Oral evidence: DFID’s programme in Nigeria, HC 676Tuesday 26 April 2016

Oral evidence, 26 April 2016.

Witnesses

Dr Leena Koni Hoffman, Associate Fellow, Chatham House, Alex Duncan, Director, The Policy Practice, and Joseph Hurst-Croft, Stakeholder Democracy Network, gave evidence.

Chair

Thank you very much indeed. We have around 45 minutes for the second panel, which is roughly the same as we have had with the first panel. I think you were all here, but just to reiterate the way that we do this is that we will go straight to questions. When you first answer a question, please do briefly introduce yourself. Do not feel you need to answer every question and bear in mind that we are seeking to cover nine questions in 45 minutes, so roughly five minutes per question.

Mrs Grant

Good morning to you. Has the governance situation, especially in relation to transparency and accountability, improved since the transition to democracy in 1999, and what role has the Government in the UK played in any change?

Alex Duncan

Could I read a sentence from a review I did for DFID six years ago of governance in Nigeria? My name is Alex Duncan. I work with The Policy Practice, a small group we set up 12 years ago to focus on the political economy challenges of development. We have been quite involved in various roles in Nigeria with DFID. The review reads: “The prevailing political economy results in a systematic failure of the state to provide the public goods on which poverty reduction depends—quality public services, public infrastructure, a conducive environment for investment and growth, and personal security.” I am afraid what I said six years ago remains true. There are major, major systematic weaknesses in governance and accountability still 17 years after the return to democratic rule. There have been important improvements. The introduction of democracy, which the UK and others have played a constructive role in supporting, has improved the quality in important respects of the debate around public policy and around the performance of Government. There has been an opening up, in important respects, of this debate. It is, in important respects, much better informed, both among Nigerians and also among the development agencies. DFID in 2003 to 2005 invested £3 million in political economy studies, which fundamentally changed, improved and deepened the understanding of the nature of the systemic problems in the country, and the country programme and the design and implementation of a lot of programmes within that have been influenced by a much better understanding of the nature of these embedded political economy problems. The broad picture remains the case that Nigeria is a major, major development challenge. It is a complicated country, extremely large, extremely diverse, fragile—all sorts of challenges. There is, of course, a question about whether the UK should be involved in the way it is. The answer is that it should, for a number of quite strong reasons. The challenges are severe. It is an extremely difficult environment in which the UK Government engage, and importantly failures of a number of initiatives must be expected. One has to be realistic about this. There are also a number of examples of really quite major payoffs to success. One can identify a number of those.

Mrs Grant

Could you give us a couple, just quickly?

Alex Duncan

I did a review three years ago for DFID of 15 years of UK support to the debt management office within Government. When President Obasanjo came to power the management of Nigeria’s debt was a shambles. It was unsustainable. Nigeria simply could not pay. They did not even know what they owed. It was chaos. When we did this review I talked to some banks and I talked to some ratings agencies, and by common consent Nigeria had the second best debt management system in Africa. They were advising other Governments on how to do this. It is a very good example, in a very difficult wider context, of taking advantage of a political opening of a conducive environment created in the first Obasanjo term. The elements of success in the support were some high-grade, low-key technical assistance, funded by the British Government, provided by Crown agents. It was a good example of how to do it. It was low-key. It was not seen as a British project, and I have a slight quarrel with the need to badge a lot of these highly sensitive governance activities with a Union Jack. It is a pity because Nigerians quite rightly are in many cases proud people with a sense of identity. It is much better to feel—which is the reality in many of these programmes, and they are run by Nigerians to a great extent—that this is a Nigerian initiative to bring about some of these improvements. The debt management office was a good example, which has saved Nigeria a lot. They got the biggest ever debt relief deal, $18 billion, just over a decade ago, which was a direct result of that. Also the saving on the management of the debt ran into hundreds of millions, if not more.

Dr Hoffman

My name is Leena Hoffman. I am Nigerian. I am an Associate Fellow of Chatham House and I work on politics, governance and corruption in Nigeria. On the question about how governance has improved in the last 16 or so years of democracy, within the frame of that we have to be mindful of where Nigeria was coming from. The last military regime before the one that transitioned Nigeria to democracy was one of the most repressive military dictatorships in the history of Nigeria. There was repression and the press was not as independent as we see today. The broader picture or the broader context in which we should look at the improvements in governance should be the journey—the point at which Nigeria transitioned from democracy. There was a very repressive military regime in place, there was very, very little press freedom and institutions of governance were severely weakened by corruption and patronage to networks tied to military power. Looking at the journey since then, some of the positives that are worth highlighting are to do with the management of electoral processes and the strengthening of democratic institutions. I am aware that DFID have made significant investments in resources and support to electoral management bodies, such as the Independent National Electoral Commission. As much as previous elections have not lived up to expectations of credibility, equality, etc, the last election in 2015 was a direct result of this journey of strengthening electoral management bodies and making them more efficient and supporting them in terms of funding and technical capacity. There are definitely positives to highlight there and as well maybe pointing to the privatisation of the telecoms sector. We have spoken about that, about the power sector, but there are successes to be highlighted in that respect. That was a process started by the Obasanjo Administration. In terms of the frameworks for anti‑corruption efforts, in the very first democratic Administration when Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999 Obasanjo set up a number of anti‑corruption agencies. There were some prior to that, in terms of legislative framework and powers with which they can do their responsibilities. We have spoken about power sector reform and failures in that. I am sure we are going to be speaking about corruption and anti‑corruption later on, but the larger point I do want to emphasise and make is be mindful of the path Nigeria was on and how far it has come and some of the positives worth noting.

Joseph Hurst-Croft

My name is Joseph Hurst‑Croft. I work for Stakeholder Democracy Network. I have been working in Nigeria, particularly in the Niger Delta, since 2004. I have spent a lot of time there. Thank you for having me today. My colleagues have said a lot. I have two points on the governance point. When I first went down there in 2004 there was this term banded around—“Democrazy”. “That is what we have in Nigerian. We do not have democracy.” At the last set of elections there was a less than 10% split and the people accepted that there needed to be a change of Government. That was a huge moment and a lot of the work that DFID did was around supporting electoral reform and making sure that civil society could have an active voice within that. Some of the election observation that I have been involved in over the last three set of elections has seen a real, real difference. You have elections now that are being rerun in the Nigeria because people can say, “Hang on, you are trying to rig the votes. We need to be able to hold you to account.” That process is going on. A lot of DFID’s work on that grassroots accountability of political actors is something that can really improve. I will not go into repeating other things, but the other side on the governance issue is the work around transparency and budgeting. There have been a lot of improvements around supporting civil society groups to track budget expenditure, to begin to say to local governments and state governments, “Hang on a minute. Where is the budget being allocated? What is it for?”, and beginning to ask some interesting questions of politicians. The accountability is probably where the weaknesses are at the moment. That is where DFID programmes need to move more towards the accountability and not just the transparency side of things. Some of the work that I have seen, not with just DFID funding but with USAID funding and Dutch Government funding, looking at community groups holding local politicians to account, has a lot of good examples in the south of Nigeria, which I have seen.

Chair

Thank you very much indeed. They were great answers, but a bit too long. We just need slightly shorter answers if we are going to get through everything else.

Wendy Morton

My question very much follows on from what you were talking about, Joseph. How would you describe the relationship between improved governance in Nigeria and DFID’s mission of poverty reduction?

Joseph Hurst-Croft

It is absolutely key because basically the fundamentals, unfortunately, of the political system are a patronage corrupt network that extract from the country. Unless you begin to support civil society and other groups and the reformists within Government—the President himself is the main champion of bureaucracy— and within the different sectors, the different ministries and civil society, and unless you get these groups working together, you are going to continue to have this elite group that extracts from the core and therefore undermines the resources Nigeria does have. There is an opportunity for DFID to leverage funding in targeted areas to lead to more money. We can talk about that when we come to corruption.

Dr Hoffman

Just to add to that, there are opportunities to leverage the current President’s public commitments and declarations to address corruption in Government—institutionalised corruption. It will reflect on the sincerity of his Administration and as well get the buy‑in of the Nigerian public and as well get ordinary citizens paying attention to how the Government spends, uses resources and the resources that are attached to the projects, and there is accountability in delivery processes in that regard.

Alex Duncan

I have just one point that is coming out of what we are saying, which is the extent to which the fundamental problems of governance that impact on poverty are very, very profound in this society. One is talking about long‑term historic processes of change. Politics has to work differently in Nigeria ultimately if these problems are going to be addressed. I admire the British Government for being involved in one of the biggest development challenges but you have to be there for the long‑term. This is not even decades. This is generational change, in some respects, that we are talking about. It is enormously important to combine a strategic goal, a sense of the real long‑term that one is aiming for, with recognising that one needs to be practical, have nuts and bolts things that work, be opportunistic even when required, but do not lose sight of and be very realistic about the timescale.

