COMMUNITIES AND PUBLIC SECTOR REFORM

  Communities must cease to be regarded as beneficiaries of reform, but co-creators, writes HAMZAT LAWAL

Every community has a story government files rarely tell. It is the story of the mother who knows why the newly built primary healthcare centre remains deserted despite millions spent on its construction. It is the story of the farmer who can predict flooding long before official forecasts arrive because he has watched the river change its temperament over decades. It is the story of young people who understand why an expensive skill acquisition programme attracted applause during commissioning but silence afterwards.

I know this story from personal experience. In 2016, Follow The Money tracked a Federal Government intervention under the World Bank-supported Saving One Million Lives programme after the government of Kogi, my home state, confirmed receipt of $1.5 million. Among the projects was the rehabilitation of Okengwe PHC, one of several primary healthcare facilities in Okengwe, Okene Local Government Area.

Yet it quickly became clear that what was being delivered did not necessarily reflect what the community needed most. The people who would ultimately use the facility had not been meaningfully involved in identifying the priorities or shaping the intervention. Most community members were not even aware that the project was taking place. Without their voices to help guide implementation, a well-intentioned government intervention risked solving a problem on paper rather than addressing the needs that mattered most to the people it was designed to serve.

These are not isolated anecdotes, they are repositories of knowledge. Yet, in far too many instances, the people who understand local realities best are invited into governance only after the important decisions have already been made. Their role is reduced to receiving projects instead of shaping them. That approach is no longer sustainable.

If there is one lesson Africa’s governance journey has taught us, it is that development cannot be delivered to people as though it were a parcel. It must be built with them. Public sector reform succeeds not because governments possess all the answers, but because they are willing to ask the right questions, and humble enough to listen to the people who live with the consequences of every policy.

This is why communities must cease to be regarded as beneficiaries of reform. They must become their co-creators. This will not only curb waste and infrastructure deficit. It is indeed a veritable channel to check corruption. The other day I was on national television and was asked about the budgeting coordination of the present Nigerian government. One of the concerns I raised was that, sadly, budgets are passed in our clime without proper needs assessment. Certainly, community ownership of public sector reform is the fastest way to close the needs assessment gap in our budgeting system.

For decades, reform has often followed a familiar script. Experts gather in air-conditioned boardrooms. Consultants produce elegant reports. Policies are launched with ambitious targets and carefully crafted speeches. Months later, implementation falters, public confidence declines, and another reform joins the growing archive of unrealised promise. The government loses immense social capital and public trust.

What went wrong? Often, it is not the policy itself. It is the absence of the people. When citizens are excluded from identifying problems, designing solutions and monitoring implementation, even the most technically sound reforms struggle to take root. Public policy is not simply about institutions; it is about people. It is not merely an administrative exercise but a living relationship between the state and society.

Communities understand the everyday realities that statistics cannot fully capture. Women know why maternal health programmes fail to reach vulnerable families. Teachers understand why children abandon classrooms. Youths know the barriers that keep them outside government opportunities. Traditional institutions recognise local dynamics that no policy memo can adequately explain.

Ignoring such knowledge is not merely inefficient; it is expensive. It leads to abandoned projects, wasted public resources and growing distrust between citizens and institutions.

The evidence is difficult to ignore. A 2025 national study, Scope of Citizen Engagement in Public Policy Making, Implementation, and Reforms in Nigeria: A Non-State Actors’ Perspective, by the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation, a non-profit organisation focused on strengthening public sector leadership and institutions in Africa, found that 76 per cent of respondents believe government institutions do not make adequate efforts to involve civil society in policy formulation. More than 72 per cent say citizens are not sufficiently involved in reform processes. Nearly two-thirds describe public trust in government officials as low or very low, while only one in five believes public officials place high value on citizens’ contributions.

Behind those percentages lies something more profound than statistics. They reveal a trust deficit. And trust is the invisible infrastructure upon which every successful reform rests. Governments cannot command trust; they cultivate it. Transparency builds it. Accountability protects it. Citizen participation strengthens it.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development observes that countries with stronger citizen engagement consistently build more effective and responsive public institutions. The African Union goes further, warning that without citizen participation, efforts to sustain positive changes in governance, peace and security are unlikely to endure.

Nigeria need not look far for proof. My experience and work in Connected Development through our award-winning flagship social accountability project, Follow the Money, has opened my eyes to the enormous latent resources lying untapped in our body polity.

Across our communities, ordinary citizens have repeatedly demonstrated extraordinary capacity to improve governance when given meaningful opportunities. Community monitors have helped expose abandoned projects. Citizens have tracked budgets and ensured public resources reached intended beneficiaries. Technology has enabled young Nigerians to report failing public services in real time. Local dialogues have influenced decisions on education, healthcare and water infrastructure in ways no centralised planning process could achieve alone.

These experiences remind us that accountability is not the exclusive responsibility of anti-corruption agencies or audit institutions. It flourishes when citizens become active custodians of the public good. That was how my journey started in Bagega, Zamfara State, a decade-and-a-half ago. I took up the gauntlet and escalated the unspoken aches of the community. And I believe there are many young, and old, citizens who can do the same today.

This is the promise of social accountability. It transforms governance from periodic elections into continuous engagement. It encourages governments to see criticism not as hostility but as valuable feedback. It empowers citizens to move beyond complaint and become contributors to solutions.

Perhaps the greatest shift required is moving beyond consultation. Consultation often occurs after priorities have already been established. Co-creation begins before decisions are made. It invites communities to define problems, contribute ideas, evaluate options and monitor outcomes. It treats lived experience as evidence, not inconvenience.

The difference may appear subtle, but its impact is transformational. People protect what they help create. Citizens defend reforms they understand. And communities sustain projects they genuinely own.

Encouragingly, there is growing recognition that capable public institutions require capable relationships with citizens. 

As Nigeria pursues reforms across healthcare, education, digital governance, climate resilience and economic transformation, our greatest opportunity may not lie in discovering entirely new solutions. It may lie in rediscovering an old democratic principle – that governance works best when citizens are not spectators but participants.

Communities are not empty vessels waiting to receive development. They are reservoirs of ideas, experience and resilience.

The most enduring reforms will not emerge from the loudest announcements or the thickest policy documents. They will emerge from village squares, town hall meetings, market conversations, youth forums and community associations where citizens speak honestly about the realities they confront every day.

Government must be prepared to listen, not because communities know everything. But because no government can know enough without them. The future of public sector reform in Nigeria will not be determined only by the quality of our policies. It will be determined by the quality of our partnerships. When communities become co-creators instead of beneficiaries, governance ceases to be something done to the people. It becomes something built with the people. Indeed, that is where lasting reform truly begins.

 Lawal (Hamzy!) is a campaigner, scholar and founder of Africa’s leading civic organisations, Connected Development (CODE) and Follow The Money