By Sam Amadi
One clear realisation in 2025 is that we have not made much progress as a society even as we have built complicated and costly systems of government. We talk about increasing costs of governance. But beyond the financial costs of government, we have the sheer scope and scale of government. In Nigeria, we have three levels of government: the local, state and federal. Each level has constitutionally mandated system and process of government. Recently, the Supreme Court restated that each of the levels of government must be democratically elected. Each has its own bureaucracy, and the fiscal policy scripted in the constitution requires that public finance belonging to the federation should be shared according to a specific formula among the three levels of government. That is how elaborate the design of government is in Nigeria.
But any keen observer of Nigeria will soon realise that Nigeria has many ungoverned areas. These areas are growing in number, especially in the north of the country. In many of these ungoverned areas, bandits and terrorists hold sway. They subject the people to taxes and tributes and provide security and some semblance of law and order. The insecurity crisis relates more to the fact of many ungoverned areas. There are also semi-governed areas, places where there is government, but government basically does nothing. Under-governed or semi-governed areas seem to stretch across all Nigeria, places there is every appearance of government in terms of officialdom and exploitation, but no real effective governance.
It is important to make this distinction clear. Government is different from governance. Traditionally, government imports coercion and hierarchy. Governance imports relationship and network. Governance is not restricted to government. Non-governmental entities are often involved in governance. Governance is also involved in private sphere where government does not play much role.
If there is one way to describe the crisis of development in Nigeria and many Third World countries, it would be that in those countries there is too much government and too little governance. Think about how you encounter government in Nigeria: big government officials driving mindlessly on large convoys, guarded by too many police officers and scaring the people off the road. Prof Wole Soyinka encountered that with the entourage of Nigerian President’s son, whose military contingent is enough to overcome the armies of Benin Republic. Think about the long list of protocol at every public event. That is government. Every community in Nigeria has a councilor, a local governement chairman and a representative at the state and National Assemblies. That is government. They also have advisors to governor and tens of officials bearing different names. That is government.
But think about the lack of basic health facilities, no electricity, no ambulance services, no public complaint office, no redress mechanism for deprived and violated citizens, no security of life and no emergence services of any sort. That is governance.
In Africa, government does not necessarily govern. Government grows but governance gets worse and unavailable. Nobody fixes pot-hole. Fixing potholes is governance. A community can be raided severally at will by a band of bandits. No one tries to prevent next attack. Preventing attack on a community is governance. But staying in the fortress of governement houses and doing nothing to protect the people could be government.
Since independence, we have succeeded in making government more sophisticated, complex and large and making governance less available. The more government grows the less governance we have.
But good governance does not even require a larger and overbearing government. Perhaps it needs less government. That may be the point of the apostle of less government. In Anambra State, Mr Peter Obi is generally believed to have reformed education. He moved the state from the worst performer to the best. People have argued that he did not build too many new schools and did not apply any sophisticated policy. What he did is just mundane: he gave back schools to voluntary associations and gave them well targeted financial grants to manage the schools. But the simple things are magical. Again, government is about working on incentives to achieve desired results. Obi did not need to create multiple ministries of education and establish a complex bureaucracy to manage education. Just the right incentive to private actors to produce public good.
Another example of governemnt without elaborate government occurred this Christmas in my community. A group of people were quarreling and I feared that it would break out into a violent fight. Temper rose high and I was expecting breakout of violence. I tried to intervene and the people restrained me. They said there would be no fight, the argument will die down as no one would be willing to strike the other. I wondered why such angry quarrel will not break into open fight. The answer is simple: any one who strikes the other pays N50,000. The community has an effective enforcement mechanism. No one dares to be guilty. It works as magic. No one strikes the other. Every one tries to provoke the other to strike but the consequence is punitive and prohibitive. So there is no strike. This is economics and public policy 101. It works without much government.
In 2026, we can achieve more social order and progress if we refocus attention from government to government. Government may likely fail. But governance is usually the solution.
