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Nigeria is a federation. Federal agencies do not get to shut down state governments because they suspect something may have gone wrong with the books. Trail the money into private hands. Do not turn off the treasury. The courts, the governors’ forum and the plain language of the Constitution have already said as much. The only question left is how many more times the lesson must be repeated.
The Steve Oronsaye Report formally titled the Report on the Restructuring and Rationalization of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions, and Agencies is a landmark 800-page public service reform blueprint submitted to the Nigerian government in 2012.
There is a clean, structural reason Nigerian election season feels less like a celebration of democracy and more like a high-stakes tactical thriller. We built an election system where the referee is hired by one of the teams, trained by one of the teams, and paid out of a purse controlled by one of the teams.
There is a specific, quiet corner in Abuja where Nigeria’s most brilliant ideas go to die. It isn’t marked by a monument, but by dust. It is the graveyard of panels, commissions, and committees a place where billions of Naira and thousands of hours of expert labor are neatly bound into volumes, submitted in front of flashing cameras, and promptly forgotten.
The genius of constitutional democracy is not merely that elections are held. It is that power is divided. Every institution is expected to possess enough independence to say “no” when necessary.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 