CONSIDER the ongoing reform that the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (through the Task Force on Port Reforms) is carrying out in our maritime industry, which has led to the reduction of the number of official agencies in our ports, from about 14 to about five; and to the new 24-hour port operations regime.

Their efforts were reported (as at February this year) to have drastically reduced clearing time in our ports, from about 39 days to only seven! Absolutely commendable! The only thing to worry about is “sustainability”, especially after the reformers are gone, bearing in mind our national “reform-scuttle-reform” syndrome! Like all change initiatives, the port reform is up against all kinds of entrenched interests.

For example, the sacked agencies are understandably unhappy about their withdrawal from the ports, and will naturally like to be back! Characteristically, all the vested interests will simply bid their time, and wait for the reform team to disband; and then strive to scuttle the reforms!

In the case of our port reform, this may be relatively easy because our maritime sector does not as of today have a clear regulator that can try to protect the gains! In other words, these gains are already vulnerable to our usual “reform-scuttle-reform” syndrome!

We must break out of our national history of reforms that tend to move the country in circles, leading nowhere; reforms, which consume a lot of resources, create new institutions, and sometimes, cause a lot of disruptions and pains; only for us to still have the problem that we started with!

The list is long: Our previous port taskforces, anti-corruption, public procurement, monetisation, privatisation, SERVICOM, education reforms, ghost workers, football reforms, pension taskforces, and so on! One of the factors responsible for this syndrome is that our reform initiatives are often moving “against the grain”, which makes them easy to scuttle.

The other factor, which concerns us here, is that our reform teams, including our various taskforces and committees, tend to drive their reforms directly, by themselves, without bothering with our regulatory agencies!

In our situation of widespread corruption, any reform that a reform team executes directly by itself will tend to disintegrate, when the team disbands, if nobody has been positioned to continue navigating it!

On the other hand, it is possible for the reform team to still be the driver of the changes, but through the relevant regulatory institutions. Such reforms will tend to become “internalised” by the system and the regulatory agencies that will remain after the reformers are gone! Every reform team has a lifetime.

For example, if our past trend can be a guide, the present National Economic Management Team, NEMT and the Economic Implementation Team, EIT, are not likely to outlive the Jonathan Presidency! Compare this with the regulatory agencies which are corporate bodies with the advantages of perpetual succession, continuity and institutional memory; and which if carefully primed, can go on reforming, long after the reform teams are gone!

Of very strategic importance, considering the present state of the transformation programme, is that the transformation team, knowing that it is already running short of time, can prime these agencies, and use them to create multiple reform fronts across several sectors, thereby dramatically multiplying the pace of the programme. Our transformation programme has lost a lot of time! Government absolutely has to unleash it with a decisive bang to be able to achieve much before 2015!

Another vital benefit of leveraging our regulatory agencies is that the transformation team will in the process, be simultaneously rebuilding these institutions, rather than making that a separate project!

It is even the job of our regulatory agencies to optimise their sectors; and they can be excellent reformers, once properly primed! For example, some of Nigeria’s most successful transformational reforms were actually carried out by our regulatory agencies!

It was a regulatory agency, the NCC, that midwifed our telecoms sector reform of 2001 which revolutionalised the Nigerian telecoms industry and has made it one of the fastest growing telecoms markets in the world! It was also a regulatory agency, the CBN, that midwifed the 2004 banking industry reform which revolutionalised Nigeria’s financial sector. Nothing prevents us from priming many other regulatory agencies and using them for similar reforms of other sectors!

In view of all these, whatever our transformation team wants to do for our health sector, power sector, aviation sector, education sector, public procurement, maritime sector, pension system, and so on, should start with repositioning the corresponding regulatory agencies and using them to create multiple reform fronts!

The poor state of these agencies (which has seen many of them now driving the evils they were created to fight) should not becloud the enormous value that they can bring to our transformation programme!

Mr. GABRIEL ZOWAM, a risk management expert, wrote from  Edo State.