also, at the regional and State levels, vigilante groups and such other voluntary organizations that are involved in security-related matters. Furthermore, there are local road traffic managers such as Lagos State Traffic Management Agency (LASMA), Oyo State Youth Empowerment Scheme (O’ YES), Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI), and such others that help in the maintenance of law and order on local roads, market places, and such other public places.
However, despite all of these, hardly can the lives and properties of the generality of the ordinary citizens, in particular, be said to be secured. For instance, the country’s First Republic collapsed on the account of political violence in the aftermath of the 1965 controversial election results in the then Western Nigeria. This had been preceded by other forms of violence that were provoked, among others, by the 1962 national census crisis, the controversial 1964 federal election, and the 1960 as well as 1964 Tiv uprisings, the latter which caused ripple effects across the country’s entire north-central political zone (Anifowose, 1982). These events led to the breakdown of order in Nigeria and the eventual overthrow of the legitimate government by the military.
The January 1966 coup, which terminated the First Republic, was quickly followed by a counter-coup of July 29, 1960, the 1967-1970 civil war and such other catastrophes that, in particular, caused the illegal possession and misuse of small arms and light weapons by criminals (Agbaje, 2003). These and other similar factors fueled the high level incidences of politically motivated killings, assassination of political opponents, and, indeed, electoral violence during the country’s Second Republic (Simbine & Oladeji, 2010). During the second advent of the military (1984-1999), as well as the 17th-year old (1999-till date) Fourth Republic, Nigeria also encountered multidimensional security threats, which included politically motivated bombings, assassinations of highly placed persons, insurgencies, terror acts, abductions, armed robberies, road and air crashes, fire outbreaks, communal clashes, particularly between farmers and herders, and ethnoreligious conflict (Yagboyaju, 2016b).
Although the number of deaths and permanent injuries caused by these violent incidences is quite worrisome, it is more disturbing that “many of the cases are often unresolved several years after” (Yagboyaju, 2016b, pp. 58-59). It should, therefore, not be surprising if as a result of the unresolved high profile cases of Dele Giwa, a frontline journalist killed in 1987, and Chief Bola Ige, a serving Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, killed in 2001, ordinary citizens resort to self-help whenever they feel aggrieved. Other cases of domestic violence, intracommunal crisis, political assassinations, insurgencies and most recently, terrorism prevail. Obviously, recourse to self-help is a recipe for anarchy, breakdown of law and order and huge threats to safety of lives and property if left unaddressed for too long. Aside from the monumental loss of lives and properties, the continued oil insurgency by the Niger Delta militants and Boko Haram terrorism has the potential to threaten the corporate existence of Nigeria as a political entity (Akinola & Uzodike, 2014).
Rule of Law
Constitutionalism and sanctity of the rule of law principle is germane to effective governance, and security of life and property. Rule of law is one of the attractions of democracy. Democracy is more than the people’s rule. It symbolizes a meaningful and broad competition for public positions through periodic, free, and fair elections, and as determined by the constitutional arrangement of the country in question. The rule of law, underpinned by an independent judicial system, implies a functional legal framework that helps to ensure settlement of conflicts between the state and individuals on the one hand and among individuals or groups on the other. It also helps to ensure respect for property rights and contracts, while preventing the government and influential individuals from acting capriciously (Adamolekun, 2016). Also, in its oversight functions, the judiciary serves as a check on the excesses of the other arms of government, especially the executive.
A review of the activities of this arm, since 1960, reveals that it suffered “critical oscillations and dwindling fortunes in development and performance” (Simbine & Oladeji, 2010, p. 819). To start with, evidence abound on the not so tidy relationship between the government and the judiciary during the country’s First Republic. It should be noted that, rather than clearly check the excesses of the then government, the judiciary, in several instances, appeared partisan. Example of such includes its role in the trial of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, leader of the opposition Action Group (AG) in the First Republic, for a treason-related offense. This was also repeated in the handling of the outcome of the Western region election of 1965, during which a breakaway faction from Awolowo’s AG, with evident support from the federal government, secured a controversial victory (Anifowose, 1982).
