Paper short abstract:

We trace the evolution of politically adaptive donor approaches in Nigeria since 1999 through support for governance & public financial reforms. Emphasising political awareness has been important because Nigeria's everyday politics is largely about the functioning & capture of state institutions.

Paper long abstract:

This paper traces the evolution of politically adaptive approaches to support programmes led by the UK's DfID in Nigeria over the past 15 years. It begins with the scenario post 1999's transitional election and why standard approaches to supporting development didn't work well in the succeeding years, leading to a rethink and new DFID country strategy based on political economy analysis in 2003-2005. The inclusion of political realities as a core part of designing support for reforms has been particularly important because a substantial part of Nigeria's everyday political transactions are fundamentally about the capture and functioning of state institutions themselves. We draw on the insights of practitioner-analysts in designing successive state-level, federal level and sector-specific programmes of governance and public financial reform for service delivery and trace their fortunes as they were supported through successive administrations with little interest in core governance reform, and in which much of the progress possible was at the level of constituent states or individual ministries, including through PDIA approaches based on timely identification of specific practical problems of interest to government. The latest iteration of this 15-year learning curve takes in the period immediately after the landmark 2015 elections in which development partners have been faced with a reversal of the problem; the advent of a national administration with public legitimacy and a strong explicit interest in public administration reform, but with limited capability as to the means of achieving it and problematic coordination.

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