Nigeria: Towards the Creation of
Incentives and Structures for Good Governance
Chukwuma Charles Soludo, CFR
Being the Guest Lecture delivered at the
2012 Annual Conference of the Faculty of Arts,
Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka; Nigeria:
May 3, 2012
I: Introduction
The nature and quality of governance have been subjects of intellectual inquiry and practical application for more than 2,500 years. Especially since the emergence of the Greek city states and the postulations of the founding fathers of western philosophy (particularly Plato and Aristotle) the causal relationships between governance and the welfare of the people have pre-occupied thinkers and statesmen. It is the subject of discourse in literally every society in every historical epoch; in organizations and corporations.
At the international level, the first effort to codify and universalize the concept of good governance was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (December 10, 1948 at Palais de Chaillot, Paris). UDHR consists of 30 articles which have been elaborated in subsequent international treaties, regional human rights instruments, national constitutions, and laws. More particularly, the International Bill of Human Rights which took on the force of international law since 1976 consists of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its two Optional Protocols. Since then, the discussion and debate relating to governance found some common anchor, albeit that the communist countries and some Islamic states challenged some aspects of the Bill of Rights.The decade of the 1980s and 1990s seemed to divert attention in the developing world to a much narrower interpretation of governance and development under the auspices of the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP). In spite of these, the apparent legitimacy and colouration of ‘international best practice’ given to the UDHR and Bill of Rights have changed the global discourse on governance.
With the apparent fall of Communism, and the realization that the economistic view of progress and technocratic interpretation of governance as mainstreamed by the World Bank and IMF for decades were inadequate, governance (broadly interpreted) has once again become the new fashion of international development discourse. However defined or measured, most analysts now conclude that the quality of governance can take a society or organization to paradise or perdition. According to the World Bank (using its own measurement of governance as contained in the Worldwide governance indicators),”Good governance pays a very large development dividend. An improvement in governance of one standard deviation can triple a nation’s per capita income in the long run. Higher income also correlates with better governance, but the causal relationship is mostly from governance to income. Although governance quality on average changes slowly, it can in some countries decline sharply in a few short years, but it can also quickly improve” (World Bank Institute, 2006). Consequently, a whole new global industry on ‘good governance’ has emerged. There are now myriads of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations, Think-tanks, international and inter-governmental organizations (such as the NEPAD- African Peer Review Mechanism, etc) focusing on the measurement, comparisons and promotion of ‘good governance’.
Evidently, Nigeria has been a textbook classic of how not to govern. Most Nigerians point to bad governance or failed leadership as the bane of the society, and this failure pervades all strata of society: private sector corporations, NGOs, governmental institutions, religious and political organizations, etc. Everyone wants ‘good governance’ (whatever that means) but the problem is how to get one. Nigeria’s Constitution is continually undergoing ‘amendments’; armed militia groups (non-state actors) continue to challenge the authority of the state; there are deafening calls for ‘Sovereign National Conference’ and the restructuring of Nigeria to reflect ‘true federalism’; Nigeria continues to reap unprecedented oil boom but official statistics indicate that Nigerians continue to be poorer by the day (a rich country with impoverished people); moral values seem to be at the lowest ebb (despite an apparent boom in the religious industry); and Nigeria continues to rank badly on all global indices of good governance.
It is in this context that I commend the Faculty of Arts of Nnamdi Azikiwe University for focusing this 2012 conference on: ‘Humanities and the challenges and prospects of good governance in Nigeria’. The man, after whom this University is named, the late Rt. Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe devoted his lifetime to pursuit of good governance for Nigeria and the black race. He and his contemporaries must be turning in their graves as they watch Nigeria, the acclaimed ‘giant of Africa’ and after 51 years of political independence and earning more than US$600 billion from oil, still unable to provide any of the basic necessities of life to its citizens (food, clothing, shelter, water, electricity, security of life and property, etc) and ranked among the worst in the world. This conference, designed as a search for a new governance framework to rejig our journey to prosperity as a people is therefore a great honour to these ‘our heroes past’ (Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, etc) whom we always pledge in our National Anthem not to let their labour be in vain. It is our expectation that this would not end up as another talk-shop: Nigerians expect depth and rigour in your analysis, but most importantly, they expect actions from you. Philosophers, they say, have interpreted the world, the problem is to change it.
