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 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.
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