Setting targets for ministers

On 14th August 2019, shortly before Ministers were assigned portfolios, President Buhari announced that Ministers will receive clear implementation targets tied to their portfolios and he will ensure that these targets are complied with and performance will be monitored by the Office of the Secretary to Government of the Federation.

Read Also: Mr President, Please talk to us!

This, of course, was very welcome news, especially as this announcement was followed five days later with a two-day “Presidential retreat for ministers-designate, federal permanent secretaries and top government functionaries.” Helpfully, the retreat elucidated government priorities beyond the three priorities – security, anti-corruption and economic growth and jobs – in the first term of the Buhari administration.

Everyone agreed that while these three priorities are appropriate and key, there are other equally pressing priorities like electric power, infrastructure, health and education that did not appear to have been given the same prominence as the top three. The Nigerian on the street is more likely to mention electric power as their priority before mentioning security and anticorruption.

In the 2019 ministerial retreat, government outlined 11 priorities for the Buhari second term. These are: stabilise the macroeconomic environment; achieve agriculture and food security; ensure sufficiency in petroleum products; ensure sufficiency in power; improve transportation and infrastructure; drive industrialisation focused on small and medium enterprises; improve health, education and productivity of Nigerians; enhance social inclusion and reduce poverty by scaling up social investments; fight corruption and improve governance; provide security for all citizens; and improve access to mass housing and consumer credit.

Elements of these stated priorities and their underlying ideologies are very interesting, but I will cover those in a separate future article on “The changing role of the Nigerian state.”

While the President’s announcement that he will be setting targets for ministers and holding them accountable is welcome news, it is not the first time that this has been done in Nigeria.

On 22 August 2012, President Goodluck Jonathan went beyond setting targets to actually signing Performance Contracts (PCs) with his ministers which he termed “a momentous ceremony, the first of its kind in the history of our democracy”.

Indeed, he clearly stated his intention that the process should be replicated all through the system. That is: ministers will sign similar contracts with their permanent secretaries who in turn with their directors and so on.

Just like now, the populace duly applauded the move. Private sector commentators that saw the major weakness of the public service as lack of a performance management culture and the use of clear Key Performance Indicators were ecstatic (KPI). The National Planning Commission (NPC) was given the responsibility for monitoring and reporting on the contracts. They produced ministerial scorecards for each ministry, with clear KPIs agreed with the minister. It didn’t work. I will tell you why.

Firstly, government budgeting is mostly unrealistic with regards to the availability of revenue to fund the budget. This means what is budgeted is very different from what is eventually released. In many years, the federal government has not been able to release more that 50 percent to 60 percent of the funds budgeted for capital expenditure.

Secondly, ministers are not the “Accounting Officers” in their ministries. This means that although ministers are the chief executives of the ministries, they do not hold the chequebook. The permanent secretary does.

Thirdly, the minister cannot employ, sack or even discipline any civil servant by himself. All appointments, promotion and discipline matters are the constitutional preserve of the federal civil service commission. I mean that a minister cannot even issue a query to an administrative officer. The minister is allowed a couple of aids paid for by government. I really mean a couple. Two. One special assistant and one personal assistant. No more.

If a minister has any more aides, she must pay for them by herself out of her salary or find a donor that is willing to fund their salaries.

 Given Nigeria’s experience with performance contracting, the recent laudable initiative to set targets for ministers must be handled with some sophistication

One year after signing the performance contracts, the planning commission assessed President Jonathan’s ministers against the targets they signed up to in their contract. Most of the ministers did not meet the targets they signed up to. Now, when you sign a contract and repeatedly fail to deliver, the consequences can be as severe as its termination. The ministers were therefore rattled.

The comforting thing though, was that virtually everyone missed significant targets. Therefore, the ministers rallied round and presented a united front. The first argument of the ministers was, “We didn’t really know what we were signing when we signed it. We have not done this before and did not fully understand the implications.” The killer argument was the second argument though: “You didn’t release the money we needed to deliver and we are not allowed to recruit our own staff. How can we be expected to deliver when we have no control over the financial and human resources needed to deliver?”

A similar argument was also advanced at state level when one state government tried to introduce performance contracts for his commissioners. One of the commissioners said, “Your Excellency, I will sign, but you must also sign that you will give me all the money I need to meet the targets and the freedom to hire all my own staff.” The initiative died a sudden death. The performance contract regime of the NPC similarly suffered infant mortality. It was never cascaded down the line, as the problems that killed it at ministerial level also killed it down the line.

The use of performance contracts started in France in the 1970s and they have been used to improve public service performance in about 30 developing countries, including Nigeria, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya and Swaziland. The results have been mixed, with failures outstripping successes.