In this short intervention, I will focus on governance by government (and leave you to deal more with the other strata of governance). In particular, I argue that the search for productive governance framework will continue to be elusive until we redress the dysfunctional incentives and structures built around the destructive oil rents. I also argue that the change we desire will not occur on a sustainable basis unless and until there is an organized and sustained demand for change from the citizens. My goal is to provoke debate and hopefully over time those who believe can get organized to change the system.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section II takes a detailed tour of the philosophical, methodological and empirical issues related to attempting to conceptualize good governance. In Section III, we provide a focused interpretation of why good governance has eluded Nigeria; Section IV outlines the new incentive system and the mandatory civil society struggle required for a new governance infrastructure and outcomes to crystallize. We conclude in Section V.
II: Measuring Good governance: How would you know it if you see one?
A: Philosophical underpinnings of good governance:
As indicated earlier, governance is a concept with a long history. Like beauty, it is largely in the eye of the beholder, meaning different things to different people. To the early philosophers—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, etc, governance was about fulfilling the essence of the state which was to promote the ‘common good’. Giving operational meaning to the ‘common good’ is itself not easy. Some see the moral, ethical, philosophical, political aspects of governance, while some see just the economic aspects. Definitions abound, reflecting the diverse vintages of the discussants. I am sure that if we were to hand over pieces of paper to all the conference participants in this hall and let each person define governance and the elements of good governance, we would end up with an interesting mixed grill. There are also people here who could write fat books on philosophical, moral, and value underpinnings of good governance. But we must find some way to have a broadly shared notion of what we are talking about.
Since this is an academic conference, it is important to articulate the epistemological foundations of good governance. In an important sense, the struggle for good governance has been essentially a struggle for democratic governance that continually improves the welfare of the majority of the citizens. In this realm, we can distinguish two broad schools of thought: philosophical idealism, and dialectical materialism.
The first school of thought (philosophical idealism) which posits a metaphysical conception of an ideal state to which all societies must strive was dominated by the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Hegel, etc. Plato and Aristotle were unrepentant critics of the ‘government of the people’ kind of democracy, and instead favoured the rule by enlightened select elite. But they persistently espoused statehood and governance based on the metaphysical attributes of the state. While these thoughts evolved over more than 2,400 years, the modern day attempt to codify governance in terms of ‘Bill of Rights’ of the governed and government by ‘consent’ of the governed started with the Declaration of Independence by the United States in 1776, and the promulgation of the Constitution of the United States in 1787. To mobilize the people and conscience of the world to justify the war of independence, the founding fathers of America articulated the theory of legitimate government and showed how far the British rule deviated from that ideal. After winning the war, the founders then promulgated a Constitution to usher in a new form of government that would derive from the principles of good governance enunciated before the war. An important aspect of the legacy of the Americans is the restatement of the ‘natural laws’ or moral truths which guide human society. These higher laws of right and wrong (following from the traditions of philosophical idealism) form the basis for human laws, and against which they are evaluated. The opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence sums it all ina seminal statement:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it; and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles or organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.
Thus, by the natural rights, we were all created equal (equality before the law) and we are all born with the rights and do not get them from any government. Whatever powers are exercised by the government are given to them by the people – to exercise on their behalf. As the Declaration makes clear, the rights of the people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness imply the right to live our lives as we wish; to pursue happiness as we think best, provided that we respect the rights of others to do the same. In effect, based on the common law of tradition of liberty, property, and contract—its principles rooted in “right reason”, the founders of the American Constitution outlined the moral foundation of a free society.
