THE GOVERNORS AND THE GOVERNED:

1. THE GOVERNORS AND THE GOVERNED: TOWARDS IMPROVED ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ACHIEVING GOOD DEVELOPMENT PERFORMANCE Ladipo Adamolekun B.A. (Ibadan), M. Phil. (Ife), D.Phil. (Oxon), NNOM Independent Scholar and Professor of Management, Federal University of Technology, Akure. NNMA Award Winners’ Lecture Wednesday, December 3, 2008

2. THE GOVERNORS AND THE GOVERNED: TOWARDS IMPROVED ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ACHIEVING GOOD DEVELOPMENT PERFORMANCE OUTLINE Preamble Part 1: Definition and Dimensions of Accountability Part 2: Accountability and Governance in Nigeria Part 3: Nigeria’s Current Development Performance Part 4: Seven Concluding Thoughts and Recommendations Appendix 1: The Eight Millennium Development Goals References Endnotes

3. PREAMBLE This Lecture focuses on two themes that are presented in the form of propositions • Making rulers accountable to the governed (citizens) is a worthy objective to pursue in a democratic or democratizing polity. • There is a strong link between the level of accountability in a polity and a government’s prospect in achieving good development performance.

4. PART ONE: DEFINITION AND DIMENSIONS OF ACCOUNTABILITY Accountability means holding public officials responsible for their actions Three main types of accountability are commonly distinguished: • Political Accountability • Legal Accountability • Administrative Accountability A fourth that has assumed increased salience in the last quarter-century is Accountability through Public Opinion. Canada’s broad-gauged definition of accountability is good practice.

5. POLITICAL ACCOUNTABILITY

6. Electorate Legislature Ombudsmen + Auditors Minister MDA Citizens, Civil SocietyOrganisations Media POLITICAL ACCOUNTABILITY Figure 1: Vertical, Horizontal and Diagonal Accountability

7. POLITICAL ACCOUNTABILITY • Hybrid approach: influences of British parliamentary system and US presidential system • Britain: Parliamentary Question Time; Public Accounts Committee ;and National Audit Office; and Public Accounts Committee – “the terror of government departments” • USA: Congressional Hearings and Investigations and activities of the Government Accountability Office “The Taxpayers’ Best Friend”. • Nigeria: Public Accounts Committee and Auditor-General Office; NASS Hearings and Investigations – overall assessment: weak political accountability.

8. LEGAL ACCOUNTABILITY Public officials can be summoned before courts to account for their actions. The courts are to protect citizens - providing judicial remedies to citizens who are adversely affected by administrative actions that are contrary to the law. • British approach: judicial control through the common law courts “in many of his dealings with the executive (including the administration), the citizen cannot get justice by process of law”. (Lord Devlin) • French approach: judicial control through administrative courts: worldwide admiration of its effective protection of the citizen against encroachments by the State. • Nigeria inherited the British approach; courts have been of limited effectiveness in protecting the citizen against the state (significant limitation on judicial independence; lower capacity of the justice system; and citizens’ limited access to the courts due to the cost of litigation).

9. ADMINISTRATIVE ACCOUNTABILITY Administrative accountability refers to rules and norms as well as some independent commissions that serve as mechanisms to hold civil servants within governmental administration accountable. • Financial accountability: internal auditors who are staff of the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF); “independent” auditors in the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (OAuGF); and transparent and competitive procurement. • Anticorruption bodies: mandate to lead the fight against corruption that undermines both socioeconomic development and standards of ethical conduct in poor countries. Code of Conduct Bureau, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI). • Public Complaints Commissions (PCCs) – Nigeria’s Ombudsman-like institution – “citizens’ defender”, protecting citizens against maladministration

10. PUBLIC OPINION AND ENFORCEMENT OF ACCOUNTABILITY Public opinion interfaces with the main types of accountability. • Power of the vote: the sovereign people (citizens/voters/taxpayers) are able to use their votes to elect officials at periodic free, fair and credible election cycles (APRM 2008 on “limitation of vertical accountability in Nigeria”). • Activities of the media and those of watchdog-oriented civil society organisations (CSOs): they seek to put pressure on the formal institutions of accountability. Need for freedom of the press (enhanced by FOI law) and progress towards education for all • Two good practices: citizen report card (CRC) pioneered in Bangalore, South India, in the mid1990s, and participatory budgeting, coordinated by an international Nongovernmental Organisation (NGO), International Budget Project since the late 1990s