Lack of judicial independence and its associated ills, a recipe for misgovernance and maladministration, particularly by the executive arm of government, became more pronounced during Nigeria’s long encounter with military rule. With their preference for special military tribunals, obviously because of the lack of confidence in the regular judicial system by military rulers, successive military regimes, therefore, relegated the role of the regular courts, especially in corruption-related cases. However, in view of the arbitrariness in the selection of the membership of the special military tribunals, like several other institutions with membership determined by the pleasure of the military junta’s head, their activities were likened to “fighting corruption with corruption” (Akinseye-George, 2000, p. 53).
This did not significantly improve even in the country’s several attempts to democratize in the Second, Third, and Fourth Republics. Among the numerous cases of abuse of the judiciary and the misapplication of the rule of law, some that stood out are cited here for illustration. These include several controversial judicial outcomes on cases in connection with the 1979 presidential election petition by Obafemi Awolowo of the then Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN); the court verdict in favor of one unregistered Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) in the eve of the 1993 presidential election, part of which the then military president, General Babangida, cited as reasons for the controversial cancelation of election results, and several ambiguous aspects of the Code of Conduct provisions that were often abused by public office holders who colluded with lawyers and several other judicial officials (Akinseye-George, 2000).
Disturbingly, the 17th-year old Fourth Republic, so far the longest in the country’s history, has recorded more brazen acts in the judicial arm. They are quite many, but few of the ones in which the National Judicial Council (NJC) itself failed the integrity test are cited for illustration. One of such was between Justice Aloysius Katsina-Aliu, then Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), and Justice Isa Ayo Salami, then President of the Federal Court of Appeal. The latter, with constitutional rights to set up election tribunals, had done so in respect of several cases in the aftermath of the 2011 general elections. For reasons best known to the CJN, he requested that the Sokoto State governorship election petition be disbanded by Ayo-Salami. In view of the latter’s insistence on the need for a convincing explanation, he was suspended from office and the CJN, as chairman of NJC, “arrested the delivery of the tribunal’s judgment” (Opadokun, 2016, p. 15). After more than 5 years, during which the tenure of the office in question expired, the judgment is yet to be delivered.
More poignantly, at least two justices of the Supreme Court and five from federal high courts across the country were arrested in October 2016, during a sting operation by the DSS, over allegations of corruption. Although their prosecution is still ongoing, it is curious that the NJC and a section of the country’s body of senior lawyers raised so much objection when, in fact, some of the arrested judges had for long maintained lifestyles that obviously could not have been be supported by their legitimate earnings (see Opadokun, 2016). Incidentally, both the NJC and the body of senior lawyers existed while Ayo Salami, the then President of the Federal Court of Appeal (PCA), was ignominiously forced out of the judiciary for being courageous.
Numerous intraparty squabbles which, for example, included the leadership tussle between the Senator Ali Modu Sheriff and Senator Ahmed Makarfi factions of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which broke out in 2016; the emergence of different candidates from these factions for the 2016 Ondo State Governorship election; and the controversial circumstances that surrounded the selection of the All Progressives Congress’s (APC’s) flag bearer in this same governorship election among such others in which prominent lawyers and the judiciary were enmeshed, many times for purposes that were not altruistic, also typified governance characterized by deceit and duplicity.
In the broad and deep relationships between law making and adjudication, it is expedient to also cite instances in the activities of Nigeria’s lawmakers, especially at the national level, so as to further illustrate the connections between governance and the impact of the rule of law in the country. It is, for instance, curious that rather than concentrate on the almost 200 bills pending in the National Assembly since 2012, some of which are adjudged to be crucial to the economy, the 8th Assembly that was inaugurated in 2015 focused more on self-serving interests (“National Assembly’s Amendment of CCB Act Cannot Stand,” 2016). Take, for example, instead of attending to pending bills such as the Railways Amendment Bill that seeks to repeal the colonial Railway Act of 1955 and open the way for private investors, as well as the Petroleum Industry Bill, “whose inexplicable delay has held up investments in the critical oil and gas sector,” and the Minerals Bill that will also open “the floodgates to private exploitation of solid minerals,” among several others (“National Assembly’s Amendment of CCB Act Cannot Stand,” 2016, p. 24), the assembly has pursued self-serving goals.
