Open Government and Nigeria’s National Development: A Critical Evaluation

Every society seeks constant improvement of quality of life of its population and enhancement of its environment. For Nigeria, achieving national development has been a goal of successive governments, both military and civilian administrations. But that aspiration is yet to be achieved. Extreme poverty, unemployment and inequality have remained high. In fact, Nigeria currently has the largest extreme poverty population in the world. The worry is even whether Nigeria will ever overcome its current state of underdevelopment without government’s transparency. Interrogating the role of open government in achievement of national development was the task of this paper. Thus, it adopted development communication theory as theoretical framework. Data was collated from secondary sources while qualitative descriptive approach was adopted for analysis. The paper found that failure to make government dealings open in Nigeria has deepened corruption. This has, in turn, hindered national development. It also found that the goal of attaining national development will continue to experience challenge if those in power continue to shroud government activities in secrecy. The paper therefore recommended a paradigm shift towards greater openness in government as a way to achieve national development. It equally recommended citizens’ participation in governance as prerequisite for national development. Keywords: national development, open government, corruption, poverty, underdevelopment DOI: 10.7176/JPID/55-02 Publication date: August 31 st 2020


Introduction
Every society strives for development. Obviously, governments within the international system and irrespective of their ideological inclination are in constant struggle to achieve cumulative betterment of the lives of their people as well as improvement of their environments.
Particularly and as Ijomah (2008) emphasizes, the best way to assess African States on democracy and development is to score them based on the demands of their people and the responses of the governments towards such demands seen as performance. Knowing that citizens will always ask for a better and rewarding life, it implies therefore that any attribution of development in Africa which fails to take into account fundamental change for the better in the lifestyle of the ordinaries in the society is grossly faulty. Same also applies to any ascription to democracy in Africa or anywhere else for that matter which extricates the wishes and interests of majority of the people from its reason for existence.
However, that is just one side to the coin. The real worry is why the standard of living in Nigeria has remained poor. It is more of concern when one recalls that different policies and programmes said to have targeted ending the current state of underdevelopment had been formulated and implemented by successive governments.
But in view of the prevailing situation, a pertinent question that has often been asked is, can sustainable improvement in human condition be achieved through governance that is not transparent and by extension unaccountable? If the answer is no, then can't the problem of under-development in Nigeria be blamed on the failure by her leaderships to adopt open government approach in their dealings? It is this bog or difficulty in achieving improvement in the life of the Nigerian populace when the government lacks openness that necessitated this paper. The paper therefore studied the linkage between open government and national development in Nigeria. It examined lack of transparency in national leadership of Nigeria and how it had hindered achievement of sustainable development in the country. But it is imperative at this juncture to establish the theoretical framework which guides the paper.

Theoretical Framework
In this paper, the development communication theory was adopted as framework for analysis. The theory is anchored on communication for social change and participatory community. It refers to a gamut of communication processes, strategies and principles within the field of international development aimed at improving the conditions and quality of life of people struggling with underdevelopment and marginalization (Hasan, 2013).
It is a theory that seeks application of communication techniques in a flexible and diversified manner. Its central concern is ending the problem of underdevelopment and betterment of the society through the employment of instruments such as media advocacy and education. Idowu (1999) outlines some of the principles of the theory to include using the media in carrying out special development tasks of national integration, socio-economic modernization, promotion of literacy and cultural creativity. According to him, the media should accept and carry out positive development task in line with nationally-established policy without prejudice to their traditional functions.
Ideally, the emphasis of the theory is on the use of the media in building a better society. The aim of the theory is the realization of an inclusive development through openness and using the media as a veritable tool. This is what makes the theory apt for the paper.
Having established the theoretical framework of the paper therefore, the next task is to offer conceptual perspectives to the variables of the study. And to do that, it serves to commence with an inquiry into what development actually entails.

Conceptual Perspectives to Development
Arriving at a universally-accepted definition of development is difficult (Ijomah, 2008). Evidently, the concept has been discovered to be not only problematic in terms of operational definition but also too argumentative in nature (Udenigwe, 2010).
