Rocket surgery made easy: El-Rufai’s and other disappointing manifestos

There’s another insight, however, to derive from this advice.  It isthe other meaning that this column wants to explore on this occasion.  Thus, the essence of Mahathir’s statement is for leaders and aspiring leaders to have concrete plans on how to serve their constituencies and constituents.  If we adopt this meaning, then most of the […]

There’s another insight, however, to derive from this advice.  It isthe other meaning that this column wants to explore on this occasion.  Thus, the essence of Mahathir’s statement is for leaders and aspiring leaders to have concrete plans on how to serve their constituencies and constituents.  
If we adopt this meaning, then most of the documents which pass for manifestos in Nigeria are rather disappointing – what I refer to as bullet-point plans or what is referred as the “sky is blue” insight.
How v what
Before we move further however, let me ask you two questions.  One, what do you usually eat for breakfast?  Two, how do you usually eat breakfast?  As you ponder these questions, ask yourself which of them yields more useful responses?  Which of them unpacks more meaning?  I’ll return to this in a moment.
The why-why technique
In knowledge management, there’s a technique called the why why prompts used to press the line of enquiry to several stages removed from the immediate causal factor – especially in air accident investigation literature.  D. Zotov suggests that the “why?” question should be posed at least five times for each line of enquiry.  David Moore, a friend of my Ph.D. supervisor and whom I consulted for the methods section of my thesis, argues that even three repetitions have proven to be adequate. If we applied the “why?” prompt to our breakfast question, we’d have: why do you take breakfast? I take breakfast because it’s good for me.  Why is it good for you? It’s good for me because it gives me any energy? Why do you need the energy? I need the energy for my morning activities.
This child-like prompts yield some information, but there’s something even better.  And this is where we returned to the two questions above and it is to what I intend to draw the attention of our manifesto writers and people with political aspiration.
“What do you usually take for breakfast?” would afford us a response such as “I eat eba, moi-moiand kunu.”  This response is not very helpful. It only unpacks content.
However, if we ask “how do you eat your breakfast?” it would unpack both process and – to some extent, content.  This process unpacking strategy is what I’m proposing our leaders should adopt.  That is, it is not enough to list the programmes you intend to do, you should also have a system or a way to implement your plans. That’s the how part of the question.
Accordingly, Zappavigna argues that the aim of the grammar-targeted [the how] interview method is to achieve a more elaborated description of a person’s knowledge than can be achieved by a content-targeted strategy. I want to extend the argument that if we can unpack tacit knowledge from individuals using the “how” question, we can also use it to plan the transformation we need in Nigeria.

For example, if you’ve listed education as an area you want to improve, you should tell us how.  Many of the manifestos I’ve seen so far do not include.  When we were debating the contents of the manifesto of one of the Niger state gubernatorial candidates, someone told me these details are not supposed to be put in the manifesto.  I agreed with him; however, the important question is: do they have another document which details the “how” part of their programmes?  Many of them do not; and believe me, I’ve checked.  
We’ve already wasted some 15 years of our democracy.  Thus, anyone who has the audacity to contest for political office, should have complete plans and how to implement these plans so that he could hit the ground running and not waste our time studying the systems for six months or even one year after assumption of office.
An example will make my point plainer.  If you want to improve our education system, how do you want to do it?  Training teachers?  No.  That’s not a system.  A system would be adopting the Singaporean curriculum. A system that has worked for 20 years.  It’s also a system which many countries – including developed ones – are borrowing from.  Right now, at this moment, it’s the best in the world as regards math and science education – and it has been for 20 years.
The 12-page El-Rufai manifesto listed healthcare as an area to improve. It listed 11 areas where this would be done including a “Focus on prevention of illness through continuous immunization, improved
environmental sanitation, fumigation of high risk areas, and nutritional
enlightenment programmes and the development of diagnostic and curative
capacities when illness does occur.”
This only answers the “what?” question not the “how?”
Answering the “how?” question would have been adopting the Malaysian health system where patients pay RM1 (N53) for every visit.  Can we copy their system and have Nigerians pay N50 that can afford full services at the hospital and a truckload of medicines?
El-Rufai however, is such a person that would find ways to make his government an excellent one.  A reference is only made to him because I expected to see more from him.  In any case, he calls his manifesto a “draft” document in which he invites people to contribute.
Starting from next week, I’ll take some of these ideas and give examples of  societies where they’ve been successful and how we’re going to copy or even steal from them.