2.     Fixing Poor Infrastructure
THE trunk (federal) roads in the South West on which I have travelled frequently since late 2004 are worse today than they were in October/November 2004.  Electricity supply is more epileptic in Lagos State and Ondo State today than was the case in late 2004.  (Those are the two states where I spent most of my time during the period).

According to newspaper reports, the experiences of Nigerians in other states of the federation in respect of these two key infrastructures – roads and electricity – are very similar to my own experiences.  Yet, between1999 and December 2010, the huge budgetary allocations to roads and electricity are enough to provide better roads and more regular electricity supply across all the states of the federation.

What really happened?  The National Assembly’s effort to shed light on what happened in respect of electricity resulted in a report that is yet to be made public two or three years after its completion.  The public has no information on why the budgetary allocations for roads have not been used to improve the condition of the roads.

Regarding electricity, Nigerians were informed throughout the 2000s that efforts aimed at improving both generation and distribution was frustrated by saboteurs. Who are these saboteurs?  Are they the so-called business moguls who dominate the importation of generators and diesel?  Are they in collusion with the senior officials in PHCN and in the supervisory federal ministry?

Maybe.  Within the first six months in 2010, Nigeria imported more than $100million worth of generators, the highest in Africa.  Why have successive governments been unable to deal with these saboteurs?  It appears that inability to deal with the saboteurs has spurred the recent request for external assistance.

External actors to the rescue?  The external assistance to Nigeria in respect of electricity includes the following:
*The Nigeria Electricity and Gas Improvement Project, NEGIP – on-going, financed by the World Bank.

*The Economic and Power Sector Reform Programme, EPSERP – on-going, financed by the African Development Bank.  (The main goal of the programme is to support the Nigerian government in its effort to provide access to affordable and reliable electricity supply…

Until there is significant improvement in electricity supply, a wide range of economic activities, including activities based on information and communication technology, ICT, will continue to be at the mercy of generators.

The government has also sought World Bank assistance to fix the problem of poor roads – a $300million loan facility.  While this intervention would help achieve improvement in respect of some roads, the extensive road maintenance work that needs urgent attention can only be fixed through domestic efforts.

The failure of the existing arrangement for road maintenance through the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency, FERMA, is incontrovertible. I would propose that the challenge of fixing the bad roads in the country should be examined within the National Economic Council with a view to turning FERMA into an intergovernmental agency to assure a true federal/state partnership in this area.

3.     Achieving the MDGs
Today, Nigeria is not among the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that are commonly cited as likely to achieve the MDGs by 2015. (African countries considered likely to achieve the MDGs by 2015 include Cape Verde, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Malawi).  However, the Country’s Countdown Strategy (CDS) outlines a roadmap to accelerate progress towards the achievement of the MDGs, even if all of them would not have been achieved by 2015.

Achieving the MDGs is considered a TRA because the government is formally committed to it, along with 200 or so other countries, at the level of the United Nations, and also because the goals are consistent with the development goals that are spelled out in Nigeria Vision 20-2020 (NV20-2020).  Indeed, the MDGs have been folded into the implementation plans of NV20-2020. I would like to highlight three points in the CDS for the President’s immediate attention:

(i). The “Roadmap Matrix of Actions,
Lead Responsibilities and Timeframe” provided in the CDS covers only 2010 and 2011 because it was considered sensible to leave room for any refinements and modifications that the new administration might decide to introduce. There is need to assign responsibility for the possible refinements and modifications to a task force without delay.  The task force will produce a new roadmap matrix of actions, lead responsibilities and timeframe that would extend to 2015.

It would make sense for this task to be completed by September 2011.
(ii). The CDS correctly stresses the need to allocate the resources for implementing the CDS (a significant proportion is from the gains of debt forgiveness) in a manner consistent with the constitutional roles and responsibilities of the three tiers of government.  (This point is further underscored in Part Three below in the discussion of the intergovernmental dimension as one of the key implementation issues).  The CDS also stresses the need for stronger partnerships with key stakeholders in the implementation of the MDGs.