Perhaps, the reasons for the complexity in evolving a single definition for the concept of development are not far-fetched. Part of the reasons is what Rodney (1972) argues about in contending that development consists of many sided process. Apart from that, the divergent views expressed by liberalists and radical Marxists on the concept has not equally helped to pull us out of the enigma.
As Udenigwe (2010) notes, the liberalists perceive development as economic development interlinked with the structures and natures of the growth of the Gross National Products (GNP). Thus, development to them entails maximization of GNP growth-rate through the instrumentality of capital accumulation and industrialization.
Put in simple term, the liberalists or economic internationalists as they are often referred to view development from the standpoint of quantitative increase in things (such as infrastructural and industrial life of the people) made possible by the capacity of national economy. They place extensive emphasis on economic growth or capital accumulation, accentuated by massive physical infrastructure.
However, this perspective has been heavily criticized by radical Marxists as inadequate and short-sighted. They also brand a conscious and erroneous marketing of philosophy that leads to faulty policy options and consequent development of underdevelopment in underdeveloped regions of the world.
The Marxists vehemently maintain that the persuasion by liberals cannot solve the problem of underdevelopment wherever the problem is found. They are united in tagging the liberals' view as imperials' gift, as well as a standpoint that is utterly unrealistic.
Ijomah (2008) echoes the view of the Marxists when he avers that development does not just refer to growth in the infrastructure but includes building of institutions that create the values and norms and the way of life that hold the institutions together. He is emphatic that the linear growth of infrastructures and institutions and industrialization is not maturity, as development rather represents a major transformation in the social life of the people. According to him, when a system is developed, there is an increase in human productivity.
Be that as it may, the intervention by Nnoli (1981) is even more striking. He observes that the view of a developing country which the leaders share is one of a country that is increasingly acquiring more and more artifacts of the type found in the Western countries and Japan and which are created by the financial and industrial leaders of these foreign countries. He cautions that development is neither catching up with the advanced countries nor the procurement of artifacts.
To him, artifacts are not development itself and in certain cases may have no relationship whatever with that process. Thus, he contends that they reflect development only when they are the end-product of the efforts of the population to apply their creative energy to transformation of the local physical, biological and socio-cultural environments as is obtained in the advances Western and Eastern countries.
In his book, Path to Nigerian Development, Nnoli (1981) argues that development is first and foremost a phenomenon associated with changes in man's humanity and creative energies, not in things. He says: Development is a dialectical phenomenon in which the individual and society interact with their physical, biological and inter-human environments, transforming them for their own betterment and that of humanity at large and being transformed in the process. It is the unending improvement in the capacity of the individual and society to control and manipulate the forces of nature as well as themselves and other individuals and societies for their own benefit and that of humanity at large. It is a process of actualizing man's inherent capacity to live a better and more rewarding life. It implies increasing skill and capacity to do things, greater freedom, self-confidence, creativity, self-discipline, responsibility, and material wellbeing.
(Nnoli, 1981) Supporting his viewpoint, Ezeibe (2015) argues that development involves the use of people's physical and mental energies to conquer and transform their environment. Accordingly, development of man should translate into increased productivities, improved living and conquering of the forces of nature in his environment.
Certainly, development is an all-round interconnected progressive transformation of man, society and nature, made possible by his incremental mastery over them (Igwe, 2007). It is a steady movement towards a better graduation (Njoku, 2009). However, Seers (1969 maintains that in determining development, focus should be on the following: What has been happening to poverty? What has been happening to unemployment? What has been happening to inequality? In fact, he contends that if all three of these have become less severe, then beyond doubt this has been a period of development for the country concerned but if one or two of these central problems have been growing worse, especially if all the three have, it would be strange to call the result "development," even if per capita income has soared.
Going by his position, three major purposes of development are therefore identified. They are eradication of extreme poverty, reduction of unemployment as well as guarantee of equality among citizens of the society. Using the criteria, a critical question then is, where is Nigeria in terms of development?

Nigeria in Development Equilibrium: Facts/Myths
Situating Nigeria's development using the incidences of poverty, unemployment and inequality is quite revealing. The three indicators are all high in the country and are ever increasing as the population increases.
