By Anan Geolengs
Technical Adviser and Output Lead, Nigeria Economic Stability and Transformation (NEST) Programme, Mr Akin-Olusoji Akinyele, said successful reforms are incomplete until intended users experience the change.
Akinyele stated this in a paper titled “The Real Finishing Line: What successful reforms teach us about making change that lasts”, presented at the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation’s convening in Abuja.
He said in August 2018, the World Bank gave its verdict on a set of reforms the Nigerian government had submitted for its Doing Business assessment, noting that only some reforms were reflected in the results.
He said some were judged too recent to have had an effect, while others were yet to be confirmed by the private sector, adding that government had acted but beneficiaries had not yet felt the impact.
Akinyele said he witnessed reform from three vantage points — as an embedded adviser in the Office of the Vice President working with the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) Secretariat, as Group Managing Director of NewGlobe Education, and currently as Technical Adviser on the NEST Programme.
He said the difficult part of reform goes beyond knowing what to do, but making reform work and making its impact sustainable.
He said PEBEC, established in July 2016 to oversee Nigeria’s business-climate reform agenda, had a clear political objective of removing bottlenecks to doing business.
He said the PEBEC operating model provided political will through the Council chaired by then Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, while the Secretariat worked with Ministries, Departments and Agencies to implement reforms, track performance and escalate issues.
He said reform ideas were filtered and refined with stakeholders, implemented by responsible institutions and taken back to the private sector for validation.
He said from 2017, successive PEBEC National Action Plans, beginning with a 60-day accelerator, gave the effort a delivery tempo of prioritising private-sector pain points, identifying reform champions and setting timelines.
He said a Presidential Executive Order (EO 001) required MDAs to publish their timelines, requirements and fees for service, and to treat a missed deadline as Deemed Approval, while the PEBECReport portal gave businesses a channel to report problems.
Akinyele said in economics, production is not complete until the product reaches the consumer, and in the same way, reforms are incomplete until users experience the change.
He said by the end of 2018, PEBEC’s impact assessment recorded more than 140 reforms over three years, with time to file company income tax falling from 14 days to 72 hours.
He said by 2019, Nigeria had climbed 39 places in the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings since 2016, and had twice been named among the world’s 10 biggest improvers.
He, however, said not every bottleneck had disappeared, but significant and measurable progress was achieved.
Akinyele said without an operating system beneath political will, government can mistake activity for reform.
He cited EdoBEST, the technology-driven education reform in Edo State which began in 2018 under then Gov. Godwin Obaseki, supported by NewGlobe across Edo, Lagos, Kwara and Bayelsa, impacting about 1.7 million children, to illustrate the need to anchor reform beyond champions.
He said convictions alone were not enough to sustain reforms, adding that durability comes when state owns reforms in routines of its agencies, budget lines and ultimately legislation.
He noted that PEBEC survived change of administration and is now chaired by Vice President Kashim Shettima, with Princess Zahrah Mustapha Audu as Director-General, while Dr Jumoke Oduwole, who led its work for years, now serves as Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment.
On sequencing, Akinyele said governments will always have more problems than capacity to solve at once, and the real question is what must move first so that something else can move next.
He quoted the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Taiwo Oyedele, as saying that a national economy is complex and cannot be managed on the basis of shallow analysis and simplistic conclusions.
He said supporting reform goes beyond capacity building, requiring working with partner MDAs, reconciling mandates and keeping institutions focused on shared result, so that stabilisation reforms are properly sequenced into inclusive growth.
Akinyele said whether it is a business filing taxes, a child learning to read or a household feeling steadier prices, the test remains whether the original problem has changed for the person it was meant for.
He said implementation cannot be judged only by implementing institution, and measurement should create a feedback loop that allows reformers to learn and improve.
He said the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation’s work in developing a Public Sector Reform Playbook was important, quoting its case study of PEBEC as saying that reforms last longer when those who use the system help shape it.
Akinyele said Nigeria has accumulated considerable reform experience, yet too much of it remains with individuals, adding that when individuals leave, institutional memory thins out.
He said the Playbook matters in turning individual experiences into institutional knowledge, and successful reform should leave behind both improvement and knowledge to reproduce or adapt it.
He added that Nigeria has shown that reform is possible in a business registry, in a classroom and in a ministry, and the next task is to codify how reforms succeed so that the next generation of reformers should not have to start from scratch.
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