(iii). The idea of a national partnership and fiscal compact for MDGs proposed in the CDS makes eminent sense but it needs further elaboration. Given the huge shortfall between the estimates of the Office of the MDGs of the costs of financing the MDGs between now and 2015 and the envisaged budgetary allocations, the fiscal compact recommended in the CDS appears to be a necessity.  The elaboration of the proposal should include the preparation of an action plan.

I would suggest that a task force be constituted without delay to undertake the elaboration of the proposal and prepare an action plan.  It is likely that the government would be able to get one or two development partners to support this process, including the provision of experts from one or two countries that have established functional fiscal compacts.

PART THREE: Implementation issues

1.     Centrality of the Civil Service:
There is strong evidence in the development literature on the crucial importance of the Civil Service’s role in a government’s ability to deliver services to its citizen’s in most countries world-wide.  Perhaps, the most notable example in Nigeria is the huge contributions made by the Western Nigeria Civil Service to the outstanding development performance of the regional government between the mid-1950s and early 1960s.  Concrete results were recorded in the political, economic and social spheres, including the most widely acclaimed achievement, the implementation of a universal primary education, UPE, programme. Significantly, each of the 13 countries world-wide that recorded sustained high growth (7 percent and above) for 25 years or longer during the second half of the 20th Century is reputed to have a well-performing civil service. Botswana in Southern Africa and Singapore in South-East Asia are notable examples. (See, Commission on Growth and Development, 2008).

For the President to deliver concrete results in respect of the three Transformation Result Areas – rehabilitating education, fixing poor infrastructure, and achieving the MDGs – the weak implementation capacity of the Federal Civil Service that successive administrations have complained about since 1999 must be tackled rapidly.  In my opinion, the obvious starting point would be for the President to approve the immediate launching of the implementation of the National Strategy for Public Service Reform, NSPSR, crafted around four pillars, one of which is focused on Civil Service Administration Reform, CSAR.  (The three other pillars are: an enabling institutional and governance environment; an enabling socio-economic environment; and public financial management reform). Strikingly, the public service vision articulated in the NSPSR is “a world-class public service delivering government policies and programmes with professionalism, excellence, and passion”.

The envisaged target results of the CSAR pillar are: (i) effective governance of the Civil Service as an institution; (ii) organisational efficiency and effectiveness; (iii) professional and results-oriented civil servants; (iv) ethical, and accountable workforce with a changed work culture; and (v) improved competence of civil servants.  I would add that for the NSPSR (and especially the CSAR) to be successfully implemented, the handicap constituted by the frequent changes in the leadership of the Federal Civil Service (four between 2007 and 2011) must stop; the HOCSF to succeed the incumbent before the end of the year should be a competent and dynamic permanent secretary who would be able to serve for at least four years. Specific measures that could help improve the performance of the Civil Service and other public service institutions in the immediate, short and medium terms are spelled out in the NSPSR.

2.     Intergovernmental Dimensions
The provisions in the 1999 Constitution relating to the functions covered by the TRAs – education, infrastructure and the MDGs – mandate the involvement of all three levels of government – federal, state and local – in delivering services in respect of different activities that are on the concurrent list (for the federal and state governments) or in the Fourth Schedule on the functions of local governments.  Instead of cooperative and collaborative efforts among the three levels of government to ensure efficient and effective delivery of services in respect of the various development interventions, the citizens have experienced poor to mediocre service delivery because of unproductive acrimony and competition among the levels of government.  The negative consequences include continued decline and decay in the education sector, poor infrastructure (especially roads and electricity) and slow progress towards the achievement of the MDGs.

I would argue that four main factors are responsible for the poor management of intergovernmental relations in the delivery of services to the public in the Nigerian federal system.  First, there are the strong centralized and unitary features carried over from the military era and transplanted into the 1999 Constitution.  Two notable examples are  the role of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation Fiscal Commission, RMAFC, in the determination of remuneration of public officials and the listing of local government areas in the Constitution which makes the determination of the number of local governments required for effective service delivery within a state a matter for constitutional amendment

Being text of an inaugural lecture  delivered by Professor Ladipo Adamolekun at an event organised by the Office of the Head of the Civil Servi ce of the Federation.