For instance, World Bank (2019), Dangana (2011), Asogwa and Okoli (2008) and Okoye (2002) all affirm that poverty in Nigeria is high, ravaging, real and pervasive. Also, NBS (2010) affirms that the proportion of Nigerians living in poverty is increasing every year despite the fact that Nigerian economy is paradoxically growing.
This is even as World Bank (2019) describes Nigeria as a lower-middle income country that is large and richly endowed but which hosts more of the world's extreme poor today than any other country, and fares poorly in multi and conflict dimensional poverty measures, with high inequality across regions. According to a projection by the Bank, the share of Nigeria's population living in extreme poverty will have risen from 42.8 percent (in 2016) to 45.0 percent by 2030, representing about 120 million people living on less than US$1.90 a day.
In its own assessment, the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (2017) reveals that 53.3 percent of Nigerians were categorized as multi-dimensionally poor in 2017. The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) adopted by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative uses 10 indicators to measure poverty in three dimensions: education (years of schooling and school attendance), health (child mortality and nutrition) and living standards (electricity, sanitation, drinking water, floor, cooking fuel, and assets).
The level of poverty in Nigeria is so bad that the World Bank (2019) warns that if not addressed, the duo of high level of extreme poverty and the low levels of human capital in Nigeria have consequences that extend beyond its borders. It said: Despite being a middle-income economy, Nigeria fares astonishingly poorly in poverty and human capital related outcomes. The number of people living in extreme poverty has gone up from 2011 to 2016, and many more are vulnerable to falling into poverty, especially in the Northern regions of the country. Nigeria ranks among the worst seven performers in the World Bank Human Capital Index and the poor lag far behind the rich in every human capital outcome.
(WB 2019:5) In May 1999, the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo acknowledged that the incidence of poverty and unemployment had assumed a dimension that is socially, economically and politically unacceptable. It then went ahead to earmark the sum of N10 billion for the creation of 200, 000 jobs in the year 2000 in demonstration of the government's desire to eradicate poverty (Okoye, 2002). Okoye equally has this to say of poverty in Nigeria: About 60 percent of Nigerians live below the poverty line. Data on poverty are staggering and reveal that only 50 percent have access to primary healthcare while most Nigerians consume less than 1/3 of the minimum required protein and vitamins intake because of low income…the overall situation now is that most Nigerians go hungry because they cannot afford to buy food. Beside the NBS's data, in June 2018, the World Poverty Clock in its own data quoted in Guardian (2019), reported that Nigeria had the largest extreme poverty population in the world as 86.9 million Nigerians lived in extreme poverty. In another data released in February 2019, the same World Poverty Clock which uses publicly available data on income distribution, production, and consumption provided by various international organizations, most notably the United Nations, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund in its works further reported that the number of extremely poor Nigerians stood at 91.16 million. In June that same year, it published that the figure increased to 93,720,530 people.
But poverty is also closely related to inequality (Inam, 2015). Inequality refers to the relative welfare of different groups (Perkins et al, 2001).
Affirming the assertions by Inam (2015) and Perkins et al (2001), Todaro and Smith (2009) disclose that the magnitude and extent of poverty in any country depends on two factors; the average level of national income and the degree of inequality in its distribution. Specifically, they contend that income inequality refers to the existence of disproportional distribution of total national income among household whereby the share going to rich persons in a country is far greater than that going to poorer persons (a situation common to most less developed countries).
In his contribution, Ucha (2010) affirms that poverty in Nigeria is caused by incidences of unemployment, corruption, non-diversification of the economy, income inequality, laziness and a poor education system. Ajakaiye and Adeyeye (2002), Kolawole and Torimiro (2006) and Adeyemi (2012) in their contributions also identify certain factors that contribute to global poverty crisis to generally include low or negative economic growth, corruption, unemployment, poor infrastructure, hash economic policy, poor governance or poor leadership, low productivity and a lag in human resources development. Others include increase in crime and violence, environmental degradation, retrenchment of workers, a fall in the real value of safety nets as well as changes in family structures.
