Governance, national ethos and succession planning (1)
The key failure of the post-colonial state in Africa – transcending both ideology and individual personality – is a refusal to grasp the importance of succession planning. This failure haunts
The key failure of the post-colonial state in Africa - transcending both ideology and individual personality - is a refusal to grasp the importance of succession planning. This failure haunts every sector, from politics to the economy, to the very way our society is held together. Without a plan for the future, there is no map and no compass, and we are steering the ship of state blind, which results in a hapless situation where no one on board knows where we are going, or why we are even on the journey.
This is why the continent is poorer today than it was at the dawn of independence in the late 1950s and 1960s. It has been largely all motion and no movement - unlike India, Malaysia and Indonesia, not to mention, of course, countries such as Brazil. Without succession planning, the framework of orderly progression through unwritten conventions and consensus cannot be achieved. The most enduring thing about democracies that work is the evolution of what might be described as a National Democratic Agreement.
National Democratic Agreements are unwritten rules, accepted across the political spectrum, about key parameters upon which a state is bedrocked. Most tellingly, in the United Kingdom, a consensus - germinated in the mid-1930s and crystallized post-war - established the welfare state and social housing as indispensable stabilizers of democracy. Despite occasional frictions, this shared commitment has birthed an admirable and stable polity, with strong institutions maintained through successive governments across party lines and ideologies.
In Germany, the tripartite system of the government, the private sector and the trade unions, working in an interwoven relationship, has led to the creation of a very solid democracy. The same thing applies to the Scandinavian countries, where the same formula has yielded highly commendable socioeconomic systems. Africa has not done this, and this has led to appalling results and more people trapped in poverty and hopelessness than anyone could have envisaged fifty years ago.
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Succession planning begins with an overall agreement on the nature and nomenclature of the state itself. Impliedly, there must be a general agreement on the goals that the state is trying to achieve over a ten, fifteen, or twenty-year period. Such an agreement is binding on successive governments of different political hues as they come and go. Governments, of course, will choose areas of priority and focus, but the general agreement remains the key focus and the engine room of decisions. Succession planning also involves the consensus to develop a consistent cadre of proven quality and promise to implement national plans, goals, and objectives. Without these, the plans will flounder due to the absence of managerial capacity.
A certain type of intellectual preparation and the development of managerial capacity is very much needed to prepare and implement for twenty years ahead, or more. Very good examples are, of course, India and China. The 'Mandarin' public service system has been highly effective and admired through centuries, and has always saved China from all manners of disasters and is currently propelling it as a key economic player. Indeed, the civil service expansions under the President of the United States of America, Theodore Roosevelt, in 1905, were influenced by a long-standing admiration for the model from China.
In the British administrative tradition, the philosophy of rationalizing the machinery of government - later codified in the landmark Haldane Report of 1918 - already found practical expression in the colonies years earlier. This logic was instrumental in the administrative design of Nigeria; it led to the strategic recommendation to rationalize British public finance by merging the Northern Territories and the Southern Protectorates into a single entity. This fiscal and political integration was eventually consummated in the Amalgamation of 1914, setting the stage for a century of shared destiny.
India is also a very good example of developing a state through succession planning, in spite of its often rancorous and occasionally violent political interactions. Every year, over 1,000,000 Indians begin the first step of trying to enter the Union (they do not use the word, federal) civil service. The 1,000,000 is eventually whittled down to 14,000. With great rigour, the 14,000 now becomes 800 to 1,000 admitted to key managerial grades in the central civil service. The process is probably the most demanding selection process in world history - and it has delivered.
In point of fact, India has shown that you cannot plan for the future without a succession plan based strictly on merit - attracting and retaining the best and the brightest of succeeding generations who will then deliver the future. This is the key ingredient in any interpretation of succession planning. It has, of course, worked. India today is the world's sixth largest economy and, unless something goes terribly wrong, would become the second or third largest economy based on output by the Year of the Lord 2050. From where India was fifty or so years ago, this is an astonishing feat. What it reveals is the dominant importance of succession planning.
The Bola Tinubu government must reverse the mentality of the rentier state and focus on outlining a national ethos which would then become the dominant hegemony of the Nigerian state long after it has exited power. To do this, a cadre inculcated with values on the accepted lines must be developed - not just for the public service, but also at the party level. Any interrogation of succession planning in a functioning democracy cannot overlook the way in which political parties recruit and mould the very young, including early teenagers, into the philosophy of the parties.
There are youth camps organized by the youth and student wings of the political parties during the long summer vacation to inculcate the political philosophy of the parties. Party bigwigs address youth as young as fourteen upwards on key elements such as the separation of powers and rudimentary explanations of why a country, for example, has what is known as a budget.
It is very much like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala explaining to a youth congress, in terms they can understand, what being the Minister of Finance entails, or Babatunde Raji Fashola outlining the difference between the job of a State Governor and that of a Federal Minister. A former Local Government chairman can also come to explain what the functions of a local government consist of. This is the sort of succession planning that ensures the development of a national ethos and the development of succeeding generations; it also guarantees the stability of the state.
A very well-noted example is that of a former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who joined the Labour Party in his mid-teens and eventually became the youngest-ever student rector at the University of Edinburgh. Starting at thirteen with protest marches and camp meetings, Mhairi Black also traded grassroots activism for a seat in Westminster. As the youngest Member of Parliament (MP) in centuries, the Scottish National Party (SNP) firebrand shook the establishment with blistering viral speeches before quitting the “toxic” system in 2024 to bring her political message to the Edinburgh Fringe stage.
There are many examples of people like them, spread across all the major and minor political parties throughout the major democracies. This is a very important foundation for any succession planning and the development of the democratic state. What this means is that the future is being developed by inculcating young minds at a very early formative period. It also means that what we call political parties in Nigeria must evolve out of the mode of special purpose vehicles into real political parties, driven by a discernible philosophical framework or ideology, if you like.
