There is a conundrum about technocrats. Every government needs them. The assumption being that technocrats can help improve government performance, and that good policymaking and technocracy go together. Indeed, some would go as far as saying that a precondition for good policy is that technocrats be in charge of making it! Yet, technocrats are a much maligned breed of public servants. When they serve in government, they either leave with a mixed record of achievements or, worse, with their reputation in tatters.
Nigeria has had its fair share of technocratic public servants. Virtually every government in this country, military or civilian, has used them. But technocrats in government acquired prominence and even celebrity status during the Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan administrations. They dominated the critical policymaking machineries of both administrations. However, few of these experts covered themselves in glory or left government with kudos. For instance, the trenchant criticisms of the Jonathan administration owed as much to Jonathan’s own incompetence as to the behaviour and performance of some of the technocrats in his government. This raises the questions why some technocrats fail in government and what makes a good technocrat? To answer these questions, let’s explore some conceptual understanding of technocrats and technocracy.
First, who is a technocrat and what is he or she expected to do? Well, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, a technocrat is someone who advocates and practices technocracy. The dictionary then defines technocracy as the “organisation and management of a country’s industrial resources by technical experts for the good of the whole community”. This is an old definition, of course. In current usage, a technocrat is not confined to the “industrial” realm, but manages all of a country’s resources (industrial, economic, social) where professional and technical skills are required. But what is clear from the dictionary definition is that the technocrat is expected to use his or her expertise to manage state resources in a way that will further the general good.
Traditionally, the term “technocrats” is used to describe senior bureaucrats. But as professionals and technical experts increasingly serve at the political level in government this restrictive definition has changed. Indeed, several years ago, the economists Jose Dominquez and Richard Feinberg coined the term “technopols” to describe technocrats who assume positions of political responsibility. These can be either technocrats who hold political positions in their own right through elections or, more commonly, technocrats who are appointed by political leaders as ministers or heads of government agencies. The latter type has been the norm in Nigeria. No Nigerian president or leader has possessed the relevant technical ability to be called a technopol. To be fair, Obasanjo, as a retired army general, and Jonathan, as a zoologist with a doctorate, are experts in their own fields. But neither had sufficient understanding of technical economic issues or, indeed, of other technical policy issues to be described as a technopol. But Nigerian leaders always did what most political leaders in developing countries normally do to secure international credibility and goodwill. They appointed reputable technocrats to run the key ministries and agencies.
Now, there are rules of thumb for technopols. One of these rules is that they should be given sufficient authority and political support to perform their technocratic roles. Obasanjo was very good at this as president. The technocrats in his government, such as Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Obiageli Ezekwesili and Charles Soludo were, broadly speaking, effective because he gave them significant support and became the lightning rod for them, taking the flak while they initiated and implemented difficult and controversial reforms.
To some extent, so too was the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. I attended the event in London in 2010 when the then Central Bank governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, now the Emir of Kano, received the Central Bank Governor of the Year award from the Banker magazine. The magazine honoured him for his anti-corruption crusade in the Nigerian banking sector. Sanusi dedicated the award to Yar’Adua, and told the audience that he couldn’t have been able to carry out the banking reform, which led to the imprisonment and humiliation of several powerful Nigerians, without Yar’Adua’s solid and unflinching support. Yar’ Adua had assured Sanusi in the presence of the then chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Farida Waziri, that he would back the campaign to the hilt, and urged him to prosecute it without fear or favour! Jonathan, of course, also delegated authority to technocrats in his government and gave them firm political backing.
But here is the rub. Jonathan abdicated his responsibility as well. There is a management saying that you can delegate authority but not responsibility. Jonathan did both. Obasanjo did not. Although Obasanjo gave maximum political protection to his technocrats, no one was ever in doubt about who was in charge. He removed the seemingly indispensable Okonjo-Iweala from the ministry of finance, for instance! A key rule of technocracy is that while technocrats should have political skills, that is, the ability to persuade and influence people, they must not be ‘political’. But as Jonathan abandoned his responsibility to his ministers, some of them became extremely political and turned their ministries into personal fiefdoms; they acted with impunity without any accountability. Yet the technocrat’s agenda is to use his or her professional and technical skills to promote a wider social good, and not to further some private benefit or favour particular groups.
Of course, this normative view is not widely shared. For instance, public choice theory tells us that technocrats are not always guided by altruism or noble motivation. Indeed, the crudest form of public choice analysis dismisses the Platonic assumption that technocrats selflessly dedicate themselves to disinterested pursuit of the public good. On the contrary, as “Homo economicus”, technocrats are motivated by self-interest and personal gain. But the economist John Williamson rejects such generalisation. He argues that technocrats are neither driven solely by self-interest nor motivated purely by altruism; rather, like politicians, technocrats have mixed motives. They have a desire to pursue the public good as well as a desire to advance their personal interests. A more generous public choice view, however, posits that technocrats want to promote the broad public interest but are hindered by institutional and political constraints. I believe that the moderate views are closer to the reality: technocrats have mixed motives and face institutional constraints. But I would add another factor. Technocrats fail when they subordinate technocracy to politics, that is, when they become more of a politician than a technocrat.
In this context, why did some of the technocrats in the Jonathan administration fail or under achieve? Let’s consider the two most controversial technocrats in the administration: Ngozi Okonji-Iweala, minister of finance and the coordinating minister for the economy, and Diezani Alison-Madueke, minister for petroleum. I start with Alison-Madueke, certainly a very unpopular member of Jonathan’s government.
Few will deny that Alison-Madueke is a talented and intelligent professional woman. With an MBA from Cambridge University and rising to a senior position in Shell, she certainly qualifies as a technocrat. But she could easily be accused of hubris and unbridled arrogance. She probably served in the government with mixed motives, sometimes subordinating technocracy to her personal agenda. I remember a story once told in London by a top western business leader, who met Alison-Madueke as minister of petroleum. He said that the way she constantly referred to and talked about Jonathan at the meeting with complete lack of deference gave him the impression that she was extremely powerful and untouchable. When a technocrat has such an unlimited power and such a non-deferential relationship with the president, he or she has violated a rule of technocracy. A technocrat, let’s remember, should use his or her professional and technical skills to further the general good. It was not always clear that Alison-Madueke was driven only by this noble motivation.
What about Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala? First, let me confess that I have a soft spot for Okonjo-Iweala. She is one of Nigeria’s and, indeed, Africa’s greatest export to the world. Few Nigerians or Africans have earned Nigeria or Africa more international recognition and credibility than Okonjo-Iweala. Educated at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she obtained a doctorate in economics, Okonjo-Iweala rose through the World Bank to become vice-president and later managing director. Her brightest moment was when she vied for the presidency of the World Bank in 2012. She was endorsed on merit by virtually all key western newspapers, including the Economist and the Financial Times. And she would have got the job but for what the Economist called “western arrogance” based on the old tradition in which the head of the IMF is European, and that of the World Bank American. President Obama, of course, did not want to be first American president to deny an American citizen the job. So, Okonjo-Iweala lost out, despite having the most formidable credentials for the job. But her personal stocks rose globally. Her book, “Reforming the Unreformable”, is on the reading lists of the economics departments of many top Western universities. I know this because it’s on one of my daughter’s reading lists at the London School of Economics, where she is studying for the BSc in Economics and Economic History. So, Okonjo-Iweala is the quintessential technocrat, and a role model to many!
But if truth be told, and she should be the first to admit this, despite her seven years in charge of running the Nigerian economy (three years under Obasanjo and four under Jonathan), her records of achievement have not matched her international reputation or, indeed, her own ambitions. She spent her early years at the World Bank as Country Director for South East Asia, and she is enthralled by the East Asian miracle. Indeed, when she launched the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) under the Obasanjo government, she said that its aim was to move Nigeria towards achieving some of the South-East Asian feats. But it didn’t take Nigeria anywhere near that goal! Nevertheless, Okonjo-Iweala was an effective technocrat under the Obasanjo administration, with her success in negotiating Nigeria’s debt relief with the Paris Club and in pushing through some key reforms. But her performance under Jonathan was less impressive.
To be sure, Yale University was right to award Okonjo-Iweala honorary doctorate degree. She is a global figure, and there are many reasons to honour her, but not for the ones that the university gave. Clearly, with 70 percent of Nigerians living below the poverty line and about 30 percent unemployed; with the national debt at $60 billion, external reserves depleted, and corruption so endemic, it is hard to say that her reforms have worked or that her management of the economy has been successful. Despite the effects of the rebasing of the Nigerian economy, which shot up the GDP and revealed some positive features about the structure of the economy, the fact is that many of the key macroeconomic indicators, such as employment, external balance and reserves, government debt, exchange rate and inflation are fundamentally weak.
Now, why did Okonjo-Iweala fail to accomplish as much? Well, first, I believe she faced institutional constraints. For instance, as she once said, corruption is endemic in Nigeria because the institutions created to tackle it are not strong enough, and there was nothing she alone could do about that. She also had to fight running battles with the state governors on spending policy, and even on the sensible idea of creating a sovereign wealth fund. So, clearly, her aim to advance the broad public interest was partly hindered by institutional constraints. That said, I believe Okonjo-Iweala was also a very political minister of finance. Under Obasanjo, she was more technocratic; but under Jonathan, she became more political than technocratic.
Her grand position as the coordinating minister for the economy, coupled with Jonathan’s abdication of leadership and responsibility, effectively made her the prime minister in the Jonathan administration. As a result, she became a politician rather than a technocrat. Both, of course, don’t go well together. As the Oxford economist John Toye argued, “The economist-turned-politician may retain the vision and rhetoric of normative economics, but is unlikely to practise his or her economic policymaking skills”. This was why famous economists David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill and John Maynard Keynes, who were members of the British Parliament, never toed the party line. They became “independents” and avoided partisan politics. If Okonjo-Iweala wants to be a politician, fine, but she should not pretend she could be an effective technocrat at the same time. I believe she did not achieve as much as minister partly because she tried unsuccessfully to be both.
For me, Akinwumi Adesina, then minister of agriculture and rural development (and now president-elect of the African Development Bank), Omobolaji Johnson, former minister of telecommunications technology, and, to some extent, Olusegun Aganga, then minister of trade, industry and investment, were the few technocrats in Jonathan’s government who took their technocratic roles more seriously. They came across more as proper technocrats than as politicians. It’s not surprising that they were probably the most successful ministers. However, Aganga was not always able to tackle special interests in order to promote the general social good, with his constant use of import bans, or threats of import ban, as a trade policy instrument. From a normative economic theory point of view, a competitive market and an open trade policy are good for welfare. I am speaking as an economic liberal, of course!
Clearly, there are lessons here for President Buhari. As he puts together his cabinet he needs reputable technocrats. They possess expertise that can help secure economically superior public policy and effective governance. He should give them sufficient authority to use their professional and technical skills. But he must not abandon his responsibility to provide effective leadership and vision. No technocrat or minister should be so powerful as to be untouchable as some of Jonathan’s ministers were. Nigerians want to see that their president is ultimately in charge, and that under-performing or errant ministers can be removed from office! On their part, technocrats who are asked to serve in Buhari’s government should remember that the raison d’etre of any technocrat is to use his or her expertise to further the general good rather than some personal agenda or private gain. Technocracy is a noble cause; technocrats or “technopols” should protect its reputation!
Olu Fasan
