Nigeria’s return to democratic governance in 1999 fortuitously coincided with a global cyclical upturn that ensured large and sustained terms of trade gains and equally large and sustained capital inflows for Nigeria. The favourable terms of trade enabled Nigeria to recover from the economic stagnation and decline of the eighties and nineties to a high growth path that has lifted the global rank of its economy from 52nd in 2000 to 26th by 2013. The favourable global financial environment also enabled Nigeria to resolve the external debt burden it had carried for two-and-a-half decades and set new peaks for external reserves and equity market capitalisation.
Beyond these reversible fortuitous gains, the people elected in the four elections since 1999 have, in spite of huge opportunities, failed to translate their electoral mandates to economic betterment for the populace. Unemployment rates are officially reported to have increased threefold and high incidence of poverty completes the Nigerian paradox. Elected officials have been unable to deliver better economic outcomes because they have passed the buck of policy conception, design and coordination to unelected appointees that should ideally only implement.
Nigeria’s democratic transition
Nigeria’s democracy involves popular election of a president (on a joint ticket with a vice-president) and a 469-member bicameral parliament that consists of a 109-member Senate and 360- member House of Representatives through general elections that take place every four years.
Nigeria has thus held four general elections, elected three presidents (Olusegun Obasanjo, 1999- 2003 and 2003-2007, Umar Yar’Adua, 2007-2010, and Goodluck Jonathan, 2010-2011 and 2011-date, the first of which served two terms), and now prepares to hold the fifth general elections to either return the incumbent or elect a fourth president in February 2015.
Nigeria has also seen six Senate presidents (Evans Enwerem, 1999, Chuba Okadigbo, 1999-2000, Pius Anyim, 2000-2003, Adolphus Wabara, 2003-2005, Ken Nnamani, 2005-2007, and David Mark, 2007-2011, and 2011-date) and six speakers of House of Representatives (Salisu Buhari, 1999-2000, Ghali Na’aba, 2000-2003, Aminu Massari, 2003-2007, Olubunmi Ette, 2007, Dimeji Bankole, 2007-2011, and Aminu Tambuwal, 2011-date) in the four sessions of bicameral legislature since 1999.
The president nominates appointees to lead the various ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) for confirmation by the upper chamber of parliament, the Senate. Beyond the nomination and confirmation of nominees, elected officials have tended to delegate responsibility for economic management to the confirmed nominees.
Economic management style
President-parliament engagement: A striking feature of Nigeria’s democratic transition is that there is no routine engagement between president and parliament on economic issues, and there is no routine engagement between parliament and the appointees on economic issues. The president is obliged to propose the budget for each year to a joint session of the two chambers of the legislature once every year, but is not obliged to ever make any routine submission regarding the economy.
The absence of engagement on economic issues between president and parliament weakens the ability of Nigeria’s democratic machinery to assimilate important economic aspirations and deliver on them. Mechanisms for making the 470 elected persons feel more responsible for delivering superior economic outcomes must now be sought and found if Nigeria’s democracy is to become an effective means for attaining desired economic outcomes.
Policy conception, design, and coordination
Since there is no institutionalised process of engagement between president and parliament, there has been no effort to the build the capacity of the presidency and/or the parliament to conceive, design and coordinate economic policies, or exercise any meaningful oversight on the appointees running the MDAs. In theory, strategic economic policy design is left to ad-hoc economic management teams. Tactical economic policy coordination is left to no one in particular, as most MDAs report directly to the president. Operational implementation is left to a series of autonomous MDAs.
In practice, economic policy management has been more operational than tactical, much less being strategic. Mechanisms for effective economic policy insights, design, coordination, oversight, and foresight have to be developed. Presidential and legislative apathy has led to regimes of autonomous and unaccountable economic policy teams that brought about the paradox of worsening unemployment rate in the face of stellar economic growth, and the aggressive tightening of monetary policy in the face of deteriorating unemployment rate.
Elected officials thus left the task of economic policy conception, design and coordination in the hands of unelected appointees, who have inadvertently made policy choices that have weakened growth, contracted domestic demand, and worsened the employment rate. There is a challenge of turning democratic rule into a mechanism for achieving tangible economic outcomes in Nigeria.
Legitimacy vs. effectiveness
Democratic rule in Nigeria in the past 15 years has been more about the legitimacy of government than it has been about the effectiveness of government. The country spends a fortune to elect 470 persons to run its government every four years, but is failing to device ways to make the elected officials effective agents for achieving adequate levels of economic performance. The age of a democratic regime may influence economic performance, since democratic institutions take time to develop and mature, and the capacity of leaders in new democracies to pilot their economies varies across countries.
To make the budding democratic governance a tool for delivering tangible and enduring economic benefits in the future, Nigeria needs to seek practical ways of building the capacity of elected presidents and parliaments to function as effective managers of the economy, in the same ways that older democracies have successfully evolved economic management processes within their democratic structures that enable elected officials to effectively deliver superior economic outcomes.
Towards democratic effectiveness in economic management Democratic deficit: The presidents and parliaments elected in Nigeria need to be equipped to be more competent in managing the economy. From nomination of candidates for vacant positions, to confirmation of nominees, issuance of policy mandates, and oversight, elected presidents and parliaments in the past decade and a half have been ill-equipped to get the best results. They have largely shied away from collective institutionalised approaches, embarking instead on elusive search for messianic solutions.
A growing democratic deficit has emerged as elected officials pass the buck of policy conception, design and coordination to unelected appointees that should ideally only implement. There is an increasing divergence between conferment of powers through elections and the ability of the elected persons to exercise such powers between elections. Studin, I. (2008) makes a case for establishing stronger political party think tanks as a way of mitigating the democratic deficit in the Canadian context.
This paper agrees with the statement of the problem in Studin (2008), viz: something extra must be dome to ensure that democratic legitimacy translates to democratic effectiveness in economic policy management. But we argue in favour of British and US approach that effectively builds the capacity of elected officials to deliver on the job once elected in non-partisan approaches, rather than Studin’s suggestion that political parties’ capacity be built in the hope that that would translate to higher capacity of candidates fielded by the various parties.
The UK relies on Select Committees to give the parliamentary system its teeth, while the US relies on the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) to strengthen the ability of its president to deliver, while the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) does the same for the congress. The UK even has a Select Committee on its Select Committees. We argue that the 470 persons Nigeria elects every four years now have to be equipped in the US-style non-partisan way to achieve a stronger link between favourable global economic and financial stimuli and domestic economic outcomes.
Mitigating the deficit
Specifically, Nigeria now needs to embed strong policymaking institutions in her fledgling democratic transition by redefining the roles that elected officials must play in economic management, equipping them to play such roles, and setting out the rules by which such roles must be played in explicit new pieces of legislation. We suggest five aspects of the economic management processes that must be reformed to overcome the huge democratic deficit in the Nigerian transition and ensure that the next decade and a half of Nigeria’s democratic transition yields better economic outcomes than the initial decade and a half.
a) First, until we know the facts about the economy in a timely fashion, it will be difficult to know when or how to boost economic outcomes, however well meaning we may be. There is a need for government to ensure that all agencies charged with responsibility to provide any type of economic data do so in a timely and orderly fashion, preferably on pre-announced due dates to ensure predictability. The president and the parliament need to ensure that data provision mandates/legislation are updated to include comprehensive calendar and ensure sufficient funding is appropriated for data providing agencies.
b) Second, once necessary data are provided, Nigeria needs to have a neutral national economic intelligence agency to generate a central view of the trends and outlook of the key aspects of the economy, and provide the insights into ways to improve economic outcomes, oversight of national policies and programmes, and foresight into long-term future economic trends, required to ensure that president, parliament and all agency heads always stay focused on ways to make government work better.
c) Third, to overcome the growing democratic deficit in which elected presidents come into office to pass the buck of economic policy conception, design and coordination to unelected appointees that should ideally only implement, Nigeria henceforth needs to oblige elected presidents by law to provide an annual written articulation of their thinking about where the economy is coming from, where it roughly is, and where it is heading to; assign specific roles and actions to elected presidents; and provide them the technical backing to be more effective in providing active leadership in economic policy formulation. Elected presidents must be equipped to take responsibility for defining economic realities and required policies in formal statements to the parliament on an annual basis.
d) Fourth, to overcome the growing democratic deficit in which elected parliaments merely pass the buck of policy economic policy conception and design to unelected appointees that should ideally only implement, Nigeria henceforth needs to oblige elected parliaments by law to respond to the annual written articulation of the president on his thinking about where the economy is coming from, where it roughly is, and where it is heading to; assign specific roles and actions to elected parliaments; and provide them the technical backing to be more capable to engage the president in economic policy formulation, articulate informed pre-legislative debate on the floor of the parliament, and enact agenda-setting economic legislation.
e) Fifth, Nigerian parliament must also be equipped with access to the technical personnel and expertise required for exerting greater influence on economic policies and outcomes by holding the MDAs to account, and promoting public understanding of policy choices.
Conclusion
On the eve of Nigeria’s fifth general elections, global economic and financial situations are not only both favourable, but seem set to remain favourable into the foreseeable future. In spite of past misses, the window of opportunity for Nigeria’s democracy to deliver stronger economic outcomes remains open. The 470 elected officials have to do more to provide a stronger link between favourable global economic and financial outlook and domestic economic outcomes. Elected presidents must be equipped to take responsibility for defining economic realities and policies required in formal statements to the parliament on an annual basis. The parliament must be equipped to be capable to respond to the president’s report, articulate informed pre-legislative debate on the floor of the parliament, enact agenda-setting laws, and provide effective oversight over the actions of executive agencies.
NB: What is published here is only an abridged version of the above paper.
Ayo Teriba
