SINCE 1999, Nigeria has been reengineering its governance architecture to purge it of militarism and those structural and political-economic injustices which have stifled development, nation building and innovative experimentation in the context of distorted federalism. 1999 therefore signals for Nigerians the commencement of a democratic dispensation that is meant to herald a culture of democratic governance and an enduring socio-economic development naturally associated with it. This expectation is rooted in the belief that democracy is inherently developmental in nature. A democratic state ought to be a developmental one since democratic governance facilitates a policy architecture that ensures and harnesses the administrative strength of the state to create a service delivery mechanism that delivers democratic dividends to the citizens.
Unfortunately, Nigeria’s democratic experiment is now exactly 17 years old and it does not seem that we have hit the right governance balance that makes, for example, Norway the first on the Democracy Index and also the first on the Human Development Index. Democratic governance is founded on the right commitment to policy articulation, formulation and implementation, backed by the weight of the administrative apparatuses of the state. Besides, Nigeria’s democratic credential is undermined by a serious development deficit marked by high unemployment rate, bad infrastructural base, high crime rate, low illiteracy, very low human development statistics, galloping poverty level, insurgency, etc.
It is this context that explains the emergence of the Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy (ISGPP) as an independent think tank concerned with getting government to work better for democratic governance and development. The ISGPP therefore hopes to leverage the twin instrument of research and executive education, by converging on existing community of scholars and practitioners, to intervene in Nigeria’s policy environment with the goal of facilitating creative responses to the development predicament in Nigeria.
I am glad to announce the arrival of the School’s Public Policy Group (PPG) because it serves as the concretisation of the evolution of the ISGPP as a Think Tank, in the mould of the Brookings Institution, Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy, Adam Smith Institute, to name just a few.
The ISGPP’s main objective is to be a problem-solving think tank that interjects regularly in Nigeria’s policy and development predicament. At the core of this objective is the Public Policy Group (PPG) made up of a multi-disciplinary teampolicy, industry, economics, governance, human rights, gender, education, social statistics/demography, foreign policy, public service, security, ICT, ethics/philosophy, communication/media, poetry/literature, local government, engineering, legislative studies, etc.inaugurated to rigorously explore and investigate the policy-research interface as a viable research programme.
The modus operandi of the Public Policy Group delineate the research programme into ten research clusters around which critical policy challenges and interventions can be made. These research clusters include (a) governance and politics; (b) economic growth and development; (c) management of economic fluctuations; (d) social development; (e) fiscal federalism; (f) exploitation of natural resources; (g) national security and defence (h) education, science and technology (i) climate and environment and (j) international affairs. These clusters are significant in policy terms because they provide the concrete policy platforms which allow the ISGPP to converge a critical mass of academics and practitioners into a brainstorming dynamics that generate policy dialogues necessary for energising continuing discourses on national development in Nigeria.
Membership of the PPG as presently constituted, represents the inner core in a concentric circle. What do I mean by that? These core members are to create the foundation of ISGPP as an aspiring national think tank, and as PPG activities unfold, the group obviously would necessarily enlist other experts after iterated gap analysis as might be advised by its action plan. Membership was deliberately restricted to those who are located within immediate reach for obvious reasons, so that progress is not constrained by limited resources. As ISGPP grows and as PPG activities expands, PPG is expected to also expand to enlist networks of experts including an International Advisory Board which will bring on board our network of foreign experts and expert-Nigerians in Diaspora.
If public policy is the soul of development, then it becomes difficult to see it solely as the preserve of the government and its officials. In the 21st century, governance has become so significant that it has drawn critical attention to the nature and the efficiency of the policy making dynamics. Countries all over the world are now, more than ever before, concerned with the need to modernise their policy architecture in order to enhance their decision making quotient and hence increase their development capabilities. Modernisation efforts often include (a) designing policies around outcomes; (b) making sure policies are inclusive, fair and evidence-based (c) avoiding unnecessary burdens on businesses (d) involving others in policy-making’ (e) making the decision making dynamics more forward and outward-looking and (f) learning from experience. The fourth modernising element is more worthwhile than it seems.
Traditionally, government used to be the sole agent of governance. It determines the policy and its implementation dynamics. But then, we know that many of government policies do fail. And one good reason is because the policies government make have been enclosed within a tight political cocoon that is subject to corruption and to a political economy that is rooted in structural and political injustice and political power play that together stifle development and innovation. The modern administrative revolution however demands the enlargement of the governance space in a way that makes the government only a regulator of both the state and non-state actors concerned with policy articulation, promulgation and implementation. One of these non-state actors are the policy networks, policy institutes and policy think tanks that assist the efforts of governments all over the globe to formulate good policies that can backstop democratic governance. The United States, for instance, is suffused with sufficient think tanks and policy institutes, more than 150 in all categories, to justify its rating as one of the full democracies in the world. The Brookings Institution is not only one of the famous and one of the oldest, but certainly one of the best in the world. It sets the policy pace for the United States in terms of governance, public policy, global economy, foreign policy and development.
Nigeria has less than ten national think tanks, and yet its development challenges are more than that of the United States. And even at that, the experiences of, say, the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) and the National Economic Summit Group (NESG) are enough to convince anyone foolhardy enough to think twice before getting into the think tank game in Nigeria. But then, obstinacy is the instigation for change; Nigeria will not make progress if prospective think tanks are scared off by its volatile and stagnating environment.
Enter the Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy (ISGPP). It serves as an innovative platform for community engagement on issues of governance, democracy and development. It therefore seeks to address skills deficits and advance knowledge required for transforming public institutions through the rethinking of the governance space, as catalysts for getting government to work better than they currently do for inclusive development and democracy.
The Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy faces a significant ecological problem because it aspires to become a national think tank stepping into the policy-development gap in Nigeria that is filled with socio-economic disarticulation, policy incoherence and political lethargy. In Nigeria, there is surely a profusion of good policies. And there is also no shortage of good intentions, as the tireless efforts of NIPSS and NESG confirm. But rarely do these policies make it through implementation to constitute a critical mass of decisions sufficient for developmental progress. And in engaging this policy-development problematic, the ISGPP has no benefit of organisational precedents, like the Brookings. Rather, there is a surplus of negative experiences. But this is all the more exciting because the Nigerian policy environment provides the challenging template for taking Nigeria seriously in terms of policy articulation and implementation.
The Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy is a risky venture. But then, Nigeria’s governance framework requires the entire intellectual arsenal that a nation can muster if it must move forward. Democracy goes beyond a mere nomenclature; it requires buckling down and making the policy architecture a formidable one that can withstand the enormity of our development predicament. Think tanks, it seems to me, come with a moral imperative. Whether private or governmental, the survival of the Nigerian state is non-negotiable. The national project is too huge and too fundamental a project to be allowed to founder. A decade has already been committed to its sustenance. The ISGPP is lending its strength to the future of that project.
- Dr. Olaopa is the Executive Vice Chairman of Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy (ISGPP), Ibadan