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Big government, little governance 13 Jan 2026

As the year 2025 drew to a close, one thing is clear: we have not made much progress as a society, despite having built complex and costly systems of government. We talk about the rising costs of governance. But beyond the financial costs of government, we have the sheer scope and scale of government. In Nigeria, we have three levels of government: local, state and federal. Each level has a constitutionally mandated system and process of government. Recently, the Supreme Court restated that each of the levels of government must be democratically elected. Each has its own bureaucracy, and the fiscal policy scripted in the constitution requires that public finance belonging to the federation should be shared according to a specific formula among the three levels of government. That is how elaborate the design of government is in Nigeria.

But any keen observer will realise that Nigeria has many ungoverned areas. These areas are growing in number, especially in the north of the country. In many of these areas, bandits and terrorists hold sway. They subject the people to taxes and tributes, and provide security and some semblance of law and order. The insecurity crisis relates to the existence of many ungoverned areas. There are also semi-governed areas, places where there is government, but it basically does nothing. Under-governed or semi-governed areas seem to stretch across all of Nigeria, places where there is every appearance of government in terms of officialdom and exploitative taxes, but no real effective governance.

It is important to make this distinction clear. Government is different from governance. Traditionally, government suggests coercion and hierarchy. Governance signals relationship and network. Governance is not restricted to government. Non-governmental entities are often involved in governance. Governance is also involved in the private spheres where the government does not play much role. In that sense, governance is the management of the public good through rules and procedures. At the heart of it is relationship – between public and private entities – and managed in a manner that ensures effectiveness. These rules and processes are what economists call ‘institutions’ that enable and constrain. But beyond institutions, culture matters in governance because it shapes institutions and makes them sticky. Government, in the sense of a formal institution that monopolises power and exercises violence and imposes its will on the people in arbitrary ways, is not inherent in the definition of government, even as it is a component of institutions. Having a strong government in the sense of hierarchy, violence, and authority does not mean you have effective governance. 

If there is one way to describe the crisis of development in Nigeria and many Third World countries, it would be that in those countries, there is too much (i.e., very strong) government and too little governance. Think about how you encounter government in Nigeria: big government officials driving mindlessly on large convoys, guarded by too many police officers and scaring the people off the road. Soyinka encountered that with the entourage of the Nigerian President’s son, whose military contingent is enough to overcome the armies of Benin Republic. Think about the long list of protocols at every public event. That is government. Nearly every community in Nigeria has a councillor, a local government chairman or a representative at the state or National Assemblies. That is government. They also have advisors to the governor and tens of officials bearing different titles. That is government.

But think about the lack of basic health facilities, no electricity, no ambulance services, no public complaint office, no redress mechanism for deprived and violated citizens, no basic sanitation, no filling of potholes, no repairing of broken primary school desks, no clearing of roads to the farms, no security of life and no emergency services of any sort. That is absence of governance. 

In Africa, governments do not necessarily govern. Government grows, but governance gets worse and more unavailable. Nobody fixes potholes. Fixing potholes is governance. A community can be raided severally at will by a band of bandits. No one tries to prevent the next attack. Preventing attacks on a community is governance. But staying in the fortress of government houses, feeding fat and indulging in luxuries, and doing nothing to protect the people is government. 

Since independence, in many African countries, we have succeeded in making government more sophisticated, complex and large and making governance less available. The more government grows, the less governance we have.

But good governance does not even require a larger and overbearing government. Perhaps it needs less government. That may be the point of those who argue for less government. In Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi is generally believed to have reformed education. He moved the state from the worst performer to the best. People have argued that he did not build too many new schools and did not apply any sophisticated policy. What he did was just mundane: he gave schools back to voluntary associations and gave them well-targeted financial grants to manage the schools. But the simple things are magical. Again, government is about working on incentives to achieve desired results. Obi did not need to establish a complex bureaucracy to manage education. He just provided the right incentive to private actors to produce the public good.

Another example of governance without elaborate government occurred this Christmas in my community. A group of people were quarrelling, and I feared that it would break out into a violent fight. Temper rose high, and I was expecting an outbreak of violence. I tried to intervene, and the people restrained me. They said there would be no fight, the argument would die down, as no one would be willing to strike the other. I wondered why such an angry quarrel would not break into an open fight. The answer is simple: anyone who strikes the other pays a sanction of N50,000. The community has an effective enforcement mechanism. No one dares to be guilty. It works like magic. No one strikes the other. Everyone tries to provoke the other to strike, but the consequence is punitive and prohibitive. So, no one strikes. This is economics and public policy 101. It works without much government. It’s cost-efficient and effective governance. 

In 2026, we can achieve more social order and progress if we refocus attention from government to governance. Government may likely fail. But governance is usually the solution. 

Sam Amadi, PhD, a former Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, is the Director of Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts.