Nigeria and the Burden of Good Governance

By Ogiri John Ogiri

Good leadership, accountability, transparency and respect for the rule of law and due process have been identified by political scientists as fundamental indices for evaluating the existence or otherwise of good governance in any political system.

Now let me explain.

Leadership is the art/process of motivating and influencing group behaviour towards achieving some specific, well-defined, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely goals in line with the overall interest of the majority of the public. A good leader should be accountable, transparent as well as show genuine respect for the rule of law and due process.

To be accountable is to be responsible. For me, accountability is responsibility. To be able to offer good governance, a good leader should be able to account for his or her actions and accept responsibility for both success and failure. A good leader should not engage or be seen to engage in blaming others or past administrations for his or her embarrassing failures.

Further, transparency connotes the idea and practice of openness in the conduct of governance. When elections are held, the results should be collated and announced in a transparent manner. A candidate who comes to power on a stolen mandate made possible by an election that is not popular, free and fair cannot be trusted to deliver good governance to the people.

A good leader should ensure that transparency is always brought to bear on every of his public activities or actions from awards of contracts to appointment of people into positions of alternate authorities.

Finally, respect for the law of the land, regarding it as supreme and final over everything and everyone is the hallmark of the entire principle of the Rule of Law as wisely espoused, intelligently articulated by A.V Dicey.

A good leader should respect the law by seeing it as supreme, by respecting individual's personal liberty, encouraging judicial independence including independence of Judges and other dispensers of justice. For instance, a leader who disobeys court orders at will, or choose extrajudicial ways of doing things, influences appointments and removal of court justices and judges may not make a good leader and so cannot be trusted to deliver good governance to the people.

Democracy and good governance is said to be in practice when the factors discussed in the foregoing are present.

Do we have true democracy and good governance in Nigeria now?

© Ogiri John Ogiri.