Evolving Institutional Framework for Effective Service Delivery

The growth, structure, and extent of Lagos megacity and its fragmentation into several local governments (eight in number) demands an innovative governance structure. This manifests in the reforms undertaken for policies, legislations, and institutions in the past decade and a half. The state government passed several legislations and policies and established many metropolitan-wide parastatals for effective service delivery in such areas as solid waste management, health-care delivery, transportation, security, water supply, pollution, and land-use planning. These are citywide services that constituent local governments cannot handle in isolation. These response needs are to be extended to the handling of central sewage disposal in the city. These parastatals include the Lagos State Emergency Management Authority ((LASEMA), Lagos State Emergency Medical Services (LASEMS), Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA), and so on. There is the need to work out a modality for promoting effective interagency relationship between these parastatals and local governments for service delivery.

Many cities that are fragmented into several local governments, which is an emerging and enduring phenomenon, can learn from the Lagos experience by creating a similar structure.

Promotion of Participatory Governance

In the spirit and principle of democracy, which means “government of the people by the people and for the people,” the state government embraced a participatory approach to promoting development. The government made it a point of duty to mainstream participation in promoting development issues in all sectors of development. This practice is a complete reversal of the top-down approach, which characterised the military era.

Stakeholders’ engagement has been institutionalised through active consultations with a broad spectrum of the community that is either going to be affected or benefit from a policy, programme, or project. For any project, the government does the preliminary work and comes up with a draft proposal that it presents to a target audience at a formal gathering within the beneficiary community. For policy formation, which oftentimes results in legislation, the stakeholders’ engagement is even more involving. After the initial series of consultations leading to policy formulation, the draft legislation is sent to the state assembly (legislature) which after the first and second readings and committee considerations, organises the stakeholders’ forum on the proposed bill. Inputs from such interactions eventually result in modification to the bill before its enactment. The Lagos State Urban Regional Planning and Development Law 2005 went through this process before its enactment. It contains elaborate and copious provisions for the preparation of an urban development plan.

In addition, town hall meetings have been institutionalised. Here the various communities aggregate at the community centers where they are briefed about government programmes and positions and achievements by members of the executive council and high-ranking government officials. At such interactions, questions are asked and requests made by members of such communities for government action. The media is also often used and press briefings are done periodically for informing the general public about the government’s plan, programme, or policy.

One of the major lessons from the Lagos experiment is the importance of community participation and inclusion in the decision-making process for any undertaking that concerns the community. The Lagos state government and consultants on development projects organise stakeholders’ fora to include communities in the planning and decision-making process and ongoing strategies, which consider the cosmopolitan background of the people of Lagos.

Another lesson learned is the effectiveness of the application of the bottom-top approach rather than the traditional top-down approach, which has been put into place at the three levels—local, state, and federal. Public enlightenment is used to bring planning to the grassroots.

Urban management and development programmes and projects are capital intensive. In Nigeria, as in most other developing countries, there has been a continuous dependence on government statutory allocations. In Lagos the success of many projects has been attributed to the strategy of public-private participation.

Also a major lesson from the Lagos experience is the usefulness of data collection, storage, and utilisation. Lagos state is perhaps the best in Nigeria in the statistical documentation and the use of geographic information systems (GIS) to resolve complexities of land use and as an aid to making day-to-day decisions.

The hallmark of the achievements of the Lagos state government over the decade and a half under consideration is the aggressive attitude toward resource mobilisation, using internally generated revenue (IGR), and involving the private sector. This has been matched also by putting in place an effective and transparent accounting system. Participation is also one of the strategies for ensuring prompt payment of taxes—the state government involves the people, educating them on the values of paying taxes. The government-introduced e-payment system has cut off ghost workers and ensured a transparent and accountable system.

Another lesson is the role accorded to planning, especially, fiscal planning and projection, strategic visioning of development, and adoption of long-term land-use plans for all sectors in the state, which is highly commendable and enviable. All settlements in the state have land-use plans. The state has an operative poverty reduction strategy, which is backed by 10-point agenda focusing on poverty reduction. The strategy paper is also backed by a medium-term sector strategy, which ensures that funds are available for implementing government projects.

The state accorded high priority to the use of ICT and establishment of databases for planning, monitoring, and evaluation. The state needs to be commended for use of a geo-referenced database through the use of GIS images, a strategy worth emulating by other cities in Nigeria.

CHAPTER six

Conclusion

The accounts of this report indicate that rapid urbanisation transformed Lagos into a megacity with associated social and environmental problems, which make demands on good governance. It has documented the challenges of developing the city, the reform processes, changes that have taken place, and the success story of these efforts from 1999–2011 during the Tinubu-Fashola administrations.

Undoubtedly, in the last one-and-a-half decades a lot of progress has been made in the good governance of Lagos megacity. The accounts underscore best practices in city governance, planning, development, and management as well as institutional reforms and resource re-mobilisation.

With Lagos megacity merging imperceptibly with settlements in Ogun State, there is the need for inter-governmental cooperation between Ogun state, Lagos state, the federal government, and the various local government areas in promoting service delivery in the megacity. Lagos megacity is one of the largest conurbations and emergent urban corridors in West Africa. The Lagos megacity region consists of the 153,340 hectares of built-up area, comprising most of the local government areas of Lagos state and four local governments in Ogun state namely Ado-Odo/Otta, Ifo, Obafemi Owode, and Sagamu. The case for this kind of collaboration has been well made by the Presidential Committee on Re-Development of Lagos Megacity Region which says that:

An institutional arrangement to facilitate the implementation of the many recommendations for transforming and re-developing the Lagos Megacity Region is proposed. It is a three-tier arrangement with a President’s Council for constant dialogue and strategic decision-making by the President with the governors of both Lagos and Ogun States; a Megacity Intergovernmental Committee of relevant Ministries at both the Federal and the two-state levels; and a Lagos Megacity Transportation and Planning Authority with a Policy Board of political actors and a Management Board of professionals.

With the expectation that Lagos megacity will become the third-largest in the world in 2015, there is need to overhaul and expand the responsibility for its planning and development beyond the Lagos state government alone. Apart from the public sector involvement through the other levels of government, the emphasis on public-private partnership (PPP) should continue and all the strategies that have created the success reported in this study should be continuously adopted. All the legislative reforms necessary to make multi-government and private sector participation possible must be undertaken so that the right, friendly, and sustainable social, political, and economic environment will be available to the city’s inhabitants.

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