Similarly, nothing in the activities and operations of the lawmakers significantly showed the kind of urgency required by the serious security threats such as Boko Haram and Niger Delta Avengers. Meanwhile, such threats, as reported by
Curiously, rather than concentrate on these and such others, both arms of the National Assembly showed preference for the amendment of certain provisions in the Code of Conduct Bureau/Code of Conduct Tribunal Act. This is apart from several other issues such as the purchase of expensive official cars for all the lawmakers and their huge allowances that are not in line with the country’s current economic realities and the 2015 scandalous budget padding allegations among others that generated so much controversy, heat, and distraction, at a time when the country’s economic recession ought to be the major concern of every stakeholder.
The Code of Conduct Bureau and Code of Conduct Tribunal, known as CCB/CCT Act, that was instituted to curtail corruption, compel the declaration of assets by public officials and maintain a high standard moral virtue in the conduct of government business was recently amended by the parliamentarians (“National Assembly’s Amendment of CCB Act Cannot Stand,” 2016, p. 24). The importance of maintaining highest standard of public officials is prevalent in most parts of the advanced democratic world where top leaders are expected to publish information about their assets, so as to maintain a standard of morality and accountability in government businesses. Disturbingly, the National Assembly commenced this amendment process while one of its principal officers, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, was standing trial before the CCT over false assets declaration.
The Leadership Question
Leadership is, no doubt, a key factor in the whole gamut of public administration and the management of societal affairs. In the light of this, Nigeria’s lack of capacity in terms of the attainment of effective governance that addresses the issues of corruption, human rights, and mobilization of human and material resources for sustainable development is generally traced to leadership failure (Achebe, 1988; “Mo Ibrahim’s Sobering Report,” 2013). In Nigeria, democracy has not yielded the expected results due to the character of the political elites who has a limited understanding of what governance requires (Agulanna, 2006). Shanum (2013) maintains that “the progress of any nation rests on the stature or standard of its leadership and how they can bring this to bear on the welfare of people of the nation.” Therefore, the state is expected to perform service–delivery responsibilities, which include the construction of society’s infrastructure, including roads, posts, and telecommunications, and water, sewage, and energy infrastructures. Ironically, the Nigerian state has been unable to live up to these expectations. Indeed, once a political arrangement is dominated by visionless leaders, the country would perpetually struggle to attain peace and development. Furthermore, “many African governments have remained either criminally blind to, or unable to redress, the harsh realities of life for most of their citizens. Basically, no other region of the world has been as poorly led and governed by so many leaders for so long” (Uzodike, 2009, p. 2). In summary, leadership failure is one of the strongest foundations of state incapacity in Nigeria.
Since the 1960 independence, the country’s abundant human and mineral resources are yet to be significantly harnessed to combat the impoverishment of ordinary Nigerians. For instance, Nigeria remains the largest oil producer in Africa and the world’s eighth largest oil producer, the world’s fourth largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and possesses the seventh largest reserves of natural gas (Oshikoya, 2008). The country’s crude oil resources include about 35 billion barrels of oil and an estimated 180 trillion cubic ft of natural gas, with reserves projected to be sustainable for the next 40 and 110 years respectively (Oshikoya, 2008). The inability of the state to convert the huge crude wealth to sustainable development prompted the following questions: Why has the country been unable to develop its oil and gas industry from which so much income has been earned? From an average OPEC price of “$1.57 per barrel, in 1961” (“May 29: Wasted Years of Civil Rule,” 2015, p. 22), the price of crude rose to $17.44 per barrel in 1999 when civil rule was reintroduced in Nigeria. There was a phenomenal boom between 2010 and 2014 when the product averaged “$77.38 pb; $107.46 pb; $109.45 pb; $105.87 pb; and $96.29 pb for 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014, respectively,” before dropping to between $30 per barrel and $50 per barrel in 2015 and 2016 (“May 29: Wasted Years of Civil Rule,” 2015, p. 22).