11. Box 3: Highlights of Canada’s Federal Accountability • Reform the financing of federal political parties • Strengthen the role of the Ethics Commissioner (e.g. a new Conflict of Interest Act). • Improve the federal appointments process – create a Public Appointments Commission • Ensure truth in budgeting with a Parliamentary Budget Authority • Clean up the procurement of government contracts • Provide real protection for whistleblowers • Strengthen access to information legislation • Strengthen the power of the Auditor General • Strengthen auditing and accountability within departments • Create office of independent Director of Public Prosecutions (to prosecute criminal offences under federal legislation)

12. PART TWO: ACCOUNTABILITY AND GOVERNANCE IN NIGERIA • Service Delivery • Taxation • Decentralization • Corruption Coupling the concept of accountability with four key governance issues:

13. ACCOUNTABILITY AND SERVICE DELIVERY • Six fundamental tasks of a modern state: • Establishing a foundation of law; • Maintaining a nondistortionary policy environment including macroeconomic stability; • Investing in basic social services and infrastructure; • Protecting the vulnerable; • Protecting the environment; • Assuring the security of life and property of citizens. • Overview of accountability and service delivery in post-independence Nigeria: three phases – • Pre-military governance phase, • Military governance phase, • Post-military (contemporary) governance phase. States need to develop and nurture the capability required to ensure efficient and effective performance of these tasks.

14. ACCOUNTABILITY AND SERVICE DELIVERY Pre-Military Phase The public enjoyed, in varying degrees, quality public services. Examples included, among others, roads that were regularly maintained by functioning public works departments (PWDs) with a network of maintenance posts, train service that was predictable, quality primary and secondary/technical education, and a premier university (at Ibadan) that was among the best in Africa and was widely regarded at home and abroad as a world-class institution. Furthermore, stable government policies, a framework of order, and serious attention to implementation resulted in broad-gauged satisfactory development performance that ensured the vast majority of the population lived above poverty level; those below were estimated at about 25 percent in the mid1960s.

15. ACCOUNTABILITY AND SERVICE DELIVERY Military Rule Phase • The authoritarianism and arbitrariness that were its essential features are the antithesis of accountability; because military rulers staged coups “for profit”, corruption assumed unprecedented proportions during the three decades of military governance; poor to mediocre performance of successive military regimes in the provision of services to the public; poverty at a level unknown in 1966 – with about 70 percent of Nigerians living in poverty by 1999, that is, on less than US$1 per day. Post-military Rule Phase • Rulers loud on rhetoric of “dividends of democracy” for the public but poor record of services today – from electricity to transportation, education , health, and low ICT penetration and use – strong evidence that governments’ development performance is below both the promise of the politicians and the expectations of the citizens. SERVICOM – modest impact.

16. ACCOUNTABILITY AND TAXATION • “No taxation without representation” slogan of the American colonies’ fight for independence is widely cited to illustrate the link between taxation and accountability. In the modern state, the slogan stands for the right of citizens to demand services from a government to which they pay taxes. • Complaint of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG): “We do not see the justification for the quantum of taxes that we paid because it does not reflect on our living conditions or the development of the state. We are still providing for ourselves those amenities that the government ought to provide for the citizenry such as light, roads, hospitals, schools, and so on. So, why then are we paying taxes?” (March 2008) • “Taxation is fundamental to the survival of democracy in the country ... because the people do not feel the pinch from their own pocket and because they are not paying the correct taxes, they could not hold their leaders accountable for what they are doing...”– Minister of Finance (July 2008).

17. ACCOUNTABILITY AND TAXATION • “Why are we paying taxes?” (NUPENG president) and “Do the rulers derive the mandate to govern from the citizens through free, fair, and credible elections?” - two crucial issues to address in the discussion of the relationship between taxation and accountability. • The shaping of tax policies and their implementation are significantly influenced by political considerations because rulers know that the financial resources needed to run governments are derived from tax payers who determine whether or not they retain political power. The tax payer/voter reacts to (i) the fairness and levels of taxation and (ii) the goods and services that governments provide to the public. • In Nigeria, the combination of electoral legitimacy deficit and the virtual total reliance on oil money to run governments at all levels has resulted in a disconnect between taxation and accountability. • To consolidate democratic governance in the country, the link between accountability and taxation must be re-established.

18. ACCOUNTABILITY AND DECENTRALIZATION Of the three degrees of decentralization • Deconcentration • Delegation, • Devolution • The focus is on devolution • Devolution of specific powers to sub-national government units – regional/state/provincial, local governments and municipalities • Emphasis is on bringing government close to the sovereign people through local self-governing institutions responsible for promoting political participation, ensuring efficient service delivery, and enhancing effective resource mobilization. Strong interconnections among all three objectives – India (1890s) and Nigeria (1976).

19. ACCOUNTABILITY AND DECENTRALIZATION • Pursuit of the lofty aims of 1976 LG reform was short-lived as the civilian governments bastardised the system between 1979 and 1983 and successive military governments increased the number of LGs from the 301 created in 1976 to 774 LGs listed in the constitution without any apparent link to accountability and results-orientation • Military rule and abandonment of characteristic features of devolution within a federal system – triumph of centralism and arbitrariness. • Disregard for accountability of the military era persisted between 1999 and 2007 e.g. contract for the construction of health centres in each of the 774 LGAs with funds deducted at source from LGs’ share in the Federation Account. State erosion of the autonomy of local governments and disregard for accountability.

20. ACCOUNTABILITY AND DECENTRALIZATION • Since 1999 - clamour for local self-governance structures that are closer to grassroots: “development areas” e.g. in Lagos state 37 Local Council Development Areas in addition to the 20 LGAs) and in Niger state 25 LGAs have been subdivided into 274 “Ward Development Committees” • Constitute each of the 97,000 communities identified by DIFFRI in late 1980s into local self-governance institutions (LSGIs) - more accountable to their communities and greater popular participation in governance. • Constitution to mandate states to allocate a fixed percentage of their allocations among the LSGIs – state governments free to determine size and number of LSGIs

21. TABLE 1: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES ON THE NUMBER AND SIZE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

22. ACCOUNTABILITY AND CORRUPTION Corruption is abuse of office for personal gain - thrives best in contexts where those who exercise state authority are not held accountable for their actions. • Several formulas and equations that seek to summarize the relationship between authority, accountability and corruption. • Corruption = Monopoly Power + Discretion by officials – Accountability • Corruption = (Monopoly Power + Discretion) – (Accountability + Integrity + Transparency) • Less Discretion + More Accountability = Less Corruption.

23. ACCOUNTABILITY AND CORRUPTION World Bank 1997 highlights linkage of accountability to the problem of corruption: • policy distortion index • predictability of judiciary index • ratio of civil service wages to manufacturing wages • merit-based recruitment index Low scores in respect of two or more of the indices results in institutionalized or systemic corruption and countries characterized by systemic corruption invariably record poor social development indicators. Nigeria is one of such countries (TI’s CPI and “The Ibrahim African Governance Index”) • the ratio of civil service wages to manufacturing wages in the country is low, • merit-based recruitment ceased to be the norm in the country since the advent of military rule.

24. TABLE 2: NIGERIAS SOCRE ON THE CORRUPTION PERCEPTION INDEX (CPI) 1996 - 2008

25. CONSEQUENCES OF CORRUPTION A. Economic Growth: public spending and revenue collection • Distorts the composition of government expenditure • Reduces expenditure on operations and maintenance • Lowers the quality of public infrastructure and services • Reduces government revenues • Lowers incentives to private investment B. Other Consequences • Undermines legitimacy and credibility of the state • Influences outcomes of the legal and regulatory processes • Violates the social and economic rights of the poor and the vulnerable • Erodes the moral fabric of society

