Annual Review

[Edited for publication]

Business Case

Summary Sheet

Title: Nigeria Public Sector Accountability and Governance Programme

Purpose:

The programme will support the development of stronger public sector accountability as an essential element of an enhanced anti-corruption approach. DFID Nigerias Operational Plan objective is to help the Nigerian Government to spend its own resources more effectively to reduce poverty. This will require a significant, long-term behavioural shift in the Nigerian public sector, which tends to be incentivised by rent seeking and corruption, rather than delivering development outcomes. Promoting public sector accountability and reducing corruption is therefore critical to ensuring that Nigeria is able to use its own resources to deliver the public goods and services required for poverty reduction and growth, including to women and girls. It is similarly critical to support the sustainable success of DFID Nigerias service delivery and other anti-corruption programmes.

The programme responds to this long-term challenge by supporting more accountable, effective, and evidence informed governments, that prioritise the sustainable delivery of public goods and services that meet citizens needs. The programme will be delivered through three pillars. The first pillar, Accountable, Capable and Responsive Government will strengthen government systems to reduce opportunities for corruptionand to make them better able to respond to public demand. The second pillar, Engaged Citizens, will strengthen the capacity of citizens to hold government to account. The third pillar, Learning, Evidence and Influencing, will support the other two by providing robust evidence and lesson learning on public sector reform, enabling us to know whether our interventions are working.

We will work to make gradual progress towards long-term sustainable change, but recognise that this ambitious goal requires a realistic delivery strategy that reflects the level of DFIDs resources, knowledge and influence. Our interventions will be designed to achieve leverage by testing and demonstrating models of more accountable governance and supporting processes of replication and scaling up. Recognising the complexities and uncertainties of public sector reform, we will adopt an approach based on problem-driven iterative adaptation (PDIA), which requires: (1) a selective focus on issues with political traction, (2) a clear understanding of the local political economy, (3) a willingness to experiment with a variety of intervention approaches, (4) well developed monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems to assess the results, and (5) strong management systems to adapt the programme design according to lessons learned and the changing political context.

The programme will combine a focus on supporting centre of government reforms (e.g. budget and planning processes) with sectoral governance reforms. This will enable the programme to focus on specific service delivery problems with political traction and to demonstrate the link to cross-government, public sector management issues.

The programme will adopt an integrated approach to supporting both the supply- and demand-side of governance reform. This reflects DFIDs experience in Nigeria and elsewhere that demonstrates the value of combining technical support and building capacity for government institutions (supply-side approach) with strengthening constituencies who can apply pressure for change (demand-side approach). There will be a particular focus on linking the two by promoting constructive engagement between government and non-state actors on particular policy and governance problems. The programme also recognises that public sector accountability and corruption are heavily influenced by social norms, and will experiment with innovative approaches (based on social marketing) to influence the necessary long-term change in societys expectations, behaviour and incentives.

Programme Value: max 100m

Pillar 1: Accountable, Capable and Responsive Government

Pillar 2: Engaged Citizens

Pillar 3: Learning, Evidence and Influencing

Country/ Region: Nigeria

Senior Responsible Owner: Tia Raappana/Wilf Mwamba

Project Code:

Start Date: February 2016

End Date: January 2021

Quest Number:

Intervention SummaryWhat support will the UK provide?

This Business Case covers the three pillars of the Nigeria Public Sector Accountability and Governance Programme. These will be contracted separately, but will be delivered in close coordination to achieve a common impact. The pillars are:

Accountable, Capable and Responsive Government

Engaged Citizens

Learning, Evidence and Influencing is a foundational pillar, supporting the other two pillars.

What are the main programme activities?

The Accountable, Capable and Responsive Government pillar will support Nigerian governmental partners to build their capacity and strengthen systems to manage public finances and human resources, and to strengthen the planning, budgeting and execution of public policies. It will work primarily at State Government level, but may also include activities at Federal and Local Government level that are designed to support State improved results at state level.

The Engaged Citizens pillar will support groups of citizens and organised constituencies to advocate for change on public policy issues by building their capacities and networks and linking them to the policy process. It will work with partners in civil society (defined broadly),[footnoteRef:2] the media, State Houses of Assembly and the National Assembly. [2: Civil society can include media, unions, faith-based organisations, traditional authorities, business associations, think tanks and universities.]

The Learning, Evidence and Influencing pillar will generate evidence on how governance reform happens and how it contributes to improved service delivery and outcomes for poor citizens. It will engage with DFID and Nigerian stakeholders to influence and enrich public discourse on accountability and encourage political leadership to engage with public sector reform issues, so supporting the other pillars and contributing to a gradual change in social norms and expectations over time.

The three pillars have been designed as an integrated package in support of a unified theory of change drawing on research evidence that reducing corruption and strengthening public accountability is a collective action problem that requires engagement by multiple stakeholders, inside and outside of government.[footnoteRef:3] [3: Booth, David, Development as a collective action problem: Addressing the real challenges of African governance, Africa Power and Politics Programme, 2012, http://www.institutions-africa.org/filestream/20121024-appp-synthesis-reportdevelopment-as-a-collective-action-problem. ]

The programme will cover a broad range of governance issues, including: (1) centre-of-government issues relating to core aspects of budgetary and personnel management, and (2) sectoral governance issues affecting the delivery of public services in key sectors. Work on sectoral governance issues will require close coordination with DFID sectoral programmes.

Why is UK support required?

Despite Nigerias economy now being recorded as the largest in Africa, at more than $500bn[footnoteRef:4], poverty rates are high, and unequal. New estimates reveal that approximately 60 million out of 170 million Nigerians live below the national poverty line, with a further 60 million people living not far above it.[footnoteRef:5] Poverty is worse in the North than the South.[footnoteRef:6] Nigeria is at a critical juncture, marked by serious economic, political and security challenges arising from the effects of inequitable growth, misuse of resources, intensifying conflict in the northeast and falling oil prices. Governance institutions are both part of the problem and the potential solution. Many Nigerian states are demonstrating progress towards internal reforms and awareness of the gains to be made by delivering better services to their publics. But, this is against the grain of a system that lacks accountability and is based on diversion of public resources, corruption and patronage. [4: The Economist, Step Change, 12th April 2014. Word Bank Data Bank (2014).] [5: The World Bank Nigeria Economic Report, August 2014. Nigerias human development indicators are also worse than in comparable lower middle-income countries. UNDP Human Development Index 2011. http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/NGA.html]] [6: See DFID Working Paper, 2013, Regional Disparities Within Nigeria (internal). The World Bank Nigeria Economic Report indicates that more than 60% of those living in poverty are in the North (North East and North West) and more than three quarters are in rural areas.]

In this challenging context, previous and current DFID Nigeria governance programmes have demonstrated encouraging results, and have shown that it is possible to create successful working relationships and achieve promising results in improving government accountability. DFID will continue this work by providing technical assistance in response to demand from government, engaging with reformers that show commitment and strengthening the capacity of civil society organisation to engage on key reform issues. DFID will embed and scale up its results to work towards sustainable, long-term gains gradually by helping reforms to spread within government, harnessing public interest in issues of service delivery and infrastructure, and working proactively to encourage stakeholder engagement across the state and non-state divide around eme