One of the most profound lines from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address in 1863 says that “government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth”. This line has been used severally in defining democracy in modern times. However, the focus in this piece is the original intent of the message – equitable good governance for all. Since governance is people-centred as defined above, then, service delivery must take the fore for any form of development to occur. Consequently, to make the achievement of equitable good governance a reality, it is critical that service delivery is judged to be “effective”. This requires a framework for performance, implementation, and monitoring.
Ondo State workforce, under the insightful leadership of Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, SAN, CON has started imbibing the consciousness of service delivery on all fronts, as it has been identified as the catalyst for improved revenue generation and all-round development in the State.
The journey to this epiphany began in January 2021, when Mr. Governor constituted the Transition Strategy and Implementation Committee (TSIC), to handle modalities for a seamless transition into his second term in office. Obviously, post-mortems of the first term had to be done, to set building blocks for the second term. This provided a moment of self-reflection and critical feedback on all government officials. During the rounds of stakeholder engagements and high-level analyses, the missing gap revealed itself. Yes, the State was short on funds and needed to draw in investments from local and foreign partners, but the internal cohesion expected from a potential investment hub, due to its plethora of resources and its geographical location (the gateway to the eastern and northern parts of the country), was lacking. It was glaring. Service delivery and ‘One Administration’ were the keys that could improve revenue generation, bolstered by a framework for performance, implementation, and monitoring. In addition, the limited funding to states from the federation account required a systemic strategy that would prioritize efficient spending for maximum impact. It is again no surprise that Ondo State was one of only six states, whose total expenditure in 2021 declined by 6.73% from N142.81BN in 2020 to N133.20BN in 2021. The need to reduce cost of governance may be a punchline in political circles, but for the Sunshine State, it was a target that was defined and then put into effect through the simple mantra of “Efficient Service Delivery and ‘One Administration’”.
As it is said, once a problem is identified, the solution is not too far off. In addition to drafting the policy direction of the second term (REDEEMED Agenda), the Transition Strategy and Implementation Committee swiftly proposed the establishment of a delivery unit which will focus on the major machineries of service delivery – performance of agencies of government and the delivery of projects. These will be monitored vis-à-vis the overall objective of the Administration to leave no project abandoned.
One of the foundational pillars for the delivery unit such as Communication and Collaboration was infused into the Induction Ceremony held for Political appointees and Permanent Secretaries in the Public Service of the State in April 2021. For a forward-looking State, every major player in the team must understand its policy direction and how it has been linked to a more global template – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Also, they must understand the importance of working together for the common goal of the State. Thus, sectoral focus groups, otherwise called ‘clusters’ were created, namely: Agriculture and Infrastructure, Institutional Development, Economic Development, Human Capital Development, and Financial and Procurement Services. To operationalize this cluster framework, Cluster Leads were provided with an explicit mandate to ensure projects in Ondo State are: 1) subject to performance standards; 2) are appropriately monitored via health checks on project statuses; and 3) are subject to implementation frameworks in line with both PPIMU’s performance standards and relevant project mandates.
Fast forward to December 2021, the full structure of the delivery unit was ready, and Mr. Governor graciously issued the Executive Order establishing the Performance and Project Implementation Monitoring Unit (PPIMU). The Unit, which is domiciled in the Office of the Governor is meant to perform four (4) functions – Collect, consolidate, and condense performance-related data; Collaborate with others in the organization to instill a collaborative culture across government parastatals; Coordinate the implementation of the administration’s goals and agenda; and Communicate the results across different layers of government. While this sounds simple, a closer look reveals its hydra-headed difficulty, since government is multi-faceted, multi-layered, and multi-sectoral; but is often addressed as one anonymous entity – ‘government’. Everyone and everyone constitute government; but mostly, only one person answers when the chips are down – the Chief Executive. Hence, the importance of the Leadership tracking the performance of its initiatives and its drivers – the Public Service (political appointees and civil servants).
Thus, to make the herculean task of PPIMU easier, the Unit sought the assistance of the delivery unit of the Government of Senegal, Operational Office for Monitoring the Emerging Senegal Plan (BOS/PSE). The delivery unit, which is funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB) is helping PPIMU deconstruct the project prioritization pathway for Ondo State and proffer monitoring and evaluation templates suitable for the objective of Efficient Service Delivery. While some of the methods being initiated might be unfamiliar with the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) who implement government’s projects and programs, PPIMU is doing its best to push the advocacy frontier for a more data-driven operational model in MDAs. There is therefore significant data and statistical drive that cut across all clusters in PPIMU. The paradigm must change, if the promised land is to be reached.
