The recent victory of the All Progressives Congress and its “change” mantra have brought with it a huge burden of expectations from Nigerians. However, before the presidential election and its aftermath, especially the euphoria of ousting an incumbent president beclouds the important tasks that lie ahead, it is imperative that the full import of this seismic shift be appreciated by all Nigerians.
This article is therefore a call to action by all Nigerians towards ensuring that true change is delivered, as the Nigerian public may soon realise that change without substance is utterly useless! I believe the notion of change and harnessing the multi-faceted expectations of many Nigerians regarding what it means, are the biggest challenge that President-elect Muhammadu Buhari and his party now need to focus their attention on rather than the more egregious issues of patronage as our political class is wont to engage once elections are won.
The need to manage our collective expectations in the face of change is predicated on the fact that Nigeria needs to get back on track with the business of developing and improving the lives of her citizens. A task that requires more urgent attention now in the face of damning evidence of how badly the nation and its institutions have failed in delivering efficient public goods and services in the past 55 years of her existence. This new administration has to look more closely at the public service with a view to making it more suited to delivering the desired quantity and quality of services to meet the demands of citizens.
This call remains relevant now that a new leader has emerged as it was even before the elections because achieving policy objectives depends on the effectiveness and efficiency of the public service. A look at the APC manifesto reveals a shopping list of broad policy statements, without enough punch and clarity as to how the expectations of Nigerians will be met and managed in key public policy areas. Education, health, the economy, job creation and youth employment all have broad policy statements that stop short of being mere rhetoric and a little “more of the same” story from previous administrations. In my view, managing citizen expectations in the next four years will be tough considering that in its current form, the President-elect and his party’s manifesto have offered no new benchmarks for delivering on the change promised during the campaigns.
This call for a more strategic approach to meeting citizen expectations stems from the fact that leadership performance in the public sector is an ambiguous, multi-dimensional and complex concept for which there are two main classes of performance measures – output and outcome measures. Output measures relate to public agencies’ organisational efficiency (output) – how many kilometres of road are constructed, how many more new schools/hospitals do we have for defined amounts of naira budget etc., while effectiveness (outcome) measures are in terms of the ease of access, and quality of public goods and services received by citizens – how long does it take to see a doctor, student-teacher ratios or other citizen satisfaction effects, to mention a few.
The critical point these issues raise is that for the new administration to successfully manage the expectation of citizens and be seen to have “performed”, it must clearly articulate a service delivery strategy that converts its current “shopping list” into a measurable set of service standards for which citizens are able to hold it accountable for performance. This is no mean feat, and requires a commitment from both the incoming government and the people working together as critical stakeholders to achieve a stable society in a complex governance environment. Achieving desired governance outputs and outcomes requires that pertinent questions regarding Nigeria’s fiscal federalism be re-examined and appropriate answers demanded at every level of government.
This evaluation is critical in view of the political economy of public service delivery in Nigeria which places different governance outputs in the different domains in our supposed three tiers of government (federal, state and local government). The implication of this lopsided federalism is a lack of clear delineation in accountability for specific service delivery outputs which has resulted in critical sectors of national life being left in “no man’s land”. A case in point is the national road safety and management strategy that leaves Nigerian roads in the unenviable position of being the third most unsafe roads in the world – according to a recent WHO Global status report on road safety.
When this statistic is juxtaposed against the multiplicity of functions between the state government-led Vehicle Inspection Services and the Federal Road Safety Corps, it becomes clear that inefficiencies in public sector agencies account for an unprecedented burden of service failure, from which no nation can extricate itself unless radical changes in public accountability are implemented. An unbundling of service delivery bottlenecks within the complex layers of our peculiar federal state will be key to successful change in all the sectors of our national life begging for change. This should inform a restructuring of the civil service in a way that aligns national priorities with specific agency mandates.
Parallel and duplicating functions that abound in our current public service agencies and remain avenues for inefficiency of production must be tackled with the same zeal as corruption and insecurity. In reality, the changes desired by the Nigerian populace can only be delivered when services delivered within the public sector (both civil and public services) reflect a harmonisation of the yearnings and expectations of citizens from government at all levels. How effectively the new governing party achieves this marriage of expectations and bridges the gaps will determine its success as change agents.
Putting service delivery at the heart of governance reflects an understanding that the perception of government/governance effectiveness is directly related to the experience of citizens when they access or are unable to access public goods and services. Unfortunately in Nigeria, this connection has in recent times been reduced to “stomach infrastructure” — made available only during electioneering seasons. This is where the real change must happen for governance to be meaningful, in spite of high sounding numbers about economic growth and perceived national prosperity that leaves the poor feeling poorer.
Effective and efficient service delivery is the magic glue that closes the expectation gap between government and the governed. In order to succeed in its change agenda, the APC and the President-elect in actualising their defined objective of instituting a set of progressive social welfare programmes need to engender a more robust public accountability framework under which each layer of government can be held accountable for failure of service delivery. It is only by setting clear performance standards in policy implementation; standards derived from wide consultations with citizens as critical stakeholders, that the new administration will set a new bar for meeting citizen expectations which currently range from the most simple, to sometimes unrealistic demands.