In Ghana, it helped to improve rural water supply by holding the Community Water Supply Agency to clear performance targets. In Swaziland, using consultants to frame the contracts and set the targets led to a lack of ownership, particularly given the lack of intimate knowledge among many consultants of the intricacies of the public service. It didn’t work. Kenya first tried performance contracting in 1989. It failed. They reintroduced it in 2003 and it had more success this time, particularly in state corporations like the Kenya Power and Lighting Company and the Kenya Ports Authority.

It is fair to say that performance contracting is more successful when used in agencies and parastatals than in ministries. Agencies and parastatals often have a lot more control and discretion on their management of both human and financial resources. That is why it makes a lot of sense that Isa Ali Pantami, minister of communications, has set targets for the agencies in his own ministry.

Given Nigeria’s experience with performance contracting, the recent laudable initiative to set targets for ministers must be handled with some sophistication.

Consultants, monitoring and evaluation experts who encourage ministers to commit to what they know they cannot deliver, just to look good in the eyes of the president and the public, actually do more harm than good. The federal government must tread carefully here. While it is necessary to be ambitious, and Nigerians have a right to expect its public servants to work towards stretch targets, it is always better to under-promise and over-deliver, than to over-promise and under-deliver.

It is also important to understand that ministers should really be held responsible for outcomes and not outputs. The agencies under the minister should be the ones that are held to output targets. The minister’s targets should be about how they will ensure that the world changes. Despite the obsession of the press with figures of megawatts generated, most Nigerians don’t care about reports of number of megawatts. They care instead about how many hours in a day they will have electricity. The latter is what the minister of power should be held responsible for.

How do we make sure that the minister of power can deliver more hours of electricity to Nigerians? How can we give him the resources to achieve that target? Let’s go next to Canada, the dream destination of many young Nigerians today, for an interesting approach.

When you are appointed a minister in Canada, the Prime Minister writes you a personal letter. It starts: “Dear Mr XYZ, I am honoured that you have agreed to serve Canadians as minister of Health.” It then proceeds to set out what the government promised the people, the expectation that the people will hold the government responsible for those promises, and the Prime Minister’s determination that those promises will be fulfilled. It tells the minister that he would have to work with all key stakeholders including the ruling party, the parliament, the public service, the private sector, civil society, and even members of the opposition. The letter sets out the overarching goal for the minister, such as achieving universal health coverage.

It is written as a personal letter from the Prime Minister and the language is: “I expect you to do abc”, “In particular, I expect you to work with your colleagues and the parliament to achieve xyz.” It explains why the goals are important and points to relevant documents and policies that affect them. The Prime Minister says that he knows he can count on the minister to fulfil the responsibilities outlined. More importantly, the letter ends with the Prime Minister saying: “In turn, please know that you can count on me to support you every day in your role as minister.”

The Canadian approach is different from the usual target setting and performance contracting approach. It requires clarity of expectations on the part of the Prime Minister and shows leadership and responsibility. The letter is published for the public to see, so that they are aware of what the minister has been asked to achieve. It is also tracked and publicly reported. The result is that of 289 priorities set out in the ministerial mandate letters of 2015, 76 percent were fully met; 22 percent are in progress; and only 2 percent were not met or are not being pursued as at June 2019. This is impressive.

Coming back home, I would urge President Buhari to consider a similar approach. He could issue a similar letter to the minister of power saying “I want you to ensure that Nigerians get, on average, four additional hours of electricity every day. You have my full support to do whatever it takes to achieve it, including renegotiating the contracts with the distribution companies, if necessary.”

To the attorney general and minister for justice: “I want to see a 20-place improvement in Nigeria’s ranking on the Corruption Perception Index and a 25-place improvement in the rankings by Freedom House. I expect you to work with the EFCC, ICPC, Code of Conduct Bureau, the National Assembly, the judiciary and the media to achieve these. You can count on my full support and should let me know you need me to personally engage with the heads of the other arms of government to achieve these.”

The ministers can then work out what they need from their ministries, agencies and parastatals to achieve the goals. Where, say in the case of power, other ministries are involved, the President would have asked the minister of state for petroleum to ensure that the minister of power gets the gas he needs. He would have asked the minister of solid minerals to ensure that the minister of power gets the coal he needs. He would have asked the minister of water resources to ensure that the dams are functional and can produce the required hydropower.

In conclusion, holding Ministers to targets is a welcome development. Tasking the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) with the responsibility to coordinate and monitor the targets is also a good thing, particularly as it strengthens the office of the SGF that was, in my view, very weak in President Buhari’s first term.

Ministerial mandate letters direct from the President may be a better way to outline expectations for ministers. In terms of tracking the targets being set, there has been talk of setting up yet another “delivery unit”, this time in the office of the SGF. This would be in addition to the delivery unit that already exists in the office of the Vice President, another one set up to track the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), the monitoring and evaluation department of the federal ministry of finance, budget and national planning, as well as the bureau of public service reforms that reports to the office of the SGF anyway.

Is this the best way?

 

Joe Abah

 

Dr Abah is a development practitioner and the immediate past Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms