A Framework for Conversation, Refinement and Possible National Adoption As Nigeria approaches another important season of political choices, perhaps we should begin a different conversation about leadership. For decades, we have interrogated those seeking public office largely around promises: What will you build? How many jobs will you create? Which roads will you construct? What will you do about education, healthcare, security and the economy? These are legitimate questions. But perhaps they are no longer enough. Behind every manifesto lies a more fundamental question: what kind of governing system will the candidate leave behind? Nigeria’s experience suggests that good intentions are not enough. Good people can become ineffective leaders. Strong leaders can produce impressive results while in office, only for those achievements to disappear after they leave. And institutions that depend upon exceptional individuals are not yet truly strong institutions. Perhaps, therefore, our leadership conversation should move beyond simply asking: “Are you a good person?” or even: “What will you do for us?” to asking: “What will you build that can outlive you?” The following ten questions are therefore proposed not as a finished national template, but as a framework for conversation, criticism and refinement and perhaps, if we can build sufficient consensus around it, eventual adoption as one of the instruments through which Nigerians interrogate those who seek the privilege of governing them. THE TEN QUESTIONS 1. THE INSTITUTIONAL LEGACY TEST Which institutions within your responsibility will be demonstrably stronger when you leave office than when you entered and how should citizens measure that improvement? The question is not merely what the candidate will personally accomplish, but what institutional capacity will remain. 2. THE SUSTAINABILITY TEST Which of your major reforms should still be working five years after you leave office, and what will you do to make them survive you? Projects may deteriorate and administrations will change. Serious reforms should become embedded in systems, laws, professional routines and institutional culture. 3. THE SELF-RESTRAINT TEST Which powers presently dependent upon personal discretion will you convert into transparent, rule based processes? One measure of institutional leadership is the willingness to replace “Oga must approve” with rules, systems and processes that work irrespective of who occupies the office. 4. THE INDEPENDENCE TEST Which institutions will you strengthen sufficiently to investigate, audit, challenge or sanction your own government, associates and political allies where necessary? It is relatively easy to build institutions that constrain one’s opponents. The real test is whether those institutions can also constrain one’s friends and oneself. 5. THE COMPETENCE AND MERIT TEST How will you ensure that competence, rather than patronage, increasingly determines who enters, advances and leads within the public service? No government can permanently outperform the quality of the state machinery through which it governs. 6. THE PERFORMANCE TEST What few measurable outcomes should citizens use to judge whether your government is actually succeeding? Not speeches. Not activities. Not the number of committees inaugurated. What outcomes should citizens independently track? 7. THE TRANSPARENCY TEST Which important government processes will you make sufficiently transparent that ordinary citizens can interrogate them without privileged access? Budgets, procurement, expenditure, appointments and project performance should progressively become matters of public information rather than insider knowledge. 8. THE CONSEQUENCE TEST What happens when someone in your government breaks the rules including someone politically important to you? Rules become institutions only when consequences cease to depend upon the identity of the offender. 9. THE SUCCESSION AND CONTINUITY TEST How will you ensure that government does not suffer institutional amnesia whenever leadership changes? A functioning state should preserve knowledge, capability and continuity across administrations rather than repeatedly returning to the starting line. 10. THE SYSTEM TEST What safeguards will you build so that an average, incompetent or even self-interested successor cannot easily dismantle what works or inflict extraordinary damage? Perhaps this is the ultimate institution building question. A successful system should enable good leaders to accomplish extraordinary good while preventing bad leaders from doing extraordinary damage. FROM QUESTIONS TO A NATIONAL CONVERSATION The usefulness of these questions will depend less on who originated them than on who eventually uses them. For citizens and young Nigerians, they could provide a way of looking beyond charisma, rhetoric, identity and campaign theatre. Do n
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