Introduction
Nigeria transitioned to democracy in 1999 ending decades of military rule. However, democratic institutions remain fragile given a history of coups, endemic corruption, ethnic conflicts and poverty. Promoting good governance is imperative for national development. This article analyses key areas for reform and measures Nigeria can undertake across dimensions of accountability, transparency, rule of law, participation, and responsiveness to consolidate its democracy.
Electoral Reforms for Credible Representation
Nigeria’s 2019 elections were a critical test that exposed weaknesses in the electoral process including vote buying, voter suppression, results manipulation, and election violence. Key reforms needed include:
- Independent Candidate Participation: The constitution mandates candidates be nominated via political parties. Permitting independent candidates widens the choice for voters dissatisfied with parties.
- Campaign Finance Regulation: Lack of spending limits enable vote buying and undue influence. Capping donations and expenditures curbs abuse of money power in politics.
- Technology Adoption: Electronic voting machines, biometric voter IDs, and results transmission systems enhance integrity and trust in outcomes. India offers a model for scaling adoption.
- Robust Collation Systems: Manipulation of results from the polling unit to local government collation centres must be prevented through tamper-proof processes.
- Voting Access Expansion: Supplementary voting mechanisms like postal ballots, diaspora voting, and early voting facilitate inclusivity.
- Youth Engagement: Lowering age limits for contesting elections gives youth greater representation. The constitution mandates 35 years for the president, 30 years for governors.
- Diaspora Voting Rights: Over 1.7 million Nigerians live abroad without voting rights. Enabling diaspora voting recognizes their stakeholding.
- Violence Mitigation: Voting security provided by neutral centralized agencies rather than partisan police reduces conflicts. Online hate speech monitoring aids prevention.
- Depoliticizing INEC: Appointments based on merit rather than political affiliation ensure election commission independence and integrity.
- Civic Education: Grassroots awareness campaigns on electoral rights and responsibilities promote informed voting.
Overall, Nigeria’s electoral act requires comprehensive reform for transparency, trust, and protection of people’s mandates. This will enable governance that genuinely represents citizen’s interests.
Institutionalizing Separation of Powers
The concentration of power enables impunity. Nigeria’s constitution created three branches of government but overlap in powers persists in areas like budgeting, appointments and lawmaking, undermining checks and balances. Reforms should clearly delineate roles:
- Legislature: Separate from executive branch. Core law-making functions involve the representation of constituent interests.
- Executive: Headed by directly elected president rather than an appointed prime minister. Focused on policy implementation, national security and enabling prosperity.
- Judiciary: Independent appointment and budgets. The core role of impartial interpretation of laws and service delivery oversight.
Parliamentary oversight over budgets, appointments and the performance of the executive branch should be strengthened. Simultaneously, judiciary independence and enforcement capacity need improvement to check excesses of both parliament and executive.
Federalism Rebalancing for National Cohesion
Nigeria’s federal structure has become excessively centralized over time, marginalizing states and fuelling ethnic tensions. Recommendations include:
- Revenue Decentralization: States currently access only 20% of revenues, weakening development and governance capabilities. The global average share is typically 40-45% for subnationals.
- State Police: Localized law enforcement enhances security responsiveness, oversight and community relations. Can evolve from existing federal units.
- Gradual Devolution: Progressive power transfer to states in areas like policing, land, and local taxation based on institutional readiness.
- Equitable Access to Economic Assets: Regulations around ownership and royalties from national assets like oil ensure inclusive growth.
- Reduced Role Duplication: Streamline governance functions between tiers based on subsidiarity principles. Avoid overregulation through overlapping agencies.
- State Collaboration: Interstate commissions, for example for Niger Delta development, and regional economic partnerships enable collective bargaining with the centre.
A rebalanced federal structure can enhance satisfaction with the Nigerian project across all communities and geographies by ensuring local aspirations shape governance priorities.
Tackling Corruption Through System Reforms
- Public Procurement Reform: E-procurement, competitive tendering, and vendor databases enhance transparency in nearly $10B annual public contracts spending. Open contracting principles should be adopted.
- Asset Declaration: Expanding the scope of public officials declaring assets improves accountability. Online public repositories with verification enhance enforcement.
- Money Laundering: Regulating bank accounts of politically exposed persons, improved KYC compliance and open ownership registries for assets like real estate to plug illicit financial flows.
- Whistleblower Protection: Shielding witnesses, anonymous reporting channels and incentives encourage exposure of graft.
- Election Spending Transparency: Timely disclosure of campaign contributions and expenditures enables scrutiny.
- Beneficial Ownership Registry: Comprehensive identity data for owners behind shell companies and offshore assets improves financial transparency.
- Continuous Audit: Tools like Afghanistan’s e-Martyrs portal that channels assets recovered from corrupt officials back to the public should be studied.
The scale of system-wide reforms needed to combat corruption and patronage politics should not be underestimated. However global precedents exist for benchmarking.
Security Sector Reforms for Stability
Militarization of internal security and impunity of armed forces has enabled grave human rights violations. Reforms involve:
- Demilitarizing Police: Separation from military command, training reforms for community policing, establishing local oversight committees.
- Intelligence Reform: Clearer legal scope limiting surveillance overreach, and parliamentary oversight of agencies.