In 2016, the country exported an average of 2 million barrels per day; yet it not only was unable to fully account for its earnings, it also could not put its four refineries to “10.4 per cent capacity utilization” (“May 29: Wasted Years of Civil Rule,” 2015, p. 22). Despite the oil wealth, majority of Nigerians still live in penury; this explains the outright hostilities to any form of fuel increases in the country (Akinola, 2014). Nigeria has been referred to as “a rich country of poor people” (Agbaje, Onwudiwe, & Diamond, 2004, p. xx), whereas Suberu believes that Nigeria is the “greatest single developmental tragedy in the world today . . . the metaphor per excellence for a failed developmental experience” (Suberu, 2004, p. 31). Its unsuccessful socioeconomic reform, like the oil sector reform, becomes a point to note. Therefore, the failure to maintain the productivity of the refineries, weakness of oil governance machineries, and inept leadership led to the continued importation of finished petroleum products and a “criminally dubious fuel subsidy regime,” which stopped in 2015 (Akinola, 2014; Akinola & Wissink, 2018; “Swallowing the Bitter Pill of Fuel Deregulation,” 2016, p. 22).
Furthermore, the article raises different questions in relation to the leadership crisis in the country: Why did successive leadership in the country abandon agriculture and agro-allied manufacturing that were not only more reliable but also contributed so immensely to the good living conditions before the discovery of oil, for the latter whose economic values are largely determined by highly volatile factors? Such volatilities include the highly unstable and unpredictable international price of oil as well as the age-long restiveness in Nigeria’s oil producing Niger Delta region (Akinola & Uzodike, 2014). For how long can the country’s economy endure the various excruciating pains it has persistently encountered? For instance, according to the World Bank 2012 report, which had worsened thereafter, “62.6 per cent of the country’s estimated population of 160 million live below the $1 per day poverty benchmark” (“Mo Ibrahim’s Sobering Report,” 2013, p. 22). In addition, Nigeria is said to have one of the highest global infant and maternal mortality rates, while it also houses “the highest out-of-school children (10.5 million) in the world” (“Mo Ibrahim’s Sobering Report,” 2013, p. 22).
Decrepit conditions of physical infrastructure such as roads, health facilities, transportation, telecommunications, public water supply, and electricity have for long compounded the problem. Yet, contracts for the repair and rehabilitation of most of the existing facilities as well as the construction of new ones have provided opportunities for “self-enrichment for contractors, public officials and consultants” (Abati, 2006, p. 6). This economic landscape, with evident hostile and inclement characteristics, contributed to the contraction in the remnants in Nigeria’s manufacturing sector; with a reported “1,500 factories witnessing partial or full shut-down between 2015 and April 2016” (“2017: Time Is Running Out, Buhari,” 2017, p. 16). Obviously, this is enough discouragement for the much awaited foreign direct investments (FDIs). And, as recommended by the UNDP, Nigeria needs “a minimum of $20 billion per year for a decade” (“2017: Time Is Running Out, Buhari,” 2017), of such FDIs.
Finally, leadership as a supreme political virtue theoretically, “signifies the ability of a person or group of persons to persuade others to act by inspiring” (Robertson, 1985, p. 180). However, this hardly impacted on the respect for human rights during the period under review. Both under the country’s long experience with military rule (known for its autocratic character and general lack of respect for human rights and freedoms), and the 17th-year old Fourth Republic, Nigerians have been deprived of social justice, equity, and widespread political participation. The case of the Rivers State’s rerun legislative election becomes relevant here. On December 10, 2016, the rerun election was conducted only in “1,840 units because the original ballot in March 2015 and the rerun in March 2016 were characterized by large-scale rigging and killings” (“Shambolic Rivers Rerun Legislative Election,” 2017, p. 20). Although 20,000 police officers, 20 gunboats, three helicopters, military, State Security Service, and civil defense personnel among others were deployed, “there were no fewer than 70 incidents of deliberate obstruction of the electoral process and several human casualties” (“Shambolic Rivers Rerun Legislative Election,” 2017, p. 20). Two of these casualties were police officers, who were beheaded in Uju, Ogba/Egbama Ndoni Local Government Area, by local gangsters.
