Shettima: Our institutional policy reforms will solve 80% of Nigeria’s bureaucratic challenges

By Egena Sunday Ode

Vice President Kashim Shettima has said there is an urgent need for institutional reforms as the foundation for solving the majority of Nigeria’s public policy challenges.

According to him, strengthening the nation’s institutional frameworks would address 80 per cent of Nigeria’s public policy challenges.

The Vice President stated this on Monday during the official presentation of the draft National Public Policy Development and Management Framework by the Special Adviser to the President on Policy and Coordination/Head of the Central Results Delivery and Coordination Unit (CDCU), Hajiya Hadiza Bala Usman.

A statement by the spokesman to VP, Stanley Nkwocha, said Shettima described the new policy framework as a transformative approach that has been “long overdue” in Nigeria’s governance architecture.

“If we get our institutional frameworks right, we will solve 80% of our public policy challenges. This approach is long overdue,” he said.

The Vice President called for a national reset in the way public policy is conceived, communicated, and implemented, noting that the mitochondria of every government is a workable national public policy, the statement said.

Commending President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s leadership, VP Shettima praised the President’s unique blend of public and private sector experience and his readiness to implement bold reforms.

“For the first time, we have a leader who understands the dynamics and speaks the language of economics. He has the courage to take far-reaching decisions. We cannot but commend President Tinubu for his very promising reforms across all sectors of the national economy,” he said.

According to Nkwocha, the Vice President also stressed the importance of policy clarity and communication, pointing out that reforms must be clearly understood by the public and consistently implemented across all tiers of government.

Highlighting the role of e-governance and digitisation, VP Shettima advocated for data-driven policy execution and real-time monitoring, just as he also called for enforceable consequences within the policy framework.

“There must be targets and deliverables; if people fail to perform, they should be made to pay the price. Implementation without accountability is another word for lunacy. People must be made to account for their stewardship,” the VP said.

Emphasising the need to build strong institutions over reliance on individual leaders, the Senator drew a leaf from former United States President Barack Obama, saying, “Like former President Barack Obama said, what nations need is not strong characters or leaders, but strong institutions — institutions guided by strong, fair, and acceptable laws.”

Earlier, the Special Adviser to the President on Policy and Coordination, Hajiya Hadiza Bala Usman, told the Vice President that the draft National Policy Development Framework was conceived by the realisation that the federal government had no document that conceptualised government policies.

“It is interesting, Your Excellency, to know that at the beginning of this administration, it was quite baffling that the federal government did not have a guiding document which specifies the process by which policies should be conceptualised.

“Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) of government had been operating in silos, often producing overlapping and outdated policies. This has led to fragmentation, policy inconsistency, duplication of efforts, and ultimately inefficiency in the government’s endeavours.

“These challenges have not only impeded the realisation of government goals, but it has also weakened public trust and discouraged investor confidence. Recognising this urgency and the need to address these systemic issues is what enabled us, as a team, to initiate this process,” she stated.

Hajiya Usman, however, expressed confidence that the Draft National Policy Development Framework will address deep-rooted challenges of policy management and lack of coherence and consistency across MDAs.

The Draft National Policy Development Framework, she noted, is the result of extensive collaboration between her office, Office of the Vice President, Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, the foreign and the National Economic Summit.

The Presidential Aide assured that with the input of the Vice President, the draft framework will provide the much-needed clarity, structure, and coherence that will enable the development of policies with clear intent.