26. ACCOUNTABILITY AND CORRUPTION • Anti-corruption agenda adopted in 1999 and maintained in 7-Point Agenda. - ICPC and the EFCC were created in 2000 and 2002 respectively to implement the anticorruption agenda. • EFCC (2003-2007) recorded some impressive results - recovery of huge amounts of stolen public wealth and in getting many corrupt Nigerians (high and low) punished. ICPC has also been diligent in prosecuting the fight against corruption ; leader in developing and implementing a corruption prevention education programme. • Significant contributions of some CSOs (including faith-based organisations), the media, and some concerned individuals to the fight against corruption: e.g. anticorruption campaign of the Nigerian Catholic Secretariat Forum and Wole Soyinka Investigative Reporting Award (WSIRA) - an incentive to journalists to better perform their watchdog role with particular emphasis on anticorruption and human rights. • Corruption remains pervasive in the country and the institutions established to tackle them still have much work to do.

27. PART THREE: NIGERIA’S CURRENT DEVELOPMENT PERFORMANCE • Summary of Evidence of Nigeria’s Poor Development Performance • Weak Accountability and Good Development Performance - Challenge of a Counterfactual • Weak Accountability is a key Explanatory Factor for Nigeria’s Poor Development Performance. - Electoral legitimacy deficit and poor development performance - Weak state capability and poor development performance - Institutionalized corruption and poor development performance • Overview

28. Summary of Evidence of Nigeria’s Poor Development Performance Box 7: Evidence of Nigeria’s Weak Development Performance Table 3: Nigeria’s Human Development Index and Ranking - Selected Years between 1990 and 2007

29. WEAK ACCOUNTABILITY AND GOOD DEVELOPMENT PERFORMANCE – CHALLENGE OF A CONTERFACTUAL The good development performance recorded by Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand as well as Pinochet’s Chile during many years when they were characterized by significant evidence of weak accountability. • There are three major explanatory factors for the apparent contradiction: • Strong and capable states – able to perform above average in carrying out the fundamental tasks of a modern state; • Predictability of the justice system in respect of the protection of property rights and enforcement of contracts; and • Monomaniacal focus of the political leadership in each state on achieving good development performance, with emphasis on poverty reduction. • Significant steps during the last decade in the direction of increased accountability in response to citizens’ demands.

30. THE ROLE OF WEAK ACCOUNTABILITY ON NIGERIA’S DEVELOPMENT PERFORMANCE • Electoral legitimacy deficit and poor development performance: Nigeria – neither the authoritarian (military) leaders who seized power “for profit” nor civilians who became rulers through rigged and fraudulent elections genuinely sought to promote national development. Comparison: Brazil – president’s electoral mandate has meant an obligation to move his country towards equitable and rapid socio-economic development (“Bolsa Familia”). • Weak state capability and poor development performance: In the Nigerian case, it has been a vicious cycle of weak governments that are unaccountable and with records of poor development performance. • Institutionalized corruption and poor development performance According to the 7-Point Agenda, “Corruption damages Nigeria’s reputation in the international community, undermines her ability to fight poverty, stifles the inflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and economic growth and leads to a lack of proper services by the government.”

31. OVERVIEW TABLE 4: KEY DETERMINANTS OF DEVELOPMENT PERFORMANCE – COMPARISON BETWEEN NIGERIA AND SOME GOOD PERFORMERS

32. PART FOUR: SEVEN CONCLUDING THOUGHTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS • Electoral legitimacy: The primary pre-requisite for ensuring citizen demand for accountability in democratic or democratizing polities is the sanctity of the citizens’ votes. It is through the use of their votes to reward or sanction rulers at periodic elections that citizens become assured of their power to call their rulers to account. In countries where this pre-requisite is absent, all efforts aimed at promoting citizen demand for accountability are doomed to failure or at best, would be of very limited effect. Recommendation: Getting electoral legitimacy right - that is assuring the conduct of free, fair, and credible elections in which citizens’ votes count - must be considered a priority challenge because it is critical to giving meaning to the accountability of the governors to the governed.