The blatant electoral irregularity explains why the European Union delegation led by Michel Arrion; the American Ambassador to Nigeria, Stuart Symington; the British High Commissioner, Paul Arkwright; and the French Ambassador, Denys Guaer, in a joint statement “bemoaned the elections” (“Shambolic Rivers Rerun Legislative Election,” 2017). Obviously, such an outcome, in an electoral exercise that covered only sections of a State out of 36, despite the heavy presence of security personnel, is an indication of leadership and institutional failure.
Conclusion
The article has been able to locate the Nigerian leadership and governance crises in context. The effects of leadership failure have been analyzed in previous sections on security of lives and properties, and the rule of law; the latter covering the legislative and judicial arms of government. The factors responsible for leadership failure are discussed with particular emphasis on the executive arm, the most obvious and most active part of the civilian government in Nigeria. Among the several perspectives from which this issue can be analyzed, this article focuses on the economy, public accountability, and human rights.
Obviously, Nigerian government has even failed to guarantee the security of a large section of the population, and militancy and insurrection have militated against effective governance since the return of civil rule in 1999. Institutional weaknesses, ethnic politics, historical reality, and evolution of Nigeria into unnegotiated statehood (the northern and southern protectorate were unilateral merged as a country unit by the colonial administration) have contributed to the weakness of the state and its institutions in the performance of its constitutional obligations. Nigeria has been under different sets of political leadership that were not visionary but regarded politics as an avenue to maintain their economic dominance and to sustain their business empires. Apart from the weak political leadership exemplified by the ruling elites, the structural composition of the state has also mitigated against effective governance.
Nigerian leadership problem and governance crisis was actually compounded by the lop-sided federal arrangements, with centrality of authority as opposed to the immediate postindependence regional autonomy (1960-1966), and institutional weaknesses. Incursion of the military into politics greatly distorted the Nigerian federal arrangements and laid the foundation for the promotion of individuals above state’s institutions. Indeed, the political leadership exploited the structural weakness of Nigeria’s federalism and of its institutions (Akinola & Wissink, 2018). The emerging political leadership, after the collapse of the First Republic (1960-1966), became self-serving, inexperienced, and driven by ethnicity and patron–client politics (Akinola, 2009). The influence of the military on the political class was negative, especially, in the undemocratic nature of the electoral process during successive democratization since the late 1990s.
Political parties continue to be dominated by ex-military officers, who introduced the military command system into the processes of electioneering and governing structures. In many instances, candidates for electoral positions were handpicked; thus, internal party democracy became obsolete and rigging of elections were apparent. This led to the emergent of illegitimate leaders. The followership, who had vociferously fought for the enthronement of democracy, subsequently succumbed to the antics of the ruling elites. The citizens were divided into many layers: some benefited from the militarization of the electoral processes as more unemployed youths became engaged by party leadership as political thugs; many are able to offer their votes for sale; many became desperate to join the ruling elites because of the political rewards; while the majority of the masses prefer to display political apathy. Thus, electoral corruption became the norm in Nigeria. Therefore, political party structure continues to produce deceptive candidates for political positions. The result is the lack of visionary leadership that fully understands the fundamentals of effective governance in Nigeria.
Over the years, the ruling elites have consistently demonstrated their lack of respect for the rules and regulations governing the state. With structural and institutional decay, corruption and impunity evident in Nigeria’s sociopolitical and economic environment, the capacity of the state to uphold rule of law is greatly undermined. One of the decisive challenges to sound governance, and rule of law in Nigeria, was the incursion of the military to the Nigerian political environment. The military, devoid of leadership and governance qualities, concertedly destroyed the democratic governance structured and subjected institutions of government under an autocratic chain of command. Service delivery, human rights, and socioeconomic development became a lofty dream for Nigerians. The civil service was militarized and government through nepotism installed bad governance which has continued to plague the Nigerian state and Nigerians in modern times.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.