With its freshly minted Executive Order containing its mandates and operational modalities, the PPIMU fully immersed itself in the Cabinet Retreat organized for Political Office Holders and Top Civil Servants, which held on the 5th of February 2022 at Owo, Ondo State. Barely a month into its establishment, one would envisage teething problems for an event of such magnitude. However, the Unit with its very lean team, among other deliverables during the 3-day event, was able to facilitate the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with BudgIT Nigeria, to improve budgetary and financial transparency in the State. Although the State had already hit a major milestone with its 2nd position national ranking in the 2020 Budget Transparency Index; however, with good is always a room for better, hence, the MoU. Stemming from that partnership are myriad capacity development program lined up for public office holders in the State House of Assembly and the Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget. Also, the deployment of TRACKA is underway for collecting feedback monitoring of projects, thereby increasing the transparency status of government.
Having caught a fresh motivation from resolutions and discussion points at the Retreat, PPIMU honed on its Coordination and Collaboration mandate by setting up ‘Deep Dives’ into sectors that form the nucleus of the administration’s objective and policy direction. Although, some of these sectors had already been flagged from the Transition Strategy and Implementation Committee post-mortem phase, their importance required a more frontal approach.
Due to the deep-dive session, there was a breakthrough with the Forestry sector of the State. For a State with 16 Forest reserves which have the potential to contribute 20% of the State’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and yet is being plagued by encroachers, illegal mining activities, mismanagement of revenue, inappropriate data of reserve and worse of all, depletion; something had to be done quickly. To address these and more, PPIMU proposed the constitution of the Forestry Management Committee – amulti-agency team comprising the major MDAs in the Forestry Sector of the State. Their mandate was broken down into three major focus areas: determination of the status of the forestry sector, review the Legal framework and structure of the forestry sector, and develop a forestry management framework and its economic potentials. Scratching the surface of this task involved a Stakeholders Engagement with various stakeholders (government and non-government actors). The session was held on the 10th of May 2022. As envisaged, it exposed the key issues hampering the optimal functionality of the sector. Some of the issues raised are currently being addressed through advocacy, data gathering and reconciliation. Other sectors such as Energy, Physical Planning, Health, and Finance are getting the required attention.
The holy book states that “Money answers all things.” PPIMU agrees only to the extent of the availability of the money, especially where governance is concerned. With the global problem of paucity of funds for the execution of projects and the peculiar Nigerian problem of dwindling allocation from the Federation Account to states monthly, the need to strategize financial allocation of resources became top priority. Hence, the bright idea of a Liquidity Management Committee. The already constituted Committee is meant to determine the projects to be financed in the State. This way, there is a defined tracking of how much has been spent on each sector and the ratio of financial commitment and impact. Where there is an imbalance, the figures will speak at a glance.
While PPIMU is majorly a high-level policy enabling unit, its compact size does not give it the tentacles for monitoring of implementation at all levels. The Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government are the machineries for implementation of government policy. This invariably means that they know where the shoe pinches and can offer practicable solutions to them. This peculiarity and the need to build a sustainable reward system for innovative Civil Servants at the level of Office of the Head of Service birthed the Civil Service Innovation Challenge. The maiden edition of the competition was contested on the 25th of November 2022, and the top 3 winners were awarded cash prizes at the 2022 Public Service Week grand finale.
Ondo State has always had the potential to be the next grandiose thing after Lagos State. One of the impediments was the absence of a continuous forum for a rendezvous of investors and industrialists and the enabling environment for visible transformation. This lacuna was first addressed through the first industrial summit – Develop Ondo which was held in 2018. The prospects of the potential of the State has improved since then, especially with the establishment of new MDAs and PPIMU, which can track the progress of socio-economic development across all sectors. Therefore, the State is currently putting modalities in place for the establishment of the second edition of the State’s investment summit – DEVELOP ONDO 2.0. It is scheduled to come up in the first quarter of the year 2023.
Overall, the objective of PPIMU is to become an effective dashboard for performance in the State. While there might be doubts about the unit being a jack of many trades and expert in none, the diversity in the specializations of its team and the modus operandi of being a supporting delivery unit to the already existing structures within Public Service, gives it leverage to emplace frameworks for the delivery of the REDEEMED Agenda and the robust development of Ondo State.
