ONLY IN NIGERIA

Trends of Public Policy Implementation in Nigeria: A Critique of Federal Character

Abstract

Policies (public policies) are indispensable and in-expendable especially to the developing countries such as Nigeria, this begs the question of how the plethora of policies that are daily dished out are effectively implemented. A close look at the Nigerian syndrome would reveal that policies over the years had been partially or totally abandoned right after their enactment owing to some factors such as the lack of political will, poverty etc therefore, an exegesis of these factors is paramount thus, this work. Secondary data were analyzed and the study observed that poverty and weak political will are among the many factors hampering the implementation of public policies in developing countries such as Nigeria. The study further recommends the inculcation of strong political will into the Nigerian political space.

Keywords

Policy, Public policy, Federal character, Inequality

Introduction

The unflinching importance of policy has made governments the world over to make it a tool in the effective stemming of public affairs. Virtually all governments enact policies which are considered a guide to their governmental activities. Kukah, (2003) opined that policy is recognized as a plan or course of action by a government, political party or business designed to influence and determine decisions, actions and other matters. The undisputable importance of policy has made virtually all aspects of societal enterprise the object of its enactment, a dynamic and value-laden process through which a political system handles a public problem (Bolaji, 2014). Public policy is generally seen as a complex issue. It has been defined by various scholars at one time or the other. Bolaji, Gray and Campbell-Evans (2015) posit that public policy is what government chooses to do or not to do.

After the Nigerian civil war, the country was in disarray, anxiety was heightened, nerves were tensed and there was the mutual mistrust of all ethnic groups by all. The government was tasked with finding a lasting solution to this menace which was jeopardizing the basic foundation of the Nigeria’s federation. This led to the introduction of the principle of federal character. It is note-worthy the fact that this policy was hatched and enshrined in the 1979 Nigerian constitution in order to cater for the growing need for true federalism and unanimity among the over 250 ethnic groups that make up Nigeria.

Federal character is one of the policies which were designed to gain integration of diverse ethnic groups in the country. The federal character principle which was enshrined in the 1979 Constitution of Nigeria seeks to ensure appropriate linguistic, ethnic, religious and geographic diversity of the country. The introduction of federal character policies into the Nigerian governance system was to foster unity, peace, equal ability and equal access to state resources and also to promote the integration of the less advantaged states for better improvement and good conditions of living in the country (Tamuno, 2003). The main problem of Nigeria therefore is traceable to rivalry between the rival ethnic groups in the maneuvers for the control of power. For example, the Hausa-Fulani takes precedence in the control of power with the Yoruba trailing far behind and then the Igbo group.

Efforts to redress this situation have often led to the use of force because the advantaged one(s) will not willingly give up. Conversely, the youths within a group organized themselves to perform the role of liberating vanguard. The Movement for Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) is in this category. Put differently, the driving force for the formation of MASSOB is marginalization. It does not want the Igbo race to be part of Nigeria where marginalization, injustice, inequality and violence allegedly remain entrenched in the national life (Ugoh and Ukpere, 2012). The emergence of Arewa People’s Congress (APC) from Hausa-Fulani group is to check-mate the activities of the Yoruba socio-cultural group – the Odua People’s Congress. Ugoh and Ukpere (2012) mentioned that during the administration of President Obasanjo, he enjoyed major support from his Yoruba kinsmen. In order to hold power, the Yorubas carefully and systematically put in place a paramilitary outfit – the OPC to consolidate power at the federal level. It was an accident of the annulment of presidential election result in 1993 assumed to be won by Chief M.K.O. Abiola, a Yoruba man. The inability to offer credible and acceptable reasons by General Babangida– a Hausa-Fulani for annulling the result led to the strong ethnic-regional tension and political crisis in Nigeria.

According to OPC founders, the OPC was a child of necessity that came into being after the criminal and retrogressive annulment of the June 1993 presidential election (Ugoh, 2008). As a deterrent, the Hausa-Fulani group has equally responded with the formation of Arewa People’s Congress. According to its leader, the objective of the organization is to safeguard and protect Northern interest in any part of the country where the OPC is terrorizing innocent citizens belonging to Hausa-Fulani group. The Niger-Delta region is not left out from the agitations against marginalization which led to the formation of several groups in order to drive home their demands. All these were the building issues in Nigeria until 1979 when the Constitution Drafting Committee proposed the Federal Character and it was subsequently enshrined in the constitution of both the 1979 and 1999.

Factors that Led to the Adoption of the Policy of Federal Character

The factors that led to the adoption of the policy of Federal Character were as follows;

1. Educational inequalities,

2. Economic inequalities,

3. Social inequalities,

4. Bureaucratic inequalities and,

5. Structural inequalities.

The above therefore shall form the basis and templates for the exposure of the shortcomings of this policy as it had not lived up to its expectations.

Educational Inequality: Starting from the colonial period, there has been a structurally embedded pattern of educational inequalities which persists to this day. Adamu, (2003) posited that in 2000, for instance, the North-East zone, with 14% of the national population in the 2005 census, had only 4% of the university admissions, while the South-East, with 12% of the population, had 39% of the university places. Systematically, the southern zones and ethnic groups have tended to have better access to educational resources (universities admission). These long-standing patterns of educational inequalities have been reproduced in the inequalities in manpower and human capital development across the country; in 2003, it was claimed that the northern zones with 53% of the population had only 10% of engineers, 15% of professors, 10% of architects, 25% of lawyers, 8% of bank executives, and less than 2% of insurance practitioners (Adamu, 2003).

Although Nigeria’s educational system has been drastically experiencing changes through various reforms policies. One of such changes occurred in the late eighties when the ‘6-3-3-4’ system was introduced. In 1999 specifically, Universal Basic Education (UBE) program was launched with explicit commitment of the government in providing education for all. Some remarkable changes were recorded. In the words of Umar, Ismail and Abdul-Hakim (2014:3-4) who presented a thorough research on the state of the Nigerian regional distribution of education submitted that;

Our data analysis reveals the following. First, huge educational gaps exist within as well as across regions. Secondly, lower educational inequality has been found to be associated with higher educational attainment level. Thirdly, Northern Region has higher educational inequality than the Southern Region. Lagos state has the highest level of average attainment level of 9.14 as against the country’s average of 5.08. The state with lowest educational attainment is Zamfara, with average of only 1.30. It happens that out of the 19 northern states only two states (i.e. Kwara state and Kogi state) have average attainment above the national average while all the southern states are above the national average. When it comes to education inequality, Lagos state has the lowest with a Theil Index of 0.08 and Zamfara state has the highest Theil Index of 0.72 showing the highest level of education inequality. The same goes with the geopolitical zones.

Decades after the adoption of the policy of federal character in order to put to rest the daunting issues of educational inequality which were glaring in Nigeria as espoused above, it is still obvious that the policy has not been scholarly successful in arresting such issues as there are still loads of traces of such cases in contemporary Nigeria.

Economic Inequality: Economic inequality is another feature of Nigerian national life. For example, from 1986 to 1990, 70% of the registered companies in Nigeria were located in the southwest, with 16% in the three northern zones and 14% in the two other southern zones (Hamalai, 1994). By 2001, 46% of the industries located in the northern zones had closed down as a result of infrastructural and macroeconomic difficulties; deindustrialization, associated with economic liberalization, has disproportionately affected the north (Adamu, 2003). Another index of economic inequality is preponderance of Lagos in banking operations. Lagos accounted for 48% of all deposits and 69.96% of all loans in 2006, while the three northern zones combined accounted for only 10.75% of deposits and 8.5% of loans (Soludo, 2007).

For over three decades now, Nigeria had considerable success in economic growth: its growth rate in the last decade averaged 7% annually (until the most recent recession that it pulled out of in no time). Despite this remarkable performance, the socio-economic indicators in Nigeria are among the worst in the world. The country actually is doing worse in terms of income inequality than most developing countries. Additionally, it has been found that income inequality in Nigeria is very high among the different regions in Nigeria (Raheem, 2014).

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in its 2016 report on human development gave the regional dimensions of poverty in Nigeria. An interesting dimension of the report is the regional inequality between the regions and the states with poverty incidence being highest in the North-West (71.4%), followed by the North-East at 69.1 % and North-Central at 60.7 %. The South-West has the lowest poverty rate of 49.8 % followed by the South-South (55.5%) and South East (59.5%).

From the aforementioned, the policy had not faired well in bridging the economic gaps that exists between the states and regions that exist in Nigeria.   

Structural/Social Inequality: The 2016 UNDP report also showed that gender inequality mediated through a myriad of discriminatory traditional and socio-cultural practices which put women at disadvantage in a number of areas compared to men.  The stunning statistics showed Jigawa State having 94 % of women (against 42% of men) falling on the down side of literacy (Watkins, 2017).

Within the context of widespread national poverty and its unequal nature, it can be rightly argued that extreme poverty and ill-being are a distinctly northern phenomenon. The ten poorest states are in the northern zones and these states are also gender unfriendly, while the ten with the lowest poverty levels are in the southern zones (Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2001). Access to social amenities like education, sanitation, and health services closely correspond to the poverty trends. For example, in 1995, while 29% of new born in the south-west were not immunized, the corresponding figure for the north-west was 66%. In the north-west only 25% of pregnant women used clinics compared with 85% in the south-east (FOS, 1995/1996). Similarly, the maternal mortality rate in the north-east is 93.9% higher than the level in the south-west (Galadanchi, 2007). In fact, these systematic and overlapping inequalities make Nigerians born into different ethno-regional groups to expect very different qualities of life and thus, materially undermining the basis for a common citizenship.

Conclusion

Among the shortfalls of the policy of federal character are; indolence and low productivity, inequality and corruption and lack of transparency, therefore, it can be inferred that the policy had lived short of its original intentions.

References

Adamu, Fatima L. 2003. “Globalisation and Economic Globalisation in Northern Nigeria”. Development Studies Association. Available: www.devistud.org.uk/publicaiotns/papers/conf03

Federal Office of Statistics. 1996. General Household Survey 1995/1996, National Report. Niger. DRPC. Kano

Federal Republic of Nigeria. 2001. National Poverty Eradication Programme: Programme and Implementation Strategies. Ministry of Information, Abuja

Hamalai, Ladi. 1994. “Distribution of Industrial Enterprises in Nigeria and National Unity.” Backs Resource Control. Available: www.champion-newspapers.com

Watkins, Kevin. 2017. The Oxfam Poverty Report. Oxfam Publication

Kukah, Hassan M. 2003. Democracy and Civil Society in Nigeria. Ibadan, Spectrum books limited

Raheem, Wasiu M. 2014. “Regional Imbalances and Inequalities in Nigeria: Causes, Consequences and Remedies.” Research on Humanities and Social Sciences 4. 2225-484

Soludo, Charles. 2007. Preserving Stability and Accelerating Growth. Central Bank of Nigeria. Available at https://www.cbn.gov.ng/OUT/SPEECHES/2007/GOVADD17-1-07.PDF

Tamuno, Tekena. N. 2003. “Nigerian Federalism in Historical Perspective.” in Amuwo, Kunle, Agbaje, Adigun. Suberu, Rotimi T. and Herault, Georges. Federalism and political restructuring in Nigeria. Ibadan Spectrum Books Limited.

Ugoh, Samuel C. 2008. “Leadership Questions, Ethnic Militias and Political Instability in Nigeria: The State of the Nation Beyond 2007.” Available: www.jerda.com/vol.3/issue/ugoh.html.in154j2

Ugoh, Samuel C. and Ukpere, Wilfred. 2012. “Policy of the Federal Character Principle and Conflict Management in Nigerian Federalism.” African Journal of Business Management Vol. 6(23), pp. 6771-6780

Umar, Habibu M. Ismail, Russayani, and Abdul-Hakim, Roslan. 2014. “Regional Inequality of Educational Attainment in Nigeria.” British Journal of Economics, Management & Trade, 4(3): 420-430