In fact, Inam (2009) maintains that for any given level of national per capita income, the more unequal the distribution, the greater the incidence of poverty. According to him, for any given distribution, the lower the average income level, the greater the incidence of poverty. His contention is that in most developing countries, the income share of the rich people increases with every increase in national income compared to the income share of the poor, explaining that that is how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Table 1 shows the relative poverty headcount from 1980 to 2010 in Nigeria. From the table, the poverty incidence in Nigeria rose from 27.2 percent in 1980 to 69.0 percent in 2010. That means that whereas a total of 17.1 million Nigerians were in poverty in 1980, the figure rose to 112.47 million in 2010. The sharp increase, no doubt, shows how much poverty had become a problem in the country.
But another dimension to the poverty-problem in Nigeria is that the scourge varies by region, sector and gender. As NBS (2010) puts it, poverty impacted more on Nigeria youths, children and mothers than the male adult population by 2010. Table 2 shows the poverty numbers for absolute, relative, dollar/day and food poverty in Nigeria according to NBS. From the foregoing therefore, it is safe to say that the poverty-scourge in Nigeria is distressing. It is more so with a revelation by the WB (2019) that the number of people living in extreme poverty went up from 2011 to 2016 and many more are vulnerable to falling into poverty. Its statistics shows that based on the national poverty line, the rate of poverty increased from 35.0 to 38.8 percent of the total population from 2011 to 2016 while between 2011 and 2016, the total number of people living in poverty increased from 57 million to 74 million, which was both fueled by rise in poverty incidences as well as rapid population growth rate.
Be that as it may, it is important at this juncture to interrogate the characteristics of development. Put into question form, what indicators portend development?  (2015), page 257 As can be seen from the table, Nigeria was ranked the most corrupt country in 1996 and second most corrupt country twice in 1999 and 2001 by Transparency International. The ranking is what can only be obtained in a government that is not transparent. Table 4 below further reveals the level of corruption in Nigeria. It presents summary of Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) enforcement data from its inception to December 2017.  (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017) http://icpc.gov.ng/download/5982/ List of funds recovered and returned to victims http://icpc.gov.ng/download/5979/ Photographs of some properties recovered http://icpc.gov.ng/photo-gallery-2/nggallery/icpc/photographs-of-properties-recoveredby-icpc-from-2016-march-2017 Photographs of 72 vehicles recovered from retired government officials and SURE-P http://icpc.gov.ng/photo-gallery-2/nggallery/icpc/icpchands-over-40-recovered-vehicles-to-the-federalministry-of-water-resources SOURCE: https://icpc.gov.ng/downloads-beta/ The table shows that ICPC received a total of 15, 129 petitions bothering on corruption by former government officials within the period. The number of ongoing cases in courts stood at 304 while 93 convictions were recorded in determined cases from the inception of the commission to December 2017.
On the other hand, another anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) secured a total of 38 convictions on corruption-related cases in Abuja in 2016 alone. The convicted persons included public servants who exploited the rot in the system to corruptly enrich their pockets. Table 5 presents details of the convictions. The 1 st accused person was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment on each of counts 1, 2 and 3 with option of fine in the sum of N300, 000. 00) three hundred thousand naira only. The sentence is to run concurrently. The 2 nd accused person was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment on counts 1, 4 and 5 with option of fine in the sum of N300, 000. The sentence is to run concurrently 11 Hon The accused was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment and a fine of N100, 000 (one hundred thousand naira) in the event that the accused is unable to pay the fine, he shall spend an additional 12 months in prison. On count one: 6 months imprisonment with an option of fine. On count two: 7 years without an option of fine. The court ordered the terms to run consecutively and the convict is to refund to the complainant the sums of N880, 000 fraudulently obtained from her and N60, 000 paid to him as fare to and fro Abuja to Port-Harcourt 20 Hon The Hon Justice in a well considered judgment discharged and acquitted the 1 st accused person of the charges in counts 6, 8, 12, 14, 16, 18 and 20. He convicted 2 nd person (Musa Yusuf) on all counts and sentenced him to six months on each count. The Hon. Justice also ordered the restitution of 25 units of IVECO trucks to the injured victims or its monetary value of N7, 000, 000 per truck which adds up to N175, 000, 000.00 (One hundred and seventy five million naira only. He was not given an option of fine. 22 Hon