By Tunji Olaopa
I am always fascinated with the consistent efforts by the Lagos State Government to keep pushing the boundaries of governance, policy, institutional, service delivery and regulatory reforms, that make government work better, for the well-being of the people. This is all the more so given the arid reform context and the difficulty that comes with getting not only the technical sophistication and the political will to push reform through to successful implementation in the policy spaces and public services all around the country. This is not the first time I would be intervening in the attempt to understand the reform framework within the institutional context of Lagos State, as well as her connection with the Nigerian development project.
My interest in Lagos State has many nodal points. The most significant is that Lagos State represents one of the pockets of effectiveness that,if benchmarked, have the capacity to jumpstart Nigeria’s development effort in terms of performances of states. And the second nodal point concerns the fundamental significance of Lagos State as a critical dimension of regional governance and development that is important for the Southwest as a critical point in Nigeria’s overall transformation. There is no doubt that the 9th Lagos State Economic Summit (Ehingbeti 2022) constitutes another mileage in the long trajectory of innovative programs lined up to keep unpacking how the quality of life of Lagosians can be better. And this Summit is all the more significant because it implicitly recognizes the role of the civil service in the successful implementation of the Lagos State DevelopmentPlan (2022-2052).
This intervention attempts some specific stocktaking of the governance and institutional reforms being implemented in the Lagos State public service. The objective is to undertake a critical assessment as basis for articulating a reform agenda for reforming the reform through a set of proposals and recommendations to deepen and consolidate the significant achievements that the state has recorded, going forward. There is no state in the world that does not have the objective of establishing a world class and functional public service that will serve as the machinery for the implementation of democratic governance. When in 2005, Prof. Ladipo Adamolekun conducted a study about the reform experience of African countries, Nigeria was represented as a hesitant reformer based on her reform performance. On that scale that has four categories—advance, committed, hesitant and beginner/non-starter—Lagos State would easily qualify as a committed reformer, based on the series of reform innovation and performance metrics for many years. But that is not the end of the story. With all the enthusiasm and energies committed to continuously reforming the engine of governance, the State is gradually easing itself into the advanced reforming cycle, which indeed requires far much deeper, dimensioned and innovative paradigm shifting, reengineering and refinement cum modernization of the basics of the public administration system
The conversation around the reform performance of Lagos State, like most other reforming states across the world, and especially in Nigeria’s difficult administrative terrain, must factor the critical point that, like all other public services around the globe, the government implements its policies and programs in a wide variety of ways, with the civil service and other MDAs operating alongside other special purpose vehicles, and outfits that are operated largely like task forces. Including other non-traditional new public management innovation, from the public-private partnership to management contracting and consultancy services that enable the public service to achieve capability readiness to achieve democratic service delivery
Taken all together, Lagos State has achieved giant strides in the implementation of specific institutional reforms: a) the automation of an integrated systems that cleans up its personnel records; b) the implementation of a performance management system within framework of corporate strategic management that incorporate critical level of performance contracting for top management, as well as structured training linked to performance indicators, competency framework, etc.; c) the implementation of a professionalized HR function has advanced, and the institutionalizing of a competency-based HR policy; d) an impressive modernized and reprofiled workforce planning system meant to establish new manning requirements for MDAs, to remap hierarchies as basis for operations and succession planning, with job evaluation scheme driving planned regrading and new pay structure; e) progressing post-Covid work reconfiguration to institutionalize remote working, flexi-working hours, virtual meetings and online training and capacity development; f) a culture change programme designed to institutionalize the right values and cultures in the public service, and the mapping of an evolving new work culture dynamics that could factor Lagos State into the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
All these, especially the fifth point about culture change, are strenuously and competently being activated through networks of change ambassadors/innovation champions molded into a community of practice across different cadres, andstructurally linked to a knowledge management system as well as myriad of intranet data bases. Within this frame of institutional reform successes therefore, Lagos State is becoming a smart twenty-first century economy that is making progress in seven areas specified in the reform literature: one, the most fundamental of the reform basics, especially with regard to the tightening of the size and cost of the public service, a feat that is steadily ongoing; two, a significant service delivery reforms with good and smart practices impacting six major domains—traffic management and transportation, health and environment, education and technology, transformation of the Lagos economy, entertainment and tourism, and security and governance; three, reforms to enhance good governance; four, decentralization and local government reform; five, harnessing of information technology for better governance; six, an ongoing incentives and pay reform; and seven, the modernization of the waste management and revenue collection machinery to enhance internally generated revenue.
There is no doubt that Lagos State has put in place a public service with a capability readiness to facilitate development all across the state. However, retaining the status of a committed reformer, and then gradually transiting into an advanced one requires more in terms of a focused commitment to consistently and constantly getting in tune with global reform developments that modify the state and its public service, will be much more demanding. One such recent development derived from the World Economic Forum, and its call for a FAST government that has the capacity to deal with a growing and more sophisticated citizenry with new expectations and demands that the state might not be able to deal with by using old tools and administrative dynamics. To meet these new demands, the government has to keep adapting in ways that keep creating public values in an environment that is quickly becoming VUCA—volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. To meet up, a government therefore needs to redesign its structures and processes in ways that capitalize on new technologies and improved tools. The government, in other words, needs to be Flatter, Agile, Streamlined and Tech-enabled (FAST). Thus, to measure government performance in the Fourth Industrial Revolution requires two correlated metrics. The first is that the government must be measured according to the FAST. This is how one gets to understand what has been called the “transformation readiness of the government”. Meaning, a government willing to achieve transformation must be FAST. The second metricand the second, is to benchmark improvements in service delivery of public values from the perspective of citizens through transparent dealing via e-government.
How can Lagos State connect with the future-of-government to jumpstart innovation that can carry forward the Lagos State Development Plan through capability ready Lagos public service? This requires efforts at moving forward the reform dynamics at several levels. The first is that the government needs to develop an overarching waste reduction strategy by containingthe cost of governance through significant consolidation of duplicated and redundant institutions, treasury control of establishment, unbundling of expenditure structure through productivity audit to free resources to fund development projects, set productivity targeted for MDAs. There is also the need to deepen institutional restructuring that matches tasks with skills through job evaluation to enable regrading that drives pay and compensation reform in order to attracts scarce skills, high-end professionals, reduce consultancy services costs, and motivate and retain available talents, all within an installed technical-rational model indexed to productivity as well as a democratic industrial relation.
Given that it is one of the strongest states in Nigeria with its capacity to take advantage of the capital market to raise development fund, Lagos state must also capitalize on this by deepening the PPP framework allied to corporate good governance. This requires building institutions and expanding the capacities of her public servants to competently manage contractual relationships, especially grants to non-profit, co-production cum delivery models, social impact bonds etc. which together require a range of commercial and regulatory skills including knowledge of the working of market that enable a collaborative relationship between government and the private sector. In this context, Lagos State needs to establish a multidisciplinary corps of senior executive service (SES) that enables it to upgrade the IQ and intellectual bases of her public service. This implies recruiting high-end professionals from all strata of human endeavors, and even the diaspora. This will, for instance, enable the critical mainstreaming of innovation at agencies and task force levels to reengineer the civil service standard operating system. This will,in turn, entail first, de-bureaucratizing of the outdated administrative practices, and a deepening of project management practices.
Lastly, there is no way Lagos State can ignore the immense opportunity for wealth creation that lies in strategically utilizing the subsidiarity principle at the grassroots. This can be done through a critical decentralization of local governance via a local government reform. The LGAs require strengthening that enables them to mobilize and effectively manage the community resources and people. There is therefore a need for stakeholders’ effort that deepen citizens engagement and mobilize bottom-up platforms for inclusive development planning and programming, needs assessment and project implementation, reinforced with local accountability mechanism to harness community self-help service delivery system, from vigilante and waste collection to esusu and poverty reduction frameworks.
The next thirty years is a long stretch for Lagos State to get its strategic acts together to push her development plan and achieve success. It’s a long way from the Economic Summit to the realization of the Development Plan. And yet, Lagos State is blessed with a corps of brilliant leadership, political and administrative, to push the path of the Plan beyond the brilliant analysis at the Summit.
(Being paper delivered at the Ehingbeti 2022 Lagos State Economic Summit with the theme:“Lagos 2022-2052: Charting the Paths to Sustainable Development – the 30 Year Plan”, which held at Eko Hotel & Suites, 11 – 12 October, 2022)
* Prof. Tunji Olaopa
Retired Federal Permanent Secretary
&Professor,National Institute for Policy
and Strategic Studies
(NIPSS), Kuru, Plateau State.