Reform as learning curve and change management: A policy think-piece

How does one connect between the good intentions for the governance of Nigeria that the Tinubu administration has brought to its election into office, and the reality of the seeming policy disarticulation that is already causing untold hardship with just a few weeks in office? The idea is simply that policy design and articulation are […]

How does one connect between the good intentions for the governance of Nigeria that the Tinubu administration has brought to its election into office, and the reality of the seeming policy disarticulation that is already causing untold hardship with just a few weeks in office? The idea is simply that policy design and articulation are not enough to articulate good governance. That is to say, for good governance to even take off, the government cannot afford to overlook or underestimate the importance of theoretical and conceptual issues in governance and the policy process. 

A crucial starting point is to ask the fundamental question of what development means as a basis to interrogate what ideological orientation would determine that development direction. Does the government want to toe the capability, income, welfare or basic needs approach to development? Dudley Seer, for instance, insists that development is measured by the extent to which a state ensures a steady decline in the levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality. When these are measured to have declined over time, then we can say the state is gradually developing. 

The second concept to get a handle on is the notion of reform. While we can concede that Nigeria is a reforming state, it has now become unfortunate that reform, going by historical data, hardly achieves the core of the policy, governance and development objectives they are meant for. Nigeria indeed, seems to have been a “benchmarking failure,” to quote a graphic phrase by Prof. Francis Egbokhare. The lack of a solid and sustainable reform dynamic has made it so that a failed past government suddenly becomes better in the light of the failure of the present government and its inability to achieve what the past government also failed to achieve!

One explanation for this reality is that reforms in Africa have often been designed in terms of redefining the role of the state. This is a highly ideological framework which speaks to the declining relevance of state-managed economies, especially in the third world, vis-à-vis the growing rate of progress recorded in the market economies of the Western societies. 

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And this ideological constraint has been the source of the discourse on development paradigms that put Nigeria, like other African states, on two opposing sides of adherence to the neoliberal Washington Consensus, on the one hand; and the developmental state theory that sees the utility in neoliberalism even if it is modified and monitored as exemplified by Asian Tigers.

Government must, therefore, make ideological assumptions that, in the case of Nigeria and the Tinubu administration, will jumpstart a democratic governance that is founded on a people-oriented development. This must be founded on several axiomatic principles and methodologies that the government will do well to put in mind and strategically communicate. 

First, and in layman’s terms, it will most likely get worse before it starts to get better. In other words, there is no change management that comes easy. Thus, to be able to make the omelet of inclusive development outcomes, wealth creation, poverty reduction, infrastructural development, service delivery of public goods and global competitiveness, the government and the people must know that eggs must be cracked; no gain without pains.

This understanding leads in several methodological directions. One, this nature of reform must create in the government the willingness to make tough decisions that is however undergirded by credibility, sincerity and exemplary leadership which invests in the famous national resilience that Nigerians are known for. 

Two, the government also needs a strategic communication framework to convey to Nigerians the trajectory of moving from our present state to a better one. This enables a gradual reassuring change of national mental models from rampant cynicism to vibrant optimism once the people believe the government and its willingness to work on their behalf. And the message to pass across, with sincerity and credibility, is that fundamental policies with far-reaching development impact often take very long to gestate and mature. This is what accounts for why governments balance between short (the constraining 4-year tenure) and long-term development objectives.

Once the fundamental axioms are taken care of, the Tinubu administration then needs further follow-up on the nature of reform that must underlie its change management. The first lesson the Tinubu administration must learn from the messy and complex nature of reform is to get the basic right. This translates into thinking through the sequencing and phasing of reforms. This demands an acute methodological creativity that balances between reform as continuous institutional learning and improvement and reform as a comprehensive big-bang transformation. And in this regard, part of the juggling between short-term and long-term objectives might be the determination of what is of immediate value to Nigerians, i.e. “stomach infrastructure”, and what takes a while to accrue as development legacies and benefits that are capable of creating the quantum of transitions that ultimately ignite desired national transformation. 

Finally, past governance experience has taught us that there is no way to reach the goal of national productivity without first nipping the cost of governance tragedy in the bud. This, therefore, demands a national waste management framework that can contain the unbridled chains of redundancies and unnecessary institutional multiplications that burden our fiscal accountability. And this is a reform move that cannot be achieved without bringing the labour unions into a developmental journey whose aim is to undermine the existing adversarial industrial relations and substitute it with a developmental one.   

By going back to the basics in terms of governance and reforms, the Tinubu government will not only be ensuring it will not be repeating the mistakes and errors of the past, it will also be laying a solid foundation for a better Nigeria—after sixty-three years of trying. 

Olaopa is a retired Federal Permanent Secretary