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Nigeria: On the Duties of Government (i)

Obadiah Mailafia

28 October 2008

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opinion

The aims and duties of government remain among the perennial questions of social and political theory. They have also been part of the great debate in economic science from Keynes to Hayek and Milton Friedman.

While the Anglo-Saxons have maintained that the scope of government should be narrowly defined, a richer and older tradition views its role as that of ministering to the needs of all citizens from the 'cradle to the grave'.

According to the American Declaration of Independence, government should engage in "organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness". An entire school of jurisprudence focused on natural rights and social contract from Hugo Grotius to John Locke and Rousseau views society as possessing an implicit contract between rulers and the governed.

While government has a sacred duty to protect the lives and property of citizens and to promote their collective welfare, citizens on their part have a duty to obey the laws and to fulfil the obligations of good citizenship. In our day, no one has done for more for social contract as a liberal theory of politics than the late Harvard philosopher John Rawls.

The Swiss diplomat and jurist, Emmerich de Vattel advised the modern prince to "watch for the nation, and take care to preserve it, and render it more perfect; to better its state, and to secure it, as far as possible, against everything that threatens its safety or its happiness". Timur-Bec, a medieval Muslim statesman declared that "a single hour's attention devoted by a prince to the care of his state is of more use and consequence than all the homage and prayers he could offer up to God during his whole life". For the 19th century German statesman Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt, the duties of government centre on "the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity." A linguist, philosopher and friend of Goethe and Schiller, von Humboldt saw the role of government as nothing less than that of promoting universal Enlightenment.

Nearer home, Muhammad al-Maghili, the 15th century scholar, wrote The Obligation of Princes for the guidance of the Habe rulers of what was eventually to become northern Nigeria. An advisor to the great Sarki Muhammadu Rumfa of Kano, he advised rulers to be fair-minded in administration and impartial in the dispensation of justice. In his magisterial opus, Leadership and Governance in Nigeria (1999), Mahmud Tukur has documented the key elements of this tradition of progressive politics and leadership must have inspired leaders from Sultan Muhammadu Bello to Gamji and Aminu Kano - a tradition that is all but lost.

We cannot overlook the fact that, for rich as well as poor countries, the challenges facing governments are becoming quite overwhelming. Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans exposed the rotten innards of the American system while the ongoing financial crisis has brought into stark reality its institutional-regulatory weaknesses. Entire nations in Latin America are under the stranglehold of drug cartels. In England, the government is increasingly helpless to deal with problems such as drugs, violent crime and teenage pregnancies. Professor Sir Anthony King, a noted student of public policy, wittily characterises the current situation in the manner of the sorcerer's apprentice: "The waters rise. The apprentice rushes about with his bucket. The waters rise even faster. And none of us knows when, or whether, the magician will come home."

Although I would disagree with the likes of General Buhari and Professor Pat Utomi who liken us to a 'failed state', there is no doubting that we would rank among the lowest on the capability index of nations. Some of the symptoms of our dysfunctionality include: inability to deal with the Niger Delta crisis; failure to stop outbreaks of ethnic and religious killings; the randomness of violent crime; prevalence of high-scale financial haemorrhage; failure to provide electricity; the chaotic urban blight of Lagos; the worst catalogue of road accident casualties in the world; our shamefully dilapidated infrastructures; prevalence of evil practices such as child abuse, ritual sacrifice and cultism even among the highest echelons of our elites; mass illiteracy; collapse of the manufacturing sector; little or no technology innovation; and the prevalence of hunger, disease and destitution in a land that should be flowing with milk and honey.

I am persuaded that ignorance as well as incompetence and corruption are largely to blame for the current state of affairs. Indeed, our entire system is a panegyric to incompetence and folly. Alarmingly, the operations of our governmental structure diverge so widely from the spirit of federalism as taught by scholars from Kenneth Wheare to James Q Wilson. Judged by how much state and local governments spend as against results on ground, it is clear that this colossally wasteful system is unsustainable in the long run.

There is also the absence of planning. Vision 2020 apart, there is hardly anyone out there who is thinking and worrying about what Nigeria would be twenty-five or fifty years from now. And it is an axiomatic truth that if we are not planning to succeed, we must be planning to fail.

There is also the truth that a house divided cannot stand. There is a body of evidence in economic theory which shows that nations that are cohesive tend to do better in terms of growth as compared to ethnically divided societies who tend to waste whole chunks of resources in just trying to paper over their fissiparous cracks. Where there is lack of trust, every move by government arouses suspicions of sinister motives. Without an inner spiritual core, we have become a nation of drifters, passing each other with the eerie silence of ships at night. Our government therefore needs to reclaim the abandoned project of nationhood. Those who believe in 'project Nigeria' should stand up and be counted.

It goes without saying that a nation that cannot offer protection for its citizens has failed in its primary task. In Nigeria of today, the vast majority of our citizens are living lives of quiet desperation. Jobless hoodlums and 'area boys' reign supreme in our cities, reminiscent of Fyodor Dostoevsky's 'possessed'. Young men from our decaying university system moonlight as armed robbers whilst their female counterparts sell their bodies in a desperate bid to make ends meet. Our highways are under the control of armed bandits, some of them of even foreign provenance. No one is safe-not even the senior police commissioner with armed escorts. We are a nation of hired assassins, where human heads could be procured for little or nothing. I have travelled virtually the whole world, and I can say with no fear of contradiction that, with the exception of failed states such as Sudan, Somalia and the DRC, ours is the most ill-governed and most lawless country I have ever come across.

Government must also do more, within the limits of available resources, to provide a minimum of welfare to its citizens. Linked to this is the imperative of justice and fairness. Our laws must not cater for the rich at the expense of the poor; they must provide - and must be seen to provide -equity for the poor. It was Saint Augustine who once declared that 'an unjust law is no law'. The sanctity of property and the enforcement of contracts must be a cornerstone of the legal system whilst rule of law and the imperatives of due process must prevail.

Government has a duty to provide all citizens with those public goods and social services that most countries have come to take for granted in our 21st century. Such public goods include infrastructures, roads, rail systems, electricity and energy generation, education and health services. Having spent a staggering one trillion naira on our electricity sector, it is deeply disturbing that we are so far from having adequate power supply. Nothing, in my view, better confirms our reputation as a land of mediocres. The same can be said for our doddering education and health sectors and our comatose rail system. To solve these problems would require a completely new way of thinking and a different approach to public policy and collective action. There has to be a scientific project system approach, with rigorous mechanisms for accountability, controls, monitoring and evaluation and rigorous implementation.

(To be concluded)

Dr. Mailafia is Chairman of the Centre for Policy and Economic Research, Abuja.

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