33. Service delivery: Service delivery which is the primary purpose of government in the modern state is also the most critical yardstick for assessing the extent to which a government is accountable to its public. Therefore, improving service delivery – its scope, quality, accessibility and timeliness - should be a priority of governments at all three levels - federal, state and local. Recommendation: The modest effort aimed at improving service delivery through SERVICOM needs to be scaled up to become a broader-gauged initiative that would be integrated with the evolving public service reform programme of the federal government. The aim should be to achieve a strengthened public service with the capacity to satisfactorily perform all the six fundamental tasks of the state highlighted in the Lecture.

34. 3. Budget and service delivery nexus: At the heart of the critically important accountability and service delivery nexus is the budget. Both the internal accountability measures within the executive and the external accountability efforts of legislatures, the media and watchdog-oriented civil society groups must focus sharply on the budget: its appropriation, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. Recommendation: Strategic coalitions, involving the media and watchdog-oriented civil society organizations on the one hand, and the key legislative appropriation and oversight committees on the other, are required at all levels of government to ensure that budgetary allocations are spent on the purposes intended and that services are delivered to the public with fairness and impartiality.

35. 4. Combating corruption: The widely-acknowledged inverse relationship between accountability and corruption (the weaker the former the more pervasive the latter) should mean that promoters of the former must at all times and in all circumstances be opposed to the latter. In countries or institutions where this is not the case, accountability will be weak and corruption will thrive, with the serious negative consequences highlighted in the Lecture. Because impunity is the antithesis of accountability and an enabler of corruption at the top political leadership level, genuine commitment to enhancing accountability and reducing corruption must include unequivocal support for the abandonment of impunity. Furthermore, the emphasis on ethical reorientation in the anticorruption programme in the 7-Point Agenda needs serious attention. Recommendations: (i) Section 308 of the 1999 Constitution on “restriction of legal proceedings” against presidents, vice-presidents, governors and deputy governors during their tenures should be deleted. (ii) Anticorruption programmes should, in all cases, be accompanied by ethical reorientation pursued through appropriate civic education programmes.

36. Promoting accountability through collaboration across sectors: Given the country’s prevailing level of institutional, social, political, and economic development, formal accountability mechanisms are likely to remain of limited effectiveness for several more years in making governments accountable to citizens. However, there are examples both within and outside Nigeria of informal arrangements that seek to enforce accountability through shifting, tactical broad coalitions that are focused on issues (for example, FOI and anti-corruption) and involve actors from public, private, and voluntary sectors. Recommendation: Simultaneously with efforts to strengthen formal accountability institutions under the public service reform programme of the federal government, it is desirable for self-selected institutions or groups of institutions across sectors to collaborate to promote accountability on selected critical issues such as FOI, transparent procurement, and anti-corruption.

37. Comparative perspectives: The consistent reliance on comparative perspectives in the discussion of the issues examined in this Lecture derives from a strong belief that in seeking solutions to the challenge of improving accountability to achieve good development performance in Nigeria, it makes eminent sense to learn from both good and bad practices in different parts of the world. Recommendation: Of the good practices cited in the Lecture that Nigeria can learn from, I would like to highlight two: (i) the serious and honest translation of electoral mandate into developmental policies that are consistently and faithfully implemented as witnessed in Lula’s Brazil is a lesson that our political class should try hard to learn from and (ii ) the four key determinants of development performance highlighted in the Lecture - development-oriented leadership, state capability, corruption level, and accountability –as well as their dynamic interrelationships deserve the attention of all the top political leaders and their advisers at both the federal and state levels.

38. 7. Critical importance of education: As a final thought on the subject, I would like to stress that education is the ultimate solution to the twin challenges of holding rulers accountable to the governed and achieving good development performance. Only an educated citizenry can meaningfully demand accountability. And the evidence in the development literature is that a country’s progress towards prosperity for all its citizens is, to a considerable extent, dependent on the level of education in the society. Recommendation: The critically important role of education – correctly stressed by Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US President, and our own Obafemi Awolowo, first head of government in Western Nigeria - is a strong justification for it to become the priority of priorities for governments at all levels as well as for every family in the land.

39. DEDICATION To my parents, my family, my friends, students and teachers, and to the University of Ibadan, Obafemi Awolowo University (Ile-Ife), and the University of Oxford, for their varying contributions to the enabling environment that made it possible for me to become a Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) laureate. I thank you all for your attention.