By  Mohammed Kuta Yahaya

 The latest book The Unending Quest for Reform by Prof Tunji Olaopa got me moved from the independent forewords by two erudite scholars, Dr Mathew Hassan Kukah and Prof Eghosa Osaghae, as well as  other interesting chapters that chronicle his life journey with turbulent moments that one couldn’t just ignore. Undoubtedly, each chapter constitutes elaborate lessons, and should be considered an irresistible life guide for any young person aiming for the top. But getting to the pinnacle of one’s career is a natural dream of all professionals, like Professor Tunji Olaopa. However, certain developments could make or mar lofty aspirations or create uncertainties as you get to the top and the fear of the unknown, after such attainments creates other unthinkable conjectures and uncertainties. Hence, my attraction to the Chapter Sixteen: From ISGPP TO NIPSS: Retirement and Post-Retirement Think Tanking.

 The author is a thoroughbred professional whose trajectory in development work, academia and civil service would remain remarkable footprints in the service of Fatherland. His unending quest for reforms may have been triggered by his enormous wealth of experience in Nigeria’s civil service system that is unarguably stigmatised and left with a sour taste of doubts of whether the system has the ingredients to propel the country’s socio-economic development or not.  Hence, Olaopa’s quest for unending reforms is understandable and genuine.

 The dysfunctional dynamics that go with most operations and activities in the civil service live after the civil servants who are generally believed to be professionally founded and expected to set paths for socio-political development of the country. These are some of the issues highlighted by the author in this chapter from his enormous wealth of experience as a bureaucrat with so many questions bordering on the lapses as a result of the dysfunctions in the administrative processes of government which he believes should bother every serious minded and patriotic civil servant. He argues that until these dysfunctions are effectively tackled, the system would continue to deteriorate, especially when resources meant for development are not properly channeled for human capital and material development.

 In his words: “After all, I have consistently argued about Nigeria’s cost of governance, as well as lack of coherence and justice in downsizing a bloated civil service.”

These propositions might have been difficult for any bureaucrat to point out to powers, while in service, but it is an experience that had survived in the mind of the author for several years. Consequently, a lot of efforts have been made by the government to engender reforms to correct the loopholes and bridge the gaps that have been identified by genuineness to service. But such reform efforts have ended in futility due to lack of commitment to transform the system for better service delivery.The unexpected that happened in 1975 with administrative purge in the country instilled fears of the unknown and uncertainties in the minds of the majority of civil servants. The workers, therefore, opted to prepare ahead for any eventuality.

 What is the best way to prepare than to elevate personal desires over public interest? This is one of the major reasons for the accentuation of bureaucratic corruption in the history of Nigeria’s public service. Corruption, since then, became an institutionalised phenomenon in the country and justifies Olaopa who posits that “after the 1975 purge, it became almost inevitable for the culture of deferred gratification to be substituted by that of instant gratification”.

 Since governments could sack its workforce with unrepentant whimscality, then the workers had better prepared ahead for any eventuality. The author, having realised where the dysfunctions in the system could lead him, began to prepare for his post- retirement regime and, as rightly as he could choose, he decided to return to academia, considering his intellectual prowess and academic qualifications.

 He would soon launch rigorous contributions to the total reforms of the system through scholarly publications that later gave him the hope that his post-retirement regime was bright. According to the author, scholarly pursuit in search of administrative understanding and grounding for institutional reforms was what instigated his desire to write the biography of Prof. Ojetunji Aboyade titled:A Prophet is With Honour: The Life and Times of Ojetunji Aboyade,  published in 1997 which profiles the life of an astute and consummate intellectual and administrator whose professional life served as his template for becoming a scholar-bureaucrat and how professionalism and genuineness  can contribute in pursuing goals.

 He recalls with nostalgia, while gathering the materials for the book in 1992, a fascinating discussion between the author and Aboyade led to the emergence of the vision that gave birth to the Development Policy Centre (DPC). The DPC encapsulates the OPTICOM Model, championed by Aboyade and Mabogunje. More importantly, the initial seed for the establishment of Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy (ISGPP) was sown in that exploratory discussion. Also,in one of his assignments at the Management Services Office (MSO) in 2003, an encounter in Pretoria, South Africa, with Ms Thuli Radebe and many others on the workings of South African Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI), influenced his decision to set up a similar centre that would serve as his retirement base and fast forward his unquenchable passion for reform outside the corridors of Government (NGO).

 ISGPP was conceived as a non-profit think tank, a platform for deepening policy and reform work with evidence-based research that is expected to instigate the government to work better for development and democracy. The ISGPP experiment, of which I’m a privileged pioneer faculty member, is well-grounded in the think tank business and resembles the Development Policy Centre (DPC) and the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS). Its uniqueness derives from its research capacities and executive education platform that were meant to transform the policy architecture of the Nigerian state.

 In the spirit of practice what you preach, the author has left no one in doubt with the ISGPP. It is fundamentally set to address the skills and competence deficit in the public service anchored on“inspiring strategic transformation” through research and executive education founded on a continuous mix of new perspectives and evidence-based analysis, with creative approaches. The author elaborately justifies the purpose of education in reducing poverty because, once the majority of the people in the country are educated, they are likely to get jobs, earn a living and assurance to provide the basic needs for their families palpable.

 According to Olaopa: The idea of enlarged and comprehensive learning becomes essentially a national objective in a state like Nigeria that is plural and subject to conflicts from all sides. A part of that conflicting predicament is that Nigeria lacks a value framework around which the virtues of decency, civility, tolerance and charity can be fostered to counter the vices of ethnic jingoism, religious extremism, gender inequality, divisive politics and social anomie.

 He cites C.P. Snow’s argument about the debilitating effects of what he called “the two-culture thesis”, and how that separation between the sciences and the humanities have robbed us of the benefits of a liberal education. Indeed, in the world of neoliberal capitalism, the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) curriculum has become the template for a development-oriented pedagogy.

 From ISGPP to NIPSS: Issues and Dimensions

As a deep thinker and reform ‘activist,’ the NIPSS was his mirror for ISGPP as Nigeria’s foremost think tank. Since its founding in 1979, the NIPSS has gone through several structural and institutional metamorphoses and challenges that makes it very ripe for a fundamental study. This among others are reflected in his published paper titled: NIPSS: Conception, Operations and Framework for Repositioning (2021),  considered  as the concrete manifestations of introspective reflections on what it means to do think tank in Nigeria and what consequences that had for the survival and institutional flourishing of the ISGPP.

In complementing the “fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy” as outlined in the 1999 Nigerian Constitution, the motto of NIPSS was simple and fundamental: towards a better society and significant call on all Nigerians to participate in the rethinking of Nigeria in the context of the dynamics of a constantly changing world. Thus, the distinction makes for a whole lot of comparative divergences between the NIPSS and the ISGPP, especially on the matter of funding and patronage. The NIPSS draws its patronage from all government sectors and even the organised private sector. It attends to specifically crafted government policy objectives and has the capacity for reaching and drawing into its fold teaching and administrative resource persons across Nigeria.

Writing that exploratory seminal paper on the NIPSS provided the author with solid background for deepening thoughts about the experience of the ISGPP, which, to him, is a mixed one, spanning the continuum from despair to hope and optimism and fundamental challenge of sustainability. The NIPSS has been sustained since 1979 because succeeding Nigerian governments have remained committed to its fundamental objective in the achievement of the Nigerian project. On the other hand, the ISGPP depends on self-funding and the collaborations that it gets from partners and businesses. Outside of the availability of consistent grants, it begins to falter in its efficiency,  once the funding sources dwindle to a trickle.

So far, Nigeria has continued to pay lip-service to the need for research-based policy engagements that will transform the policy architecture of the Nigerian government. However, almost little has been done to take this commitment to its logical conclusion in opening up a broad-based relationship with non-governmental agencies and parastatals, as well as the Nigerian universities, to facilitate a continuous flow of relevant research that the government would find useful in jumpstarting her development drive. The constant bickering between the government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) seems to be a fundamental indication that the government is still beholden to an adversarial industrial relations model that is undermining the tertiary institutions and their relevance to national development.

In conclusion, Tunji Olaopa succeeds in setting the agenda that not only encapsulates the beauty in modeling ideas and preparing well in life, but also building good relationships and standing for fairness.  The chapter does not only serve as a model path to prosperity, it teaches the rewards in good conscience, quality service delivery, no matter the situation one finds himself in. It is an encyclopedia of righteousness and need for good public and civil services reforms for the greater development of Nigeria. Henceforth, I hope the political elites will take up the patriotic challenge to showcase their manifestos at NIPSS or ISGPP than instead of Chatham House!

Yahaya is a former Secretary to the Niger State Government and Professor of Agricultural Extension & Development Communications, University of Ibadan.