Mr Evans

When one thinks about Nigeria normally corruption is one of the things that first does come to mind. It goes together like bread and butter for me almost. You say that the new President is making great advances and has been swept to power on the message of anti‑corruption. Is that right?

Dr Hoffman

Yes.

Mr Evans

In some of the things that you have spoken about improvements have been made and that has to be welcomed, because PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that if they did nothing about corruption by 2030 it would cost each person about $2,000 in Nigerian. Looking at the levels of poverty that clearly would make a massive difference, what areas do you think that they are missing considering the fact that we should give some credit to where they have made advances? Where else do you think they ought to be concentrating and are there other areas where we could be assisting them?

Dr Hoffman

There are areas of concentration that are quite key, and I will speak of areas perhaps first that the current Administration has been focusing on. Specifically it has been in terms of prosecuting corrupt officials. There are a number of high-profile corruption cases going on, but the processes or the procedures in the courts that are ongoing indicate to us some of the institutional challenges that the anti‑corruption agencies have in properly and effectively prosecuting corrupt officials.

Mr Evans

Can you say something a little more about that please, so I can understand?

Dr Hoffman

There are a number of high profile cases of corrupt officials in the courts presently. The point I was trying to make is that the challenges that the courts and the tribunals are having at the present time in prosecuting these cases indicate to us some of the institutional weaknesses of anti‑corruption agencies in Nigeria and the challenges that investigators and prosecutors have in getting evidence together and presenting the cases. These are very powerful and very wealthy individuals who are able to assemble an army of lawyers into courts and tangle up these cases in the court system. There has been a lot of focus on prosecution and perhaps, beyond external donors supporting judicial reform and strengthening access to justice and anti‑corruption processes at the anti‑corruption agency level, the Nigerian state itself—the President, the federal state and local government—should invest in strengthening these institutions and how they work, so you have a prevention process or strategy, as opposed to recovering and prosecuting corrupt officials. The focus or the emphasis should be towards anti‑corruption prevention as opposed to prosecuting, because the challenges that the anti‑corruption tribunals are facing right now is a lot of these cases are going to be tangled up in the court system for perhaps months or years to come.

Mr Evans

So one area where we could assist would be judicial reform.

Dr Hoffman

Absolutely.

Mr Evans

Just as an add‑on there, are the newspapers and the media full of these stories about how the President is tackling corruption and people are being brought to book, despite the judicial problems?

Dr Hoffman

There is a keen media focus on these cases. Lots of the focus is coloured by Nigeria’s politics and who is being prosecuted and who is not being prosecuted and why, and all sorts of ethnic connotations and settling scores from the last elections, so it changes the dynamic as to the purposes of these processes. You want to prevent corruption. It is not about who stole or who did it. The media is actively reporting these cases. I know there is a lot of social media coverage of the cases in the tribunals. On the citizen level or the Nigerian public level, they are fully engaged. You have to understand that in that engagement there is a bit of cynicism as to watching how this process will play out. Perhaps it is just very exciting right now, but when it gets lengthy and legalistic, people lose interest and you have backroom deals that get people off. They may be handing over a few percent of the money they have taken and they are let off the hook. It is really how these dynamics play out, and the public does influence the way final decisions would be made.

Pauline Latham

DFID’s approach to tackling corruption includes technical assistance on budget transparency and financial management, supporting civil society and engaging with the private sector to encourage anti‑corruption efforts. Do you think DFID has prioritised the right actions in tackling corruption and do you think the newly formed department to tackle corruption is up to the job?

Joseph Hurst-Croft

On the agency of the agencies tackling corruption, there is a big gap that DFID could provide a lot of technical assistance on. I am not sure of the exact figure, but I think it is fewer than 100 agents in the EFCC that are tackling 1,000 cases. It does not have the capacity, let alone the right skills. Also, the financial tracking capacity is a real gap that DFID could support on. One of the other areas that is a really big key is that we have seen some good audits supported recently, particularly in the oil sector and other sectors, but they are very backward-looking and perhaps three or four years late, so that the people that have been involved in stealing that money are well gone. How we support those audit processes and add that accountability in a much more real‑term political cycle is something that DFID’s resources could lead to a lot more accountability; if that threat is there and people know that the capacity there is coming, we could have a lot more accountability. The other thing for me that is a huge area that DFID could focus on is the issue of oil theft. I know it is a standalone issue, but when oil was at $100 there was a $15 billion crime involving UK companies and international companies