Nigeria
Good Governance in Nigeria: Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-First Century – review
In Good Governance in Nigeria: Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-First Century, Portia Roelofs critiques conventional Western ideas of “good governance” imposed in Africa, and specifically Nigeria, through fieldwork and historical analysis. Stephanie Wanga finds the book a grounded and nuanced argument for alternative, locally shaped and socially embedded models of governance.
Good governance: a phrase laden with meaning and history. Good governance in Africa? Even more trouble at hand. Colonial and neocolonial projects in Africa have been justified in the name of good governance. However, to assume a sense of foreboding when one hears the phrase “good governance” is also to assume – and even to locate – its meaning in a particular provenance. This is exactly what Portia Roelofs, in her book Good Governance in Nigeria: Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-First Century, wants to trouble.
The author wants to draw out a re-conception of good governance: namely, as conceived of by everyday people rather than, say, the World Bank or other institutions whose projected definitions come with immense repercussions.
Roelofs, a lecturer in politics at King’s College London, has spent time in Nigeria, including undertaking research in the universities of Ibadan and Maiduguri. It is from her fieldwork in Nigeria that she wants to draw out a re-conception of good governance: namely, as conceived of by everyday people rather than, say, the World Bank or other institutions whose projected definitions come with immense repercussions. To do so, this work “places the voices of roadside traders and small-time market leaders alongside those of local government officials, political godfathers and technocrats…[theorising] ‘socially embedded’ good governance.” Using this method, she defends the argument that “power must be socially embedded for it to be accountable”, in opposition to those who cast social embeddedness as sullying politics and leaving room for all the varied forms of corruption that may hinder good governance.
If society and social demands might be seen as an enabler of corruption […] the necessary flip side is that it can also represent a constraint on the actions of those in power.
Indeed, Roelofs extends Peter Ekeh’s erudite analysis (in Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa) of a “third space” that defies the binaries of political science’s beloved public and private spheres. Ekeh presented a space from which Nigerian (and wider African) politics could be more fruitfully analysed, a space that was “neither absolutely rational-bureaucratic public authority [nor]…patrimonial authority conceived as the personal or individual authority of a Big Man’s private household”. Roelofs presents evidence that “points towards the existence of more social forms of governance which are neither personalistic […] nor ethnic, but speak to a more general sociality”, which provides the basis for the notion of governance that is “both public and yet includes some social elements and the further possibility that this may constitute good governance”. If society and social demands might be seen as an enabler of corruption (something that is not, the author reminds us, a uniquely African problem), the necessary flip side is that it can also represent a constraint on the actions of those in power. In fact, the insistence on detaching the state from its societal embeddedness increases the opacity and unaccountability of the state.
Roelofs’ methodology may be controversial to those devoted to hyper-abstraction, but for those of us who theorise as we live rather than save theory for the books, good governance must always be socially embedded. However, Roelofs is engaging with real biases that run deep in both political theory and development studies, and that have had immense consequences. As she writes, “While personal contact between voters and politicians is pathologized in scholarly analysis of Africa, it is celebrated by political scientists working in Western democracies.” Social-embeddedness has been a kind of dirty word in a lot of the mainstream writing on African politics – it is this entanglement of the political with the social that causes diagnoses such as “the cancer of corruption” and other terms that pathologise African politics every which way.
This is a book that is quite close to me in terms of method, as a person who roots herself primarily in political theory but believes ardently in the ways other methods and sources, including history and fieldwork, must educate political theory. Along with this, the book is supposed to demonstrate “the associated possibilities for decolonising the study of politics”. One might question the extent to which this book rigorously engages this latter goal, but it continues in the tradition of thinkers including Thandika Mkandawire (to whom the book is dedicated) and others like Ndongo Samba Sylla and Leonce Ndikumana.
Roelofs contests the dominant World Bank discourse on good governance that is projected as universally accepted and uncontroversial. She proposes an alternative mode of governance whereby the people decide for themselves the terms of engagement – something that the World Bank has in multiple, egregious ways denied the continent. This very act is noteworthy – the “problem” of African politics has been repeatedly deemed “too embedded in social and material relations”, leading to the oft-cited ills of neopatrimonialism, corruption, etc.
Roelofs is self-conscious of her position as a white woman trying to turn the tables on colonial, trope-filled discourse and asks for thoughts on how such a move might be more conscientiously made.
However, though this goal of challenging what good governance means is named explicitly at the outset, it would have been useful to see the precise ways in which the book operates as a (potentially) decolonial act. Roelofs is self-conscious of her position as a white woman trying to turn the tables on colonial, trope-filled discourse and asks for thoughts on how such a move might be more conscientiously made. Indeed, many have questioned how “Africanists” – often white, often working outside the continent – have positioned themselves at the centre of changing tides in African political discourse. The racial blindspots (or worse) underlying African Studies must be called out alongside those of the financial institutions; the neocolonial project is a concert of efforts.
The author hints at this issue, but often in diplomatic terms. As Robtel Neajai Pailey writes, one needs to “speak into existence the proverbial elephant in the room of development: race”. However, one must balance this move with the recognition that all of us, including white academics, are responsible for taking the decolonial bull by the horns – that one must not shirk responsibility via the false generosity of “making space” for “people of colour”. The hard work of taking responsibility and being responsible must be consciously and explicitly engaged.
Another danger the book sometimes falls into is to play up the narrative of what Africa can teach the world.
Another danger the book sometimes falls into is to play up the narrative of what Africa can teach the world. This viewpoint is problematic in that it may suggest a need to peg the meaningfulness of work done in Africa to its importance for the Big Bad West (and elsewhere). The greater purpose may instead be to unearth meanings that only have value locally, to study Africa for its own sake, and not for the West’s education. The question of where meaning should be focused relates to Toni Morrison’s observations on racism as a distraction. This burden leaves a person desperately trying to prove that they, too, are worthy; that they, too, have important things to show the world, unaware that by that very token they are upholding a particular standard of worthiness.
Despite this, Roelofs’ book serves as both rigorous, extended analysis of the good governance discourse and a worthwhile historical introduction to the troubles that have besieged state-making in Africa. Roelofs keenly dissects several key historical moments in Nigeria to tease out how they theoretically shape contemporary understandings of good governance.
Roelofs’ book serves as both rigorous, extended analysis of the good governance discourse and a worthwhile historical introduction to the troubles that have besieged state-making in Africa.
To this end, she writes about how good governance in Nigeria is often tied to the person (and myth) of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who, to some, was the best President Nigeria never had. However, there is more to the picture than the “modernising, elite-led, progressive” elements that epitomise notions of good governance in Nigeria and that Awolowo represented. Working through the contested ideas that surround good governance, Roelofs comes up with what she calls the “Lagos model”. This is a homegrown approach, made of a shared set of reference points acting as a yardstick against which governance is evaluated. Roelofs names the reference points as “an epistemic claim to enlightened leadership, a social claim to being embedded in one’s constituency and a material claim about the sharing of resources”. Roelofs shows that the ideas of good governance grounded in epistemic superiority were in tension with more populist visions that emphasised the need for satisfying short-term economic desires and connecting with leaders. From this dialectic “a full and rounded picture of legitimate leadership as containing epistemic, social and material aspects” emerges. The struggle to balance each of these three aspects is what produces good governance, and the gaps in managing the give and take across the three is what gives various kinds of actors, nefarious and otherwise, entry to “fix” what appears broken.
Overall, the book is accessible and unpretentious, even while quite history-heavy. Though it may lack the poetry and passion of a Mudimbe or Mbembe, its appeal to democratise understandings of good governance demands the reader’s engagement reckon. It is a refreshingly democratic take on what it means to govern well, by rooting the definition in what everyday people in a specific context truly seek.
Note: This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Tolu Owoeye on Shutterstock.
Finding Justice Over the Airwaves
Saidu Umar thought his future was secure in 2006 when he poured his life savings into a piece of land in Sokoto, a city in northwestern Nigeria, for ₦120,000 ($77). His dreams, however, spiraled into a nightmare when, 16 years later, the children of the late owner laid claim to the land.
The late owner’s children claimed that their father hadn’t sold the land before he passed away, making it rightfully theirs. In the legal debacle that unfolded, they alleged possession of documents proving their ownership and demanded that Umar either leave the land or provide financial compensation.
Shocked and confused, the 53-year-old farmer sought refuge with the police and filed a complaint. His claim was later dismissed because he, as is common in Sokoto, had purchased the land in good faith via a verbal agreement with the owner and could not provide any validating documents.
Saidu Umar was able to reclaim his land in 2022 thanks to the Kukana radio show. Credit: Abdullah Tijani
“I tried everything, but people would tell me that I didn’t have evidence to prove that I owned the land. I even met with several community leaders asking for help but to no avail,” Umar says. “That was until I pleaded my case on Kukana.”
Kukana, roughly translated to “my woes” in English, is a weekly radio show with over 1.7 million active listeners, as reported by the show’s hosts. Since its inception in 2016, the program, which airs on Vision FM, Sokoto’s first private radio station, has committed to voicing the grievances of those unable to access Nigeria’s justice system. In each episode, hosts of the show present victim complaints and then work towards providing solutions.
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With his dream of owning land almost slipping away, Umar met and explained his ordeal to the host of Kukana, Ibrahim Salihu Isa, who, after researching the matter, invited him to appear on the show. During the episode, Isa introduced Umar to Ibrahim Tudundoki, a Sokoto-based human rights activist and lawyer.
Tudunoki took the matter to the Sultan’s Palace, Sokoto’s traditional arbiter. Because the Sultan was traveling, he discussed Umar’s case with a local judge, who invited the divisional police officer to investigate further. At this time, the late owner’s brother, Chika Maidaw, got in touch with Isa and confirmed that his deceased brother had indeed sold the land.
Ibrahim Salihu Isa, the host of the Kukana radio show that has helped address the grievances of thousands of people. Credit: Abdullah Tijani
“He listened to me on Kukana and was willing to come and testify,” Umar explains. “That was how I got my land back.”
Tudundoki, a regular guest on Kukana, believes in the show’s cause and regularly communicates with Isa to follow up on cases of vulnerable people in Sokoto free of charge.
“Most of the people who appear on Kukana have nowhere to turn to, and if a program like this is not available, they will end up being victims of injustice,” Tudundoki says.
Sokoto is Nigeria’s poorest state, with nearly 90 percent of its population of over six million, living below the poverty line, and more than three-quarters unable to read or write in English, the country’s official language. According to Isa, Kukana’s popularity as an alternative platform for justice stems from these socioeconomic hurdles that render the legal system an unnavigable labyrinth to the majority.
Mu’azu Habibu Sabaru, the chairman of the Joint Disabled Association, resorted to the show after the association’s social welfare stipend was cut in 2022. Credit: Abdullah Tijani
Among those who can relate to this are members of Sokoto’s differently-abled community, whose government-issued monthly allowance was withheld for almost a year before they presented their case on Kukana.
Mu’azu Habibu Sabaru, the chairman of the Joint Disabled Association, a coalition of different groups of people with disabilities, explains that the social welfare program was first introduced in 2007 and included a monthly stipend of ₦6,500 ($4.16), which was issued to about 7,000 beneficiaries. However, over the years, the payment disbursement became increasingly irregular until it was halted completely in June 2022.
“It was only after we went on Kukana that the governor visited us,” Sabaru says “He had heard our complaint on the radio show.”
Not long after the meeting, the government resumed the program. Sabaru even revealed that the monthly stipend was upped to ₦10,000 ($6.30).
After a resident from Kurfi voiced concerns about illegal encroachment on government school land during a segment on Kukana, the land infringement stopped completely. Credit: Abdullah Tijani
Over the past seven years, Kukana’s team says they’ve been instrumental in transforming the lives and addressing the grievances of more than 100,000 individuals.
“Kukana has helped a lot of people. Sometimes a community of more than a thousand people would be impacted,” he adds.
The host recalls an incident involving a resident from Kurfi, a village outside of Sokoto, who voiced concerns about illegal encroachment on government school land during a segment on Kukana. Following his appearance on the show, it seemed as though “the perpetrator was deterred, because the land infringement ceased altogether.”
“After the case, the government went there and started building a wall around the school. I was so elated when I heard this,” he exclaims.
In Nigeria, the simplicity and wide reach of radio as a mass communication tool have primed it to become a viable last resort for many victims of injustice, according to Lekan Otunfodurin, the executive director of Media Career Development Network, a nonprofit group that trains aspiring media professionals.
“Much like mass religion, radio’s appeal is far-reaching,” Otunfodurin notes regarding the success of radio shows focused on advocacy.
The school land in Kurfi village, Sokoto, that has been saved thanks to the radio show. Credit: Abdullah Tijani
Like Kukana, Berekete Family is another reality radio and television program focused on civil rights. It airs on Human Rights Radio 101.1 in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, and streams online on several social media platforms. The program, hosted by Ahmed Isah, invites people to share their problems and grievances on air while Isah tries to bridge the gap between claimants and relevant authorities.
Otunfodurin believes that despite the predominance of online media and television, radio remains important through social justice platforms such as Kukana and Berekete Family.
“The lesson here is that radio, as a form of media, is still relevant and very important in seeking justice,” Otunfodurin says. “It also costs less when compared to other forms of media.”
Despite these successes, there are times when the show’s crew feels hopeless. In many cases, the accused refuse to give their account of the story when approached by Kukana, halting any potential progress that could bring justice to the victims.
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“There was a case of a man who came to complain that an army officer driving a car hit his mother, who died from her injuries,” Isa says. “We approached [the officer] to confirm the story and hear his side, but he declined. All efforts to get him to speak to us failed, and we couldn’t air the story.”
This type of challenge is not unique to Kukana, as noted by Otunfodunrin, who believes that all media outlets engaged in investigative journalism or advocating for justice for the oppressed encounter such issues at some juncture.
“What the host [of Kukana] can do in this situation is seek collaboration with other media platforms, especially ones with a national presence, to make the story public,” Otunfodunrin explains. “When more people are engaged, the perpetrators would be forced to grant investigators an audience.”
The article is published in collaboration with Egab.
The post Finding Justice Over the Airwaves appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
The Infrastructural South: Techno-Environments of the Third Wave of Urbanization – review
In The Infrastructural South: Techno-Environments of the Third Wave of Urbanization, Jonathan Silver explores infrastructural evolution in the Global South, extrapolating from case studies in urban sub-Saharan Africa. Taking a broad interdisciplinary view, the book effectively shows how technology, inequality, climate change and private versus public investment shape contemporary infrastructural landscapes, writes Dagna Rams.
When delving into developmental reports about infrastructure in Africa, one stumbles upon assessments that it is “lagging behind” or “missing”. While it might be easy to point to “infrastructural gaps” and sigh at the scale of what is to be done, it is more difficult to understand what is actually happening, why, and with what consequences. Jonathan Silver’s Infrastructural South: Techno-Environments of the Third Wave of Urbanization is the author’s attempt to conceptualise African infrastructures, focusing on the abundance of processes on the ground. Silver pays attention to the private investment being pumped into the continent, the government’s infrastructural spending, and the multiple individual and collective efforts to make the city work. The book is panoramic, using case studies from sub-Saharan urban Africa to extrapolate to the “Global South”. Its value comes from explaining how key trends such as growing inequalities, climate change and digital economies affect infrastructures, creating new path dependencies embedded in their material networks.
[The book’s] value comes from explaining how key trends such as growing inequalities, climate change and digital economies affect infrastructures
What is “third wave urbanisation” and what forms of infrastructures does it give rise to? What are the “techno-environments”? And how far does the “infrastructural south” reach? The jargon already present in the title foretells the author’s commitment to pair analysis with the coinage of new terms – at least one in almost every chapter. Their persuasiveness depends on their usefulness and ability to travel to other contexts far and wide.
Silver appropriates “third-wave urbanism” for the African context. Geography scholars might associate the term with its use to describe urbanisation propelled by the “knowledge” or “cognitive-cultural” economy – a process that moves cities away from their industrial past towards gentrification, impersonal office buildings and consumption based on lifestyle. Although never fully spelled out, the book tacitly situates the third wave after the colonial city-making which created racial and territorial divisions within cities (first wave?) and the independence-era modernisation and industrialisation that saw the building of some public housing (second wave?). The third wave is characterised by a dizzyingly rapid rise of the urban population amid the demise of the hitherto limited opportunities within the public and industrial sectors. The cities are landscapes of manifest inequality, most starkly between informal labour and the elites connected to extractive industries. Given the preponderance of these urban trends across the continent, the author sets out to explore the infrastructural outcomes they bring forth, or the condition of the “Infrastructural South”.
Private cities of Appolonia City outside Accra and Eko Atlantic outside Lagos […] represent new transfers of capital – from Asia and Russia – and ‘start again’ urbanisation for the ‘middle class’
The “Infrastructural South” is foremost characterised by different “techno-environments,” that is, infrastructural worlds characterised by distinct technological arrangements that alter environments. The most extreme examples of such “techno-environments” are the uncompleted but already materially present private cities of Appolonia City outside Accra and Eko Atlantic outside Lagos. They represent new transfers of capital – from Asia and Russia – and “start again” urbanisation for the “middle class”, promising a lack of congestion and reliable infrastructure. In contrast to these – still only – fantasies, ever more urban residents club to sprawling suburban neighbourhoods where houses precede infrastructure, and the latter is left for the people to figure out. “Techno-environment” is a useful coinage, especially amid climate change, when the extent to which people can harness the environment for their own projects or be exposed to its whims creates new social distinctions and a looming “eco-segregation” (56). Besides these, the book covers other transversal trends such as the development of “corridors” to increase infrastructural efficiency around areas of direct relevance to extractive industries or “disruptions,” that is, infrastructures created by technologies imposing new designs like Uber or harnessing what exists with the aim of making it more efficient like creating an app for booking an existing bus service.
The “Infrastructural South” is a condition that can be found anywhere
Though case studies from sub-Saharan Africa and three cities – Accra, Cape Town and Kampala – form the backbone of this study, the author emphasises that the “Infrastructural South” is a condition that can be found anywhere. To that point, the final pages look at the water pollution in Flint, Michigan and Camden, New Jersey as examples of the “Infrastructural South”. Here, like in other places visited in the book’s pages, much more is happening than a simple lack of money that drives a lack of infrastructure. For example, schools are given funding to buy bottled water for pupils to compensate for polluted tap water, and though fixes such as this are meant to be temporary, they create lasting path dependencies. Only some of the problems get addressed and the outcomes are variable (eg, while at school, kids do not drink polluted water, but may do so at home, especially if their parents are poor). The “Infrastructural South” is thus a condition of half-measures, half-funded, half-improvements that outsource ever more responsibilities onto the people and the private sector, undermining the promise of a “public” commonly associated with infrastructural investment.
The undeniable strength of the book is its ability to identify infrastructural trends and point in the direction of new research paths
The undeniable strength of the book is its ability to identify infrastructural trends and point in the direction of new research paths. Given the book’s reliance on case studies from the anglophone world, and specifically, destinations that attract financial capital such as Accra or Cape Town, there is also an important question about how the trends it identifies play out in other parts of the continent. In addition, the book strikes me as a particularly suitable introduction to the topic of infrastructure in urban Africa for interdisciplinary contexts, especially where students have had less exposure to post-colonial theory or critical urban studies.
Because of the broad scope of the research, the examples it uses – waste companies, public toilets, electricity solutions, private cities, and corridors – are outlined rather than explored in depth. The methodology relies on reports in the public domain and short visits to different infrastructural sites. The author states in relation to each visit whether he gave notice or arrived spontaneously, suggesting that the latter allowed him to pierce through appearances. One aspect in which the book leaves a reader wanting is with regards to the many people – infrastructure users and workers – who populate the pages: they are mentioned by first name alone and we learn very little about them other than the fact that their utterances support the author’s arguments. Given the number of people mentioned, I had a sense that the “Infrastructural South” is populated by crowds from Ablade Glover’s paintings – a multitude who are seen from enough of a distance to appear to be speaking in one voice, which does not chime with the picture of infrastructural inequalities and individualised strife otherwise represented in the author’s theory.
The durability of infrastructure means that it can have the power to define cities for years to come
The durability of infrastructure means that it can have the power to define cities for years to come, just as inequalities solidified in colonial infrastructures have defined contemporary urban fabric. Likewise, decisions made today can alter urban maps in ways that will be difficult to undo – a proposition that is especially consequential in the context wherein climate change preparedness plans emphasise the importance of resilience and adaptability. Infrastructures matter. As Silver’s book warns, it is important to interrogate whether the infrastructures touted, established and planned are meant to connect or disconnect urban populations, whether the material arrangements they create are based on solutions that see into the future of the public or fixes that favour private investment. The resounding worry of the book is that the latter is likelier, and that tendency is not only prevalent in urban Africa or even the Global South, but the world over.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image Credit: Kehinde Temitope Odutayo on Shutterstock.