To create the first formalized government of the people, by the people and for the people, the Constitution of the US starts with a statement that is largely copied in most countries’ Constitutions today as follows: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America”. Founded on strong moral foundation, both the Declaration of Independence and American Constitution articulate the first principles of political organization based on equality, justice and mass participation.
Given that the principles that underlie philosophical idealism are metaphysical and seemingly universal, they are seen to transcend time, space and technology. Being the immutable laws of nature and social life, they can be transported across geographic and cultural boundaries with equal applicability. These ‘ideals’ appealed to people all over the world and constituted the clarion call for all societies and groups fighting for justice and ‘good governance’. It must be a wonderful coincidence that the French Revolution occurred in 1789 (barely two years after the new US Constitution), and this added a new fervour to the demand for liberty and equality. The conviction of the universality of the natural laws has given the moral force to all those who have sought to export these ‘universal’ rights to all peoples and places by whatever means possible. In history, these ‘means possible’ have included colonialism, or forms of imperialism, policy conditionalities by international development agencies, etc. Napoleon even sought to use military force to spread democratic ideals throughout Europe.
While the principles of philosophical idealism have remained the foundation of western democracy, other schools of thought have mounted persistent challenges. Hegel, the German philosopher, introduced the dialectics into social analysis and philosophical thought ---the understanding of the struggles among contending and often contradictory forces that shape the evolution towards the Ideal. Karl Marx adapts the Hegelian dialectic into his philosophical materialism to create a powerful school of thought which can be summarized as dialectical materialism. Nnoli (2011: 6- 29) carefully articulates the key distinctive elements of this school of thought in comparison with philosophical idealism. The Marxian philosophy rejects the metaphysical conception of social life; and while adopting the Hegel’s dialectic insists that the dialectic occurs in matter not idea. He postulates the material basis of society, with social life beginning and ending with concrete human beings, in specific locational and material conditions. Ideas, under this school of thought, arise from society; are anchored in social realities and service the society, and must therefore be understood within the context of local conditions. According to Nnoli (2011: 11-12):
This epistemological perspective considers the general aspects, tendencies and laws of the development of society in order to elucidate the general laws governing the development of any human society. It believes that these general laws of world history operate variously in different historical epochs and concrete human situations due to the changing and diverse needs of woman/man, and the accompanying changes in her/his pattern of production. Consequently, this method of analysis investigates in detail each concrete human condition in order to delineate the social laws applicable to it, and the kind of social order created by these laws. Such a methodology cannot be the intellectual basis for the foreign cultural and ideological domination of one society by another. It is oriented towards the local conditions… Analytically, there are no superior or inferior societies. And there is no approximation to an ideal pattern since no such pattern exists. The human activity of each society must be the beginning and end of analysis. Under these circumstances, cultural domination is impossible. Imitation of one society’s social processes by another is outlawed.
Implicit in this materialistic interpretation of social progress is the atomization of human societies. It implies that each society can only be studied and understood within the boundaries of its own peculiarities. Learning from other societies is not possible, and attempting to produce a template of ‘good governance’ which is applicable across geographic boundaries is analytically flawed. One fundamental challenge to this mode of thinking is one of correctly delineating the appropriate boundaries of society that make for homogenous units of analysis. For example, can Nigeria be a unit of analysis and organized action simply because Lord Luggard said it is ‘one society’? Does South East of Nigeria, with differing material conditions and social relations of the various communities constitute an appropriate category for analysis? Under this framework, the conclusion must be that whatever objective conditions that a society finds itself at any point in time (which constitutes the negotiated equilibrium among the contending social forces) must, at that point in time, constitute its ‘optimum’ unless and until overthrown by new forces. Since there is no ‘ideal’ to works towards, and society is continually in a state of motion, the concept of good governance will remain a moving target and a continuous work-in-progress at best.
Nor should it imply that philosophical idealism with its seeming ‘universality’ and hence disregard to specific historical contexts be celebrated as the way to go. In the specific context of Nigerian democracy, Nnoli (2011: 10) highlights this deficiency by noting that: