This is a guest post by Dele Olowu, a consultant, pastor, and former professor of Administration and Local Government. It is part of the Faith and Governance research of the Religion and Global Development Program at the Berkley Center.
Development must start at the local level and it must
work there.
Unfortunately, in spite of a major reform of local governments
in 1976 and the infusion of huge intergovernmental
financial transfers estimated at 5% of the
country’s GDP, most local governments in Nigeria have
not been very successful in terms of development
impact—judged by their performance in health care
(mostly preventive health, which included Malaria control).
An example is the Barkin Ladi Local Government
in Plateau State, with 11 other “success stories”, out of
774 LGUs. The main explanation for this success was
strong local leadership and their engagement with
local the non-governmental community and faith-based
organizations. What is essential is to build a
framework for co-production by local government and
faith organizations, working on a pilot basis.
Taking a specific program and challenge (like malaria)
could create major rallying point for inter- and intra-faith
collaboration to reform and revitalize local level
governance in Nigeria. This might hold the key to
reforming governance in Nigeria while at the same time helping to push the malaria agenda.
Nigerian local governments receive huge sums of
money in the form of transfers, but most of these are
stolen or mismanaged, rarely used for development initiatives.
In the past, especially under military rule, local
governments could be (and were) held to account by
the national government, and this led to some commendable
developmental impact. With the advent of
democracy, the courts have ruled that local governments
are constitutionally independent entities (which
they are); but, paradoxically, this has served to weaken
accountability and responsible governance at that level.
By enhancing the capacity of faith based organizations
to hold communities to account, we would go a long
way to enhancing the capacity for performance at the
local level both of the government and of FBOs.
We must ask how faith organizations in Nigeria are
engaging with the governance challenge. A practical,
pilot program that brings parties together within an articulated
governance framework might help to provide a
robust answer to this question, building from below and
orchestrating from above at the national level.
