Nigeria’s architecture is not its destiny, By Dipo Baruwa

The Crisis of Authority, Incentives and Capabilities

It is not in my character to write an open commentary on someone else’s intellectual work, much less a work whose foreword was written by a professor I admire, albeit from afar. Yet I am increasingly troubled by the tendency among many political-economic writers to reduce almost every explanation of Nigeria’s persistent failure to deliver on its promise either to its foundational architecture or to its operating manual – the Constitution.

In some of my recent articles, I have argued that one of Nigeria’s central governance problems is the persistent failure to align three essential attributes: authority, incentives and capabilities. I believe this misalignment has been a major constraint on Nigeria both as a developing country and as a nation seeking to make its constituent parts work effectively together as federating units.

You will, therefore, permit me not to mention the book or its author here. My intention is certainly not to diminish the considerable work that has gone into articulating its argument. I am simply putting forward an observation that I believe might add another dimension to the discussion the writer has painstakingly developed.

I agree with many of the fundamentals outlined in the book, as reflected in an interview about the book recently granted and published, but, as stated above, I disagree with the idea that Nigeria was deliberately designed to work against itself. That argument invariably takes us back to the Constitution and, beyond it, to the architecture inherited from British colonial rule. Yet I do not believe there is such a thing as a perfect constitution, just as there can never be perfect engineering work, notwithstanding all our advances in technology. There is only one perfect – God.

If that is the case, then every human construction, whether political or engineering, must necessarily remain a work in progress. Its weaknesses and constraints are not, in themselves, evidence of inevitable failure. With a dynamic governance system, implemented without bias and grounded in authority, incentives and capabilities, constraints can instead become opportunities for institutional adaptation and improvement.

Persistent Failure Attribute of Inherited Design?

To treat Nigeria’s present failures as the inevitable consequence of its original design therefore risks allowing structural explanation to become the institutional equivalent of the familiar excuse when someone is caught in wrongdoing: “it was the devil”. Historical design matters, certainly, but it cannot explain everything that has happened subsequently, nor can it become an escape from responsibility for what successive generations of Nigerians have chosen to do with what they inherited.

Nigeria has repeatedly failed to translate institutions into effective governance because we have neglected these basic principles of authority, incentives and capabilities. We establish institutions and assign responsibilities to them, but too often without providing the authority required to act, the incentives necessary to encourage appropriate behaviour, or the capabilities needed to deliver their mandates effectively. An institution may therefore exist perfectly well in law while remaining weak or dysfunctional in practice.

Nigeria is, in that sense, like the bones in the valley needing an Ezekiel who believes that they can breathe again. In Nigeria’s case, and here is one of the points on which I strongly agree with the writer, the Ezekiel cannot be one individual. It must be every Nigerian, whether at home or in the diaspora. National renewal cannot continually depend on our search for another exceptional president, governor or political saviour.

Where Does Transformation Begins?

For starters, we could begin with perhaps the simplest expression of governance: obeying traffic rules and making our roads safe through clear markings, proper signage, functioning traffic systems and conscientious road marshals. This is probably one of the easiest areas in which to demonstrate that Nigeria’s failure cannot simply be attributed to constitutional design or colonial architecture.

Traffic governance requires exactly the same three attributes. Authority must be clear: there must be rules and legitimate institutions empowered to enforce them. Incentives must be appropriate: compliance should produce predictability and safety, while violations should carry credible consequences. Capability must also exist: roads must be properly marked, traffic lights must work, signs must be visible, enforcement personnel must be trained, and the institutions responsible must possess the resources required to perform their functions.

None of these requires a constitutional conference.

If we cannot make an ordinary road intersection work, where authority is reasonably clear, incentives are easily identifiable and the capabilities required are relatively inexpensive to provide, then it becomes difficult to argue that Nigeria’s fundamental problem begins and ends with constitutional design or with the structures originally created by the British.

The Search For The Messiah

My conclusion is therefore straightforward: we are too often our own worst enemy. We need to stop pointing fingers and confront our realities. Neither perpetual praise-singing nor endless national flagellation will build the country – another point on which my thoughts converge with those of the writer. We must collectively decide whether we intend to build a nation or merely continue constructing individual political, economic and social empires within it.

Successful national transformation requires more than a visionary leader. Leadership matters, just as institutions, but enduring development requires a tripod: national vision that becomes sufficiently institutionalised and socially shared that collective action does not continually depend upon coercion, persistent leveraging patronage, personal inducement or loyalty to particular individuals.

This, perhaps, is where Nigeria’s deeper difficulty lies. We have progressively converted many of the instruments intended to make democracy democratic and accountable – representation, electoral competition, federalism, political parties and public institutions – into mechanisms for constructing and protecting individual political empires. It is precisely this tendency that also underlies legitimate concerns about state police: not necessarily the principle of decentralised policing itself, but the danger that additional authority, without appropriate incentives, institutional safeguards and capabilities, could simply become another instrument in the service of those individual political empires.

Unfortunately, a minority has succeeded within this continuing anomaly, while the majority have resorted to praising those who benefit from it, only to turn around and condemn the country when its collective consequences become unbearable.

The British may have designed an administrative structure for their own purposes. Nigerians, however, ultimately determine whether that structure remains merely an inheritance, becomes a permanent excuse, or is continually adapted and transformed through governance into a functioning nation.

A constitution does not build a nation by itself. Institutions do not govern merely by existing. Authority must be exercised responsibly, incentives must encourage productive behaviour, and capabilities must make performance possible. Until those three work together, and until Nigerians collectively accept responsibility for making them work, we will continue to blame the architecture while neglecting what we have repeatedly chosen to build within it.