Nigeria’s Reforms Must Outlive Political Champions, Akinyele Tells FG

By Gabi Hibbatullah, Abuja

Nigeria must move beyond individual-driven reforms and build strong institutions capable of sustaining government policies across successive administrations, the technical adviser and output Lead of the Nigeria Economic Stability and Transformation (NEST) Programme, Akin-Olusoji Akinyele, has said.

Akinyele warned that the country risked losing valuable reform experience whenever officials who initiated major policy changes left office.

He said the absence of proper institutional documentation often forced incoming administrations and officials to start afresh rather than build on existing achievements.

The NEST programme official made the observation in an article titled ‘The Real Finishing Line: What Successful Reforms Teach Us About Making Change That Lasts’, over the weekend.

He argued that Nigeria’s challenge was no longer simply identifying the reforms needed to improve governance and the economy, but ensuring that such reforms survived beyond their original champions.

Akinyele said, “Nigeria has accumulated considerable reform experience, yet too much of it remains with individuals. When these individuals leave office and move on, the institutional memory thins out, and another team starts almost from the beginning.”

He said successful reforms must leave behind not only measurable improvements but also the knowledge and institutional structures required to sustain them.

According to him, this informed the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation’s development of a Public Sector Reform Playbook to document lessons and practical approaches that could guide future reform initiatives.

He stressed that the document should serve as an adaptable framework rather than a rigid blueprint.

“This is why the Playbook matters in turning individual experiences into institutional knowledge. A successful reform should leave behind both the improvement and the knowledge to reproduce or adapt it,” he said.

Drawing on his experience in public service, education, and economic policy coordination, Akinyele said he had witnessed how reforms could lose momentum when implementation was not sustained effectively.

He cited his previous role as an Embedded Adviser and Technical Assistant in the Office of the Vice-President, where he worked with the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) Secretariat.

He also recalled his time as Group Managing Director of NewGlobe Education, where he led public-private partnerships in basic education reforms affecting about 1.7 million children in four states.

He currently supports coordination of economic reform and policy coherence across key government institutions under the NEST Programme.

Akinyele said his experience had shown that implementing a policy was only one stage of the reform process.

He explained that reforms must translate into tangible improvements for the people and businesses they are designed to serve.

Recalling Nigeria’s 2018 World Bank Doing Business assessment, he said some government reforms were not reflected in the evaluation because they were either too recent or had not been validated by private-sector beneficiaries.

He said the experience exposed the gap between government announcements and the actual impact of policies on citizens.

On PEBEC, established in July 2016 to address bottlenecks in Nigeria’s business environment, Akinyele identified political commitment, institutional coordination and private-sector feedback as critical components of its operating model.

The council, chaired by the then Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, worked with ministries, departments and agencies to identify obstacles, implement reforms and monitor performance.

He said the involvement of businesses in validating the reforms was particularly important because they were better positioned to assess the challenges encountered when dealing with government agencies.

Akinyele noted that successive PEBEC National Action Plans, beginning with a 60-day accelerator in 2017, helped establish clear targets, timelines and responsibilities for implementing reforms.

He also cited Executive Order 001, which required government agencies to publish service requirements, fees, and timelines, with missed deadlines subject to the deemed-approval provisions.

According to him, PEBEC recorded more than 140 reforms by the end of 2018, while the time required to file company income tax reportedly dropped from 14 days to 72 hours.

He added that Nigeria climbed 39 places in the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings between 2016 and 2019 and was recognised twice as one of the world’s 10 most improved economies.

However, he acknowledged that the reforms did not eliminate every bottleneck.

Akinyele identified four major lessons from Nigeria’s reform experiences, including the need to institutionalise reforms, coordinate their implementation, obtain feedback from beneficiaries and document successful approaches.

Using the Edo State basic education reform, EdoBEST, as an example, he said policies must become part of government institutions, budgetary provisions and legislation rather than depend on individual political leaders or external partners.

He said the reform, initiated in 2018 under former Governor Godwin Obaseki, demonstrated the importance of government ownership in sustaining policy changes.

He also pointed to PEBEC’s survival across administrations as evidence of institutional continuity.

The council is now chaired by Vice-President Kashim Shettima, with Princess Zahrah Mustapha Audu as Director-General, while former PEBEC head, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, is now the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment.

On economic reforms, Akinyele said the NEST Programme had reinforced the importance of sequencing policies and coordinating government institutions to achieve sustainable results.

He cited the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, as saying that Nigeria’s economy could not be managed through shallow analysis and simplistic conclusions.

Akinyele maintained that governments must identify which reforms should come first, considering the legislative, regulatory, financial and institutional requirements involved.

He further argued that reform assessments must go beyond reports submitted by implementing agencies to establish whether the intended beneficiaries had experienced meaningful changes.

He said, “Reforms are incomplete until the intended users experience the change and can tell us whether it worked – or not.”

He added that the ultimate test of public-sector reforms should be whether they solve the problems they were designed to address.

Akinyele said Nigeria had demonstrated that reforms were possible in business registration, education and public administration, but warned that the country must preserve the lessons from those experiences.

“Our next task is to codify how reforms succeed so that the next generation of reformers should not have to start from scratch,” he said.