By Tunji Olaopa

When the politics-administration dichotomy inaugurated the practice of public administration, what was intended was a critical need to bifurcate the logic of the two in ways that will extend the relationship between the politicians and the administrator and make it more efficient. The politician is then, within the logic of the dichotomy, restricted to policy formulation while the administrator is confined to the realm of policy implementation. Reality, however, defeats the neat boundary between the two. Politics and administration, in practical reality, are almost inseparable. And one would expect that the relationship between political science and public administration discourse will reflect this inseparability. Unfortunately, it does not. The separation undermines the fundamental urgency of addressing the political foundation of administrative research and practices, especially as they relate to the issues of power, governance, politics and democracy.

Political science descriptively and critically studies political phenomena and how they contribute to our understanding of the political community. Significantly, political science analyzes the fundamental role that power plays in the articulation of politics especially in the attempt to unravel the dynamics of the political community and its social and political circumferences and trajectories. Public administration is the very embodiment of the state as the most critical embodiment of politics. The state is made most visible within the frameworks and institutional workings of public administration, especially through the public sector and the public services. The straightforward argument is that the political and administrative reality of any state cannot be studied in isolation of each other. This seems obvious enough given that each of political science and public administration reinforces each other in terms of shedding light on the complex and intricate workings of the state and its response to the citizens and the commonwealth. In other words, there is no way the concepts of power and governance, for example, would not intersect political and administrative questions, and complicate them. The issues of democratic governance and innovation, and collaborative governance demand thinking of the interplay between politics science and administration.

In my many years as a deep insider career bureaucrat in the public service, I have been aware not only of the role that politics plays in administrative matters, and vice versa. I have also been apprised of how political acts of commission and omission actively promote or undermine the public service. Indeed, my theoretical and practical researches into the dynamics of government business and institutional reforms highlight how political and administrative factors interact. My deep worry, however, is that political science and public administration discourses in Nigeria carry on as if these interactions and interrelations are at best trivial or at worst non-existent. For instance, in institutional terms, there is nothing to write home about in the existence and possible cross-fertilizing relationship between the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA) and the National Association for Public Administration and Management (NAPAM). Indeed, there cannot be such a cross-fertilization because while NPSA is active, NAPAM has remained comatose. And the vision and mission statement of NPSA is not broad enough to take in administrative matters and concerns, or the interplay of politics and administration.

The most fundamental observation that my status as a scholar-bureaucrat in the federal civil service afforded me is a practical understanding of the nature of the fundamental disconnections in public administration practices and the consequences on the state’s responsibility to her citizens, all due to crucial assumptions and principles that have been left lying fallow and unattended to in an interdisciplinary discourse and cross fertilization between political science scholarship and public administration theories and practice. A few examples suffice. In 1966, Nigeria shifted away from the parliamentary system of government and, after the long interregnum of military administrations, resumed with the presidential system, enshrined in the 1979 Constitution. This move was preceded by the Dotun Phillips studies report of 1985, and the Civil Service Reorganization Decree of 1988, which aligned the civil service with the presidential system of government. However, even with the reversal of the reform frameworks by the Ayida reform of 1995, it is still clear that many of Nigeria’s administrative practices retain aspects of parliamentary elements that could be one source of unresolved structural troubles necessitating performance inefficiency.

This has some other implications for the practice of federalism and the stabilization of Nigeria’s governance structure. Since the intervention of the military in 1966 and the subsequent militarization of Nigeria’s political and governance structure of the Nigerian state, the federal arrangement that ought to have been the natural remedy for the unruly ethno-national diversity became compromised. For instance, inter-governmental relations and the critical need for fiscal federalism became caught in the cracks of constitutional and institutional dysfunction. The Babangida administration, through the recommendation of the IBB’s Presidential Advisory Committee, established the National Council for Inter-Governmental Relations (NCIS) as one in a series of government’s efforts—like the Centre for Democratic Studies (CDS), National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies, Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies, etc.—to rehabilitate Nigeria’s governance and administrative structures.

All this goes to demonstrate a cogent reason why the political and the administrative in Nigeria’s governance context cannot be separated, even in terms of theoretical argumentation. Political science scholarship, in longing for an interdisciplinary relationship with public administration, must recognize how the latter has evolved first as a sub-discipline of political science, and later as a multidisciplinary endeavor that encompasses insights drawn from management science, organizational psychology, sociology, statistics, industrial engineering, computer science, etc. from which it draws to invigorate its curriculum and pedagogy. This point is still not demonstrated in the disciplinary silos that define the existence of political science on the one hand and public administration on the other in Nigerian universities. In some universities, public administration functions in a different faculty, or is its own faculty, as different from the faculty of the social sciences. And so, scholars carry out their scholarly discourses in different contexts, oblivious of the grave challenges that the Nigerian administrative and governance predicament poses to their theoretical and practical separation. In what follows, I will point attention at a few contentious institutional matters to which I have gestured in many of my works, but which I contend require the critical interrogation of political scientists.

First, there is the recurrent issue of the need to keep clarifying the nature and the role of the state in terms of administrative efficiency. While the state is central to the analysis of power, and constitutes one of the central thematic focuses of political science scholarship, the fundamental need to redefine the role of the state has often not been taken up in terms of its significance for the restructuring of the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) that are the critical engine room for measuring the developmental successes of the state. Aligning the role of the state to the understanding of the MDA becomes crucial as it facilitates the reform of the MDAs in terms of the need to remodel and strengthen their core vis-à-vis their non-core functions as both relate to the service delivery function of government. This could also instigate the urgency of conducting institutional audit that is crucial not only to determining the performance status of many state agencies, but to also jumpstart organizational development dynamics that are meant to motivate the movement of structures to institutions. It is institutions, rather than mere structures that government requires to undermine governance failure.

Second, political science scholarship in Nigeria is necessarily confronted by the need to clarify and explicate the thorny issue of the relationship between the administrative operational dynamics of the executive arm of government in terms of its apparatuses—like the Federal Executive Council—and the working of the American-styled presidential system of government. This is a key concern given that Nigeria’s adoption of many institutional dynamics has remained problematic in terms of relating them to her political and administrative realities. For instance, acute and critical attention needs to be paid also to the political economy involved in the executive-legislature relations, and the implications deriving from the planning and budgeting processes from legislative oversight to appropriation and budget implementation.

Peter Ekeh’s analysis of migrated structures alerts us to the danger of adopting these structures without paying critical attention to their value orientation and the political realities of where they are coming from. Democratic governance and all its ancillary structural and administrative apparatuses encompass a host of issues that require critical analyses. Since the notion of the public good and the commonwealth, in the idea of good democratic governance, constitutes the formidable core of the relationship between politics, public management and public administration, then the discourse around stakeholder management, participatory governance, performance management and accountability becomes key and critical core issues that interact with the way we see politics, administration and citizenship. The recent discourse on the resuscitation of local governance, through the landmark decision of the Supreme Court to legally reinvigorate the constitutional strength of local government in Nigeria, points at the significance of connecting community development structures and traditional institutions to the state systems and democratic enablement through the principle of social capital and subsidiarity.

To reiterate, the predicament of the postcolonial Nigerian state demands that political science scholarship must necessarily and urgently signal an interdisciplinary collaboration that will instigate a ferment of theoretical, practical and institutional discourses from which both can expect not only to refresh their internal discursive vibrancy, but also collectively contribute to the understanding of the working of the Nigerian state and her capacity to induce participatory democratic governance.

. Olaopa is Professor of Public Administration, and the Chairman,Federal Civil Service Commission, Abuja.

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By Toyin Falola

For a long time, the response of Africans to leadership paralysis that is almost consuming the continent has been very reactionary and not necessarily proactive. With no exemption of any African country in particular, the crops of leaders that one would find at every position of leadership are individuals with sufficient demonstration of unpreparedness as they either have demonstrated no creative approach to the myriads of challenges confronting the continent or they are predominantly ideologically helpless in solving them. Their futile attempts to project some effectively planned strategies to tackle their existential challenges have indicated that they either do not have a mind or are grossly inefficient in handling the task ahead of them. Usually, what happens is that they believe in a one-size-fits-all approach. Therefore, they have traditionally dedicated themselves to extracting practices adopted elsewhere, disregarding the contextual import of such ideas. In essence, most African countries continue to find themselves in the intractable challenges that are byproduct of the superficial political aesthetics of others and do not invest in thinking their way out of the problems that face their people. They are an incurable believer that Africans are themselves deficient in independent thoughts and cannot produce refined intellectual ideas that would be used to salvage their internal challenges. But then, this trend would not go on forever.

Now that some foresighted African leaders are putting their thoughts together to create such an academic institution as the African School of Governance, it reveals their awareness about the underlying duties that have been abandoned for a long time due to the inability to face the challenges head-on. They concluded that giving reactionary solutions to Africa’s challenges would only tilt another way for the misdirection of African youths for many generations. Such youths, I’m afraid, would only be competent in following the Global North in whatever decisions they take, not minding if the universalist decisions and solutions can address their local issue.

Refined intellectuals like Professor Moghalu, who has been appointed as the maiden President of the ASG, promise to introduce a profound style of handling intending African leaders who would eventually occupy important positions where ideas and values to be used in governance would be theirs and not parodied along their colonizer’s paths. Over the years, it has become common knowledge that anyone who has economic power, questionable as the source of their affluence, always contests for political offices where ordinarily refined ideas are needed to maximum impact. It does not matter if they are utterly bereft of values and initiatives that can provoke cutting-edge and remarkable progress; what is prioritized is that they are given the mandate to represent even when they do not know how.

This is the foundation of the motivation that pushed these outstanding individuals to develop the initiative that brought ASG into existence. Across many African countries, especially in modern times, unconfirmed information suggests that people who have amassed through diabolical sources are either found picking interest in political positions or make themselves kingmakers who sponsor others that would occupy these positions. If this is the case, which is highly likely, one cannot but wonder where the future of African politics would be driven. This suspicion and anxiety cannot be unnecessary considering the discovery that in places where these individuals of questionable moral character find themselves in political offices, they have done extensively well to major in inanities and then minor in frivolities. Where other countries are making impressive leaps to overcome economic, political, climate and sociocultural challenges, these individuals are either neck-deep in pursuing policies that reinforce their nefarious inclinations or ones that do not benefit ordinary people. For instance, some countries have legalized the idea that political officeholders are immune to accountability actions when they have violated the offices where they are meant to protect the public interest. Regardless of the amount they have embezzled, it seems they cannot be called into question by the necessary security agencies to protect them. This is odd. The economically powerful countries of the world do not attain this feat through this deplorable process.

Professor Moghalu and I think many people across the world believe that the foundational problem that faces Africa is a leadership problem because not only does everything that concerns a nation go directly to the table of the leader, but it is also true that the ability to initiate innovative programs and policies, with the accompanying power of implementation, resides with the leaders. And then, any leader who develops anxiety towards a politically and economically liberated citizen would always be bereft of ideas that could ordinarily transform the collective society. In their inchoate desire to be regarded as an authority or cling to power as long as possible, they would be disconcerted by the thought that the groups of people they otherwise lord over would become liberated and then undermine their authority. That feeling indicates their inability to evolve and understand the dynamics of things in their time. Although they could become very successful in this domain, they would create a generation of people who have no idea how to move their nation forward. And regardless of how an individual remains and dies as a powerful individual when problems come knocking, they would not be insulated from the consequences of their limited foresight. A troubled citizenry in chaos does not differentiate between influential and less powerful people. When they strike, they would ultimately do so with disregard for anyone’s status. Professor Moghalu admits there are system-designed economic challenges, but he reiterated that they won’t come in a situation with purposeful leadership.

Something important to note in the conversation between Professors Moghalu and Nimi Wariboko is that both must examine what is fundamental for a leader to do when they come to power. To Wariboko, systemic foundations are nonnegotiable in changing people’s attitudes to social and political responsibilities, but Moghalu takes a different approach. We have been familiar with the contrasting views. Some individuals believe that by having the right leaders in the correct position, the people’s actions will be influenced. To be honest, such ideologues are accurate because when people of good moral character are placed in leadership positions, they use their ethical principles and strength to provoke a change. However, that thinking is defeated by the understanding that people’s moral character barely affects the company, groups, and the body of people they work with. Leaders are naturally expected to work with an endless number of people with whom they often do not share personal relationships. Even if such a leader has a glistering moral identity, they cannot determine what happens in different ministries, departments, and aspects of leadership where very sensitive decisions would be made and would affect the collective progress of the people. More importantly, you cannot guarantee that good leaders will always come to power every time. If this one is good, the following five successors may not have a similar moral view.

Interestingly, systemic changes can happen when the right systems are installed among people. Systems from time have often been compelling in shaping a people’s character to responsibilities. It has been recognized as regulating people’s behavior even when they do not want to. The reluctance of leaders in Asian countries, especially China and maybe North Korea, to steal public money comes from the awareness that the consequences of their actions are immediate. Rather than shielding the corrupt ones among them and preventing them from answering to their actions, they have systems that would generally make them accountable and show them the consequences of their actions. Does this mean that they do not have corrupt officials amongst them? No. Does that mean abuse of offices would not be found there? No. These would be encountered at a minimal level. In essence, it is very fundamental to install the right systems and empower them to make decisions that they consider great for the advancement of society. While this is germane, it is also essential that they install people with admirable moral principles in offices who would also not compromise the ethical standards of the system and not soil its integrity.

This is the final report on the interview on “African Leadership” with Dr. Kingsley Moghalu on January 19, 2025. For the transcript:

By Felix Oboagwina

Comrade, Congratulations ooo!

What’s up, Man? Why are you congratulating me? It’s not my birthday till September.

You should also tell me congratulations nevertheless!

I really need good news. What happened? Why are we exchanging congratulations?

Petrol price has dropped from four digits to three digits. Shame on doubting Thomases like you! Petrol is no longer N1,200; it is now N925.

Continue to be self-delusional! News flash: All petrol stations in this our neighbourhood are still displaying N1,045 per litre.

They will adjust their meters downwards, latest, tomorrow morning. Hooray!

Hooray kill you there! You know what is worrying you and most Nigerians?

Tell us o, Mister Doubting Thomas. What is “wronging” with us?

Stockholm Syndrome! You have been raped for so long that you have fallen in love with your rapist.

Asusu beke! Oyinbo! Mister Grammarian: Which one is Stockholm Syndrome? Let me Google it. Here it is: Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological theory that explains why hostages or victims may develop positive feelings towards their captors or abusers. This can lead to the victim defending or identifying with the captor, and may also include negative feelings towards authorities attempting to rescue them. The term originated from a 1973 bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, where hostages developed an emotional bond with their captors instead of being hostile.

You Nigerians will celebrate a little gain from your oppressors when you have lost so, so much. Before your hero took over power on May 29, 2023, the price of petrol was N195. Then, someone opened his big mouth, waaaah, and said: SUBSIDY IS GONEYou! No strategy! No modus operandi! No incentive! No structure! Nothing! Before you could say JACK ROBINSON, predictably, the price reacted and fuel skyrocketed to N550 per litre. Today they sell for N1,045 minimum! Then these same Shylocks shave off less than N100 from that bogus price and you wave your tails like starving dogs handed a meatless bone.

What is wrong with celebrating what you call “little gains?”