How Politics aids Development

In the last few posts on this blog, we focussed on how politics negatively impacted water development in Nigeria. In this post, I will focus on how politics can have a positive impact on water development. Even though the political interests of planners can stifle development, due to the great resources available to politicians and governments, they are more capable than any other actor of implementing successful top-down development projects. In this post, I will focus on how the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) in Nigeria helped to improve the quality of packaged water in the 1990s.

Developing regions, such as Nigeria, suffer immensely from poor quality, unsafe and unaffordable drinking water. In 1990 less than 49% of Nigerian households had access to piped, drinkable tap water (Egbinola, 2017). The alternative that Nigerians and other developing nations used was water packaged in sachets. Unfortunately, these packaged water sachets, whilst more affordable and available, weren't guaranteed to be sanitary or safe to drink. In many situations in Nigeria, the water sachet manufacturers took polluted water right from the pipes and packaged it for consumption (Dada, 2009). In 1993, the Nigerian government established NAFDAC to regulate and improve the quality of packaged water (Dada, 2009).

NAFDAC ensured that all packaged water underwent rigorous examination and scrutiny. Most packaged water being sold up until then had not been registered or wasn't registered by NAFDAC (Dada, 2009). NAFDAC ensured that all packaged water that was sold got a number and was approved and accounted for. NAFDAC also mandated that no food items or water was imported into Nigeria unless it was registered by them (Dada, 2009). NAFDAC's capability to implement these regulations was successful and saw the quality of packaged water increase. The main reason for their success was their institutional capacity to implement their regulations and register products (Dada, 2009).

 

NAFDAC orders the destruction of poorly manufactured water sachets (Dada, 2009).

NAFDAC was considered a great success for Nigeria. Its boss, Dr Jimoh Abubakar, praised its work in a speech in 2019, using its success to prove Nigeria's development (Vanguard, 2019). NAFDAC is an example of how politics can aid Nigeria's water development, specifically top-down politics. To stay in power and to be popular, political actors in the national government need to produce results and show that their policies are effective. Since these political actors have lots of connections and a lot of resources at their disposal, they can produce very positive and very extensive results across the nation.

Of course, political influence on water development and NAFDAC isn't without flaws. The problems of corruption are present here too. Whilst NAFDAC did have great capacity in terms of manpower to enact their policies and regulations; they lacked the professionals capable of recommending safe water. Instead, the political bureaucracy was rampant in favouritism and promoted loyal and often ineffective officials to senior positions (Dada, 2009). Its lack of integrity in this aspect limited its success.