From Okwe Obi, Abuja
Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Prof. Tunji Olaopa, has said it was time for political scientists, especially, to set an agenda for President Bola Tinubu.
Olaopa, who spoke as Chairman of the third Conference of Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA) South West, yesterday at the Lead City University, Ibadan, said it was also time for Nigerians to interrogate the scorecard of the country’s 4th republic of 1999 till now.
He said: “This is indeed an appropriate time to interrogate not only the scorecard of Nigeria’s 4th republic, it is the right time to set agenda for the highly seminal and engaging Tinubu administration through well-thought-through set of problem-focused seminal recommendations that is capable of deepening the frontiers of the innovative change management strategy and leadership sophistication that PBAT has so far brought to governance at this defining juncture in the country’s unfolding.”
He argued that good governance and development management were not only hinged on leadership sophistication, government policy but shaped by what he termed “ high level, quality and relevance of scholarly contributions facilitated by functional capacities and innovations of community of practice like NPSA and other town and gown reinforcing platforms.”
He remarked that the perception of Nigerians from the 4th republic to date, mirrored the faulty structure of the political statement which is difficult to fault because of the dilapidated, the dominance of private schools over public institutions, and epileptic power supply.
“I have however always been strong in my conviction, and in equal breath, known for my advocacy that good governance and development management hinge not only on leadership sophistication, government policy and the vigilance of an enlightened populace.
“It is also shaped by the level, quality and relevance of scholarly contributions facilitated by functional capacities and innovations of community of practice like NPSA and other town and gown reinforcing platforms.
“Indeed, the analytical and discursive interrogation of power and institutional forms depends on professional gatekeepers like NPSA and how successfully they frame research questions and agenda for researchers, as well as the quality of research findings they ventilate as strategic communication contributions to problem-solving in the dynamics of governance and institutional reforms.
“And the political and institutional design issues still awaiting technical resolutions through the inputs of political scientists are legion.
“Is it the whole issue of getting our federalism to be developmental through constitutional reengineering? Or the whole dynamic of making inter-governmental relations to be enabling for service delivery especially as touching the concurrent schedule of function?
“Or the role of the state in the maelstrom of ideological contestation in making better sense of our brand of liberal democracy and in enabling the private sector to be an engine of growth for the national economy?
“Or better still, the challenge of getting Nigeria to optimise the full potentials of public private partnership (PPP) along its three-level maturity curve, and I can go on and on.
“The role of the political scientists is, in other word, cut out in spite of what many might regard as the anti-intellectualism in the policy space in Nigeria.
“Nigeria has come a long way since the inauguration of the fourth republic in 1999. We have seen so many iterations and transitions of party politics in our evolving ideologically barren party system.
“We have seen our legislative arm evolve just as we have witnessed numerous institutional reforms of the machinery of government, the civil service inclusive.
“However, what could have made that scorecard memorable is still missing.
“And the missing link is the impact of efficient service delivery mechanisms of successive administrations on the welfare and well-being of Nigerians.
“The pervasive and unarguable perception of Nigerians from the inauguration of the 4th republic to date, is that public institutions are not working for their betterment.
“And this perception is difficult to fault because it is backed by experiential agonies of Nigerians as they encounter public infrastructures and their abysmal failures.
“Roads are not worth the amount spent on them. They begin to collapse and become death traps soon after they are commissioned. Private schools have overtaken public ones in terms of reliability and quality.
“Power supplied by distribution companies remain mere backups to generators and solar inverters, and many more Nigeria’s development narrative as governance template has therefore been reduced to that of benchmarking failures in terms of government performance except some few governments that stand out, and the number are few and far-between,” he submitted.