Why are appropriate policies not adopted in Nigeria?

By Martin Oluba

We need appropriate public policies. No doubt about it? They cushion or
eliminate many of the challenges that we face. With many of such across the
public sector decision-making terrain, many of our challenges as a country will
inevitably be resolved. However, beside the fundamental issues pertaining to the
adequacy and appropriateness of policy components and processes, concerns have
revolved around the determination of the actual point where chances of
unriddling the identified chain of Nigeria's problems are frustrated. Many such
points are identifiable and comprise stages where (a) the intention of the
government is made known (b) goals to be achieved are declared (c) means for
achieving the goals are stated (d) announcement of the collateral programmes for
achieving those goals as well as (e) specific actions taken in order to
implement programmes are made. Points (a) – (d) may well represent the policy
design and communication stage while stage (e) represents the implementation
phase. The attendant concern for the former is about the appropriateness or
otherwise.

In many quarters, the platitude is that Nigeria's problem is sustained by poor
policy implementation. If this is true then the issue of policy appropriateness
has been put to rest. On the contrary, Nigeria's perennial history of
inappropriate policy design is its core undoing. These have resulted in gross
resource misallocations, heightened inefficiency levels, grievous reduction in
the levels of productivity of capital and labour available to the economy.
Cumulatively this has continued to negatively hurt the growth of output, income
and employment. It has equally exacerbated uncertainty levels and macroeconomic
instability with implications for reduced investor confidence on the economy.
Examples abound and have been well rehashed in the media and are amply evidenced
in the failures of the economy in virtually every aspect of its life as a
country giving birth to many public bads such as long fuel queues, burgeoning
unemployment, poor quality of education, endless brain drain, poor medicare etc.
In effect therefore, even with well implemented inappropriate policies, the
actual results must be less than desirable.

When is a policy considered to be inappropriate? Rarely do governments and their
agencies admit to inappropriateness of policies enunciated by them. Let's cite a
few examples. Inflation in Nigeria is rarely reported as a consequence of CBN's
money supply disposition which is always its true source. On the contrary the
underlying causes are always popularly attributed to changes in the prices of
agricultural products. A similar example is government's declining revenue
position. This is rarely located within government's historical policy neglects
or wrong policies that have not addressed the base infrastructural challenges
that would have supported entrepreneurial growth and enabled the expansion of
tax bases but are erroneously placed on the unwillingness of people to pay
increasingly multiple level taxes which is theoretically explained by the Laffer
curve. Employment is equally blamed on laziness or changing value system that
makes white collar jobs more fascinating. Fingers are not pointed to the fact
that many wrong policies have actually killed firms that ought to have provided
young people with jobs.

Government's decisions and actions (policies) become ineffective when they fail
to address public problems in ways that are consistent with widely shared values
and preferences. Consequently effectiveness cannot be consistent with making
`supposed' genuine efforts to live up to statutory responsibilities. In the
domain of economics for instance there are popularly pursued macroeconomic goals
which are restated annually in the rites of budget speeches: strong and
sustainable economic growth, price stability, low levels of unemployment and
balance of payment stability. In Nigeria, failures in these areas have been
palpably constant across time even with deliberately structured attempts to play
them down. For instance rather than focus on productivity growth that would
present the true pictures of failure, assessments based on output growth that
hide many policy failures are played up.

It therefore follows that policy makers in Nigeria see good policies as those
that their experts tell us are good for us rather than the one that truly
satisfies the value expectations of the claimants. In some sense therefore,
their view of national problems and how they solve them define policy
appropriateness. Unfortunately even some policies with supposed short term
positive outcomes may have very grave chain of consequences that take time to
manifest. These other sides are rarely discussed and are played down. The
appropriateness of policy therefore should be evaluated based on the following
criteria namely the (a) underlying theoretical soundness and logical consistency
that will demonstrate how the policy will on a sustainable basis prevent public
bads or provide public goods as well as correct emerging negative externalities,
(b) contextual relevance of the policy, and (c) policy design process that is
clearly supported by law which at its basest form determines what is good or bad
for the public.

These go a long way to explain why in this country, good policies are actually
not pursued. Appropriate policies require substantial rigour as virtually all
these conditions must be met. For instance, bad theory always results in
inappropriate public policy when adopted as frameworks. Many of such bad
theories abound and command some level of popularity depending on the underlying
motivations and stridency of the policy designer. However, even with such
popularity, it is not possible that such policies can deliver public good or
prevent public bads or minimize negative externalities on a sustainable basis.
The typical collateral manifestation has always been bouts of `the more you
look, the less you see' short term positive outcomes that are quickly followed
by the inevitable long term destructive consequences. In the same way, blindly
copying policies that worked in other geographical contexts and blindly imposing
same on us with the expectation of efficacious results can many times be a
chasing-after-the-shadow. Foreign policy importation should be based on
satisfactory evaluation of the contextual compatibilities before adaptation.

Following through these rigorous standards in almost all circumstances does not
permit the actualization of the personal interests and motivations of many
policy makers. Needless to point out that many of them merely pursue interests
that are substantially public as defined and promoted by them but are not
genuinely common to warrant their attentive evaluation of the magnitude of the
pain that they can cause the public. But aside this, policy making positions by
those who are not properly trained to develop sound policies will produce
similar effects as inappropriate rather than good policies may be pursued.