We need appropriate public policies. No doubt about it? They cushion or eliminate many of the challenges that we face. With many of such across the public sector decision-making terrain, many of our challenges as a country will inevitably be resolved.

However, beside the fundamental issues pertaining to the adequacy and appropriateness of policy components and processes, concerns have revolved around the determination of the actual point where chances of unriddling the identified chain of Nigeria's problems are frustrated.

Many such points are identifiable and comprise stages where (a) the
intention of the government is made known (b) goals to be achieved are
declared (c) means for achieving the goals are stated (d) announcement of the collateral programmes for achieving those goals as well as (e)
specific actions taken in order to implement programmes are made. Points (a) – (d) may well represent the policy design and communication stage while stage (e) represents the implementation phase. The attendant concern for the former is about the appropriateness or otherwise.

In many quarters, the platitude is that Nigeria's problem is sustained by
poor policy implementation. If this is true then the issue of policy
appropriateness has been put to rest. On the contrary, Nigeria's perennial history of inappropriate policy design is its core undoing. These have resulted in gross resource misallocations, heightened inefficiency levels, grievous reduction in the levels of productivity of capital and labour available to the economy.

Cumulatively this has continued to negatively hurt the growth of output,
income and employment. It has equally exacerbated uncertainty levels and macroeconomic instability with implications for reduced investor
confidence on the economy. Examples abound and have been well rehashed in the media and are amply evidenced in the failures of the economy in virtually every aspect of its life as a country giving birth to many
public bads such as long fuel queues, burgeoning unemployment, poor
quality of education, endless brain drain, poor medicare etc. In effect
therefore, even with well implemented inappropriate policies, the actual
results must be less than desirable.

When is a policy considered to be inappropriate? Rarely do governments and their agencies admit to inappropriateness of policies enunciated by them.

Let's cite a few examples. Inflation in Nigeria is rarely reported as a
consequence of CBN's money supply disposition which is always its true
source.

On the contrary the underlying causes are always popularly attributed to
changes in the prices of agricultural products. A similar example is
government's declining revenue position. This is rarely located within
government's historical policy neglects or wrong policies that have not
addressed the base infrastructural challenges that would have supported
entrepreneurial growth and enabled the expansion of tax bases but are
erroneously placed on the unwillingness of people to pay increasingly
multiple level taxes which is theoretically explained by the Laffer curve.

Employment is equally blamed on laziness or changing value system that
makes white- collar jobs more fascinating. Fingers are not pointed to the
fact that many wrong policies have actually killed firms that ought to
have provided young people with jobs.

Government's decisions and actions (policies) become ineffective when they fail to address public problems in ways that are consistent with widely shared values and preferences. Consequently effectiveness cannot be consistent with making `supposed' genuine efforts to live up to statutory responsibilities.

In the domain of economics for instance there are popularly pursued
macroeconomic goals which are restated annually in the rites of budget
speeches: strong and sustainable economic growth, price stability, low
levels of unemployment and balance of payment stability.

In Nigeria, failures in these areas have been palpably constant across
time even with deliberately structured attempts to play them down. For
instance rather than focus on productivity growth that would present the true pictures of failure, assessments based on output growth that hide many policy failures are played up.

It therefore follows that policy makers in Nigeria see good policies as
those that their experts tell us are good for us rather than the one that
truly satisfies the value expectations of the claimants. In some sense
therefore, their view of national problems and how they solve them define policy appropriateness. Unfortunately even some policies with supposed short term positive outcomes may have very grave chain of consequences that take time to manifest. These other sides are rarely discussed and are played down.

The appropriateness of policy therefore should be evaluated based on the following criteria namely the (a) underlying theoretical soundness and logical consistency that will demonstrate how the policy will on a
sustainable basis prevent public bads or provide public goods as well as
correct emerging negative externalities, (b) contextual relevance of the
policy, and (c) policy design process that is clearly supported by law
which at its basest form determines what is good or bad for the public.

These go a long way to explain why in this country, good policies are
actually not pursued. Appropriate policies require substantial rigour as
virtually all these conditions must be met. For instance, bad theory
always results in inappropriate public policy when adopted as frameworks.

Many of such bad theories abound and command some level of popularity
depending on the underlying motivations and stridency of the policy
designer.

However, even with such popularity, it is not possible that such policies
can deliver public good or prevent public bads or minimize negative
externalities on a sustainable basis. The typical collateral manifestation
has always been bouts of `the more you look, the less you see' short term positive outcomes that are quickly followed by the inevitable long-term destructive consequences. In the same way, blindly copying policies that worked in other geographical contexts and blindly imposing same on us with the expectation of efficacious results can many times be a chasing-after-the-shadow. Foreign policy importation should be based on satisfactory evaluation of the contextual compatibilities before
adaptation.

Following through these rigorous standards in almost all circumstances
does not permit the actualization of the personal interests and
motivations of many policy makers. Needless to point out that many of them merely pursue interests that are substantially public as defined and
promoted by them but are not genuinely common to warrant their attentive evaluation of the magnitude of the pain that they can cause the public.

But aside this, policy making positions by those who are not properly
trained to develop sound policies will produce similar effects as
inappropriate rather than good policies may be pursued.

Martin Oluba, Ph.D, is the President/CEO of ValueFronteira Limited and a
Senior Fellow of Initiative for Public Policy Analysis, a public policy
think-tank based in Lagos.

Initiative for Public Policy Analysis
P.O.Box 6434
Shomolu,Lagos
Nigeria
Email:thompson@ippanigeria.org
Backup: thompson.ayodele@gmail.com
Website: www.ippanigeria.org

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