For a Responsible State

BY KAYODE KOMOLAFE

kayode.komolafe@thisdaylive.com
0805 500 1974

As the United States healthcare system got overwhelmed by the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic last year, celebrated theorist of liberal democracy Francis Fukuyama made a strong case for the competent state. He posited that the state should be capable of giving “effective leadership” while winning the trust of the people.
According to Fukuyuma, in periods of crisis the centrality of the role of the state becomes more conspicuous. Examples of such moments in history cited by the scholar included World War I, the Great Depression, World II and 2008 Financial Crisis.

During crises, the people look up to the state for solution.

According to the political theorist, America lacked such a solution under President Donald Trump. Countries that have managed the global public health crisis remarkably have “a competent state apparatus, a government that citizens trust and listen to, and effective leaders…” Those countries which have mismanaged the crisis are largely governed by states without those specified virtues.

His argument was put forward in an essay published in the June 2020 edition of the American influential journal, Foreign Affairs. The piece is entitled “The Pandemic and Political Order: It Takes a State.” The context, of course, was the disillusionment of the pundits and the people alike with the Trump presidency.

Similar views were expressed by the anti-poverty economist, Jeffery Sachs, in a recent statement at a development forum. Sachs also called for a government with capacity for any country confronting the crisis of underdevelopment. Again, the position of the scholar is that to confront the contemporary crises, the government of each country must give leadership in finding solution.

The character of the state is coming to the fore in the various systems around the globe. This identifiable character will determine how the state tackles the crises confronting humanity such poverty, inequality, social injustice, climate change, pandemics, conflicts etc.

It is important to draw attention to the above positions of liberal thinkers because they speak to the Nigerian situation in some respects. Those who have made a career of defending liberal democracy are now also making a case for strengthening the ability of government to deliver public goods. Amid the crises, a rethink of issues and options is taking place globally.

However, here in Nigeria our neo-liberal ideologues are still fixated on their opposition to the strategic role of the state in the political economy. Instead of the recent views of Fukuyama and Sachs, our experts and technocrats would rather recall that former American President Ronald Reagan said 40 years ago that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Reagan, of course, made the statement in the ideological atmosphere of neo-liberal hubris of those days.

Today, the organic link is often not obvious between the spread of such laissez – faire ideas and the decline of politics that is oriented towards public good in this country. Politics has been cynically reduced to a game played as a means to achieve private ends. It’s a virtual privatisation of politics, if you like. Hence, there is so much political controversies and little or no discussion of policies.

That is why on the surface it would appear that politics is taken seriously in this land. The nation is perpetually in electoral mood. As soon as the results of a presidential election are announced, the politics of the next presidential election begins in earnest even when the verdict is still being disputed at the electoral tribunal. At any moment, a distant observer could mistakenly assume that the presidential election would take place the following month in Nigeria.

But the purpose of politics is hardly a matter of interest to the politicians as well as the people. Hence the big fight i Hence the big fight on the political landscape is more about who gets to power and less about what to do with the power so coveted to deliver public goods. n the political landscape is more about who gets to power and less about what to do with the power so coveted to deliver public goods. Here lies the contradiction to be resolved. After all, being involved in politics to gain power should be a means to an end: to advance the public good. If that had been the case, the nation could have made faster progress in the last 22 years of civil rule.

In most cases, politicians have sought power to promote personal interests. For clarity, it is legitimate for politicians to have political ambitions. It is more important, however, that power should be used for people’s interest. Most participants in the political process are not motivated by this end of serving the public good. If the reverse had been the case in this civil dispensation, the condition of the poor people ought to have been better than it was 22 years ago. No, the condition is worse today.

Come to think of it, stories of countries which have taken developmental leaps in a matter of decades are being told in the public sphere.

The troubles bedevilling the main political parties are not based on differences in policies or perspectives to development. The basis of the quarrel is the control of the party structure as vehicle for those who would like to take a ride in it to power, to paraphrase Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah. That’s why membership of a party for some politicians is a political ephemera. Neither the All Progressives Congress (APC) nor the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has held a policy conference in recent times. Instead of preparing policy documents, candidates devote more time designing their legal strategies. They know that the ultimate voting takes place in the court room in most cases. Someone calls it tribunalocrcay, that is the democracy determined by the electoral tribunals. Even the smaller party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) is not spared of the political virus of elections without party programmes. The legal labyrinth created towards the Anambra state gubernatorial election coming up later in the year is not based on preferences for policies on education, health or industrialisation among the candidates of APGA, PDP or APC. Rather, what you have on display in the rancorous politics in Anambra is utter contempt for ideas and structures. The situation is the same nationally.

Therefore, there should be a rethink of the role of the political parties in the process of putting governments in place at all levels. The operations of the parties in this dispensation have purged them of any democratic significance. The parties are indistinguishable in terms of programmes; politicians move freely across the parties since there are no ideological boundaries.

To start with, party secretariats should do more than forwarding candidates forms to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The parties should be identified by their well- articulated programmes. That was the way it was in the Second Republic. Some specific policy choices were associated with each of the parties in existence during that period of the nation’s political history. For instance the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) articulated a programme of green revolution and mass housing while the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) focussed on free education, health service and rural development while the People’s Redemption Party (PRP) implemented a widely acclaimed programme of mass literacy and other anti-poverty policies. In terms of policies sold to the electorate during elections similar things could be said of the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP), the Great Nigerian Peoples Party (GNPP), and the National Advance Party (NAP).

The president and governors elected on the platforms of those parties were expected to implement the party programmes. The supremacy of the party was not only invoked in nominating candidates, but also in matters of policies and programmes.

In contrast to the policy distinctions of the Second Republic, virtually all the presidents of this Fourth Republic only remembered to draw up their economic programmes and strategies after months of their elections. In other climes of liberal democracy, not only must the parties and their candidates articulate the programmes in every sector of economic management before elections, they are also expected to come up with how to finance the programmes. It is not enough to make declarations about revamping infrastructure or improving education; the electorate in those climes expect to be told how the governor or president would fiancé the projects. In Nigeria, soon after a governor is elected he begins to lament that the monthly allocation from the Federation Account is drying up. The job of a governor should be more than sending his commissioner of finance to Abuja monthly for allocation of funds. The strategy of economic management should include revenue generation in the most imaginative manner.

It is certainly not a story of progress that in retrospect the politics of the much-criticised Second Republic is now remembered to be more qualitative than the present one. A politician is made president or governor first before he thinks of governance strategy. In whichever way the map of a restructured Nigeria is drawn, progress would still be hindered unless the governance issues are tackled.

So it is good to search for who will do the job of the president; it is even more important to define what’s to be done on which ideological platform. In other words, it is also important to define the presidential hopefuls by their ideas and not just their ethnicities, regional origins faiths and professions. Questions should also be asked about their passion for development as a way of enriching the political process with ideas.

For instance, an aspirant should be known by what he or she would do differently in the education sector. The crisis in the sector is not one that could be solved by the prescriptions of free-market fundamentalists. The problem of millions of children out school is beyond free-market solutions as the experience of the last few decades have shown.

Similarly, the problem of millions of poor people without access to quality healthcare cannot be solved without universal health coverage being a cardinal policy of government. Yet some policy wonks are still calling for more privatisation and deregulation in areas which strictly meant for delivery of public goods. It would be less than responsible for a state to toe that policy path amid acute crises of poverty and underdevelopment. It requires deep thinking to come with policy options.

The American state under the watch of President Joe Biden is intervening in the political economy with trillions of dollars as stimulus packages. It takes a state to do that in any economy- capitalist or socialist.
A responsible state cannot emerge from a political process that is not based on clear strategies and policies of development.

All told, the crises manifesting as insecurity, poverty and threats to national unity can only be tackled by a responsible and responsive state. As indicated in the introduction to this reflection, to play its role responsibly and responsively, a state should muster enough competence and strong leadership while securing the social trust. In addition, the institutions in the public sector including the bureaucracy should be well- equipped and developed to enforce regulations.

This is the “irreducible minimum” as Comrade Edwin Madunagu would put the ideological question in this proposition mathematically.

To be sure, this not a revolutionary position. It is only an amplification of an enlightened liberal suggestion.
However, in the light of the multi-dimensional nature of the crisis and in the absence of a revolution, this minimum condition of responsibility should be met by the Nigerian state to prevent anarchy.