- Use of Force Compliance: Body cameras, and embedded prosecution to enforce rules of engagement during operations like in UK and Canada models.
- Military Budget Transparency: Removing black-box national security line items, legislative scrutiny.
- Detainee Rights: Redressal mechanisms like public inquiries into abuse allegations, as conducted in Chile and Nepal.
- Security Vetting: Preventing rights violators from public office as exemplified in Kenya’s police reforms.
- Community Policing: Leveraging informal ward and village structures for intelligence gathering, and quick response deployment.
Holistic security reforms are vital to win public trust, deliver community safety, and prevent human rights violations that threaten Nigeria’s stability.
Increasing Transparency through Access to Information
Secrecy enables arbitrariness and breeds public suspicion of government motives. Proactive information disclosure and access legislation is key. Global best practices include:
- Automatic Disclosure: Proactively publish categories of information like budgets, government orders, audit reports, public officials’ assets etc.
- Mandatory Request Response: Bind agencies to respond to citizen information requests within fixed time limits of 20-30 days.
- Independent Oversight: Autonomous information commissioners facilitate requests and enforce compliance.
- Whistleblower Protection: Shielding those who disclose information in the public interest.
- Minimal Exceptions: Exemptions to disclosure limited to national security, privacy concerns etc. with specified validity periods.
- Reasonable Fees: Access charges should not impede average citizens. Many countries offer free or minimal fees.
- Open Data Portal: Centralized public data repository with identified high-value datasets like health, and education metrics.
- Digital Information Systems: Electronic workflows, request tracking and disclosure systems streamline access.
Freedom of information legislation transforms government culture from secrecy to accountability.
Citizen Participation in Governance
Energizing civic engagement creates an opportunity for direct public contribution in policymaking and builds stakeholder buy-in. Methods include:
- Open Consultation: Providing defined windows during policy formulation for public and domain expert inputs through requests for comments.
- Public Hearings: Platform to voice grassroots feedback, concerns and suggestions, especially for community-impacting programs.
- Advisory Councils: Forums enable structured participation of citizen representatives across youth, industries, and academia to advise government.
- Community Participation: Institutionalizing local opinion gathering by facilitating village and ward committees in development planning.
- Digital Engagement: Online channels like IChangeMyCity portal make civic participation easier. The public dashboard shows actions taken on inputs.
- Referendums: Enable citizens to direct voice on key national issues like constitutional amendments. Helps gauge public pulse and make course corrections.
- Social Audits: Community-led assessment of government project implementation bares gaps frankly and fosters transparency.
Constructively embedding civic engagement across all governance processes promotes public ownership and builds national consensus.
Judicial Reforms for Justice Access
Delays and backlog of 30M cases in Nigeria’s courts point to the need for reforms including:
- Fast Track Courts: Special procedures for priority cases like rape, corruption, etc., and focus on alternative dispute resolution methods improves efficiency.
- E-Courts: Digitizing records and processes brings speed, and transparency and aids access to justice.
- Plea Bargaining: Reduces case pendency by enabling mutually agreed settlements. Helpful particularly for economic crimes.
- Gram Nyayalayas: Local informal village courts used effectively in India to improve rural access. A Nigerian version will make sense.
- Dispute Resolution Councils: Official recognition of arbitration mechanisms for matters like family disputes provides alternatives to formal courts.
- Court Administration Revamp: Improving case management through daily monitoring, assigning time limits for processes, and facility upgrades.
- Judiciary Ombudsman: Independent authority to investigate allegations of impropriety enhances accountability.
- Police Reforms: Higher quality charge sheets by police reduce cases returned for clarifications.
Accessible and timely justice dispensation is vital for citizens to feel invested in the rule of law. Reforms must target root causes of high pendency and delays.
Strengthening Public Agencies for Service Delivery
Nigeria fares poorly on global competitiveness and ease of doing business indicators due to public institutional weaknesses. Reversing this requires:
- Meritocracy: Transition from patronage to performance-driven recruitment, postings and promotions.
- Specialist Recruitment: Develop specialized career tracks for domains like tax administration, aviation etc. rather than using generic civil services officers.
- Competency Building: Prioritize regular refresher training, abroad exposure and performance management.
- Culture of Excellence: Celebrate successes through annual awards like India’s Prime Minister’s Excellence in Public Administration.
- Operational Autonomy: Enable department heads to make decisions on budgets, hiring, and tenders based on KPIs with ministerial oversight. Reduces interference.
- Process Simplification: Use technology and business process reengineering to reduce red tape. Target dramatic turnaround improvements.
- Centralized Delivery: One-stop service portals like passport seva kendras in India enhance convenience.
Elevating public institutional performance across central ministries and state departments creates visible impact that boosts citizen trust and compliance.
Conclusion
Sustainable democracy necessitates constant nurturing and renewal. While Nigeria has made progress since 1999, deepening reforms across electoral processes, separation of powers, federalism balance, transparency, civic participation, anti-corruption, justice access, security and public agencies are needed to consolidate political and economic gains. Leadership vision, citizen advocacy and technical expertise must converge to enact good governance frameworks that deliver stability, inclusion and shared prosperity to fulfill the promise of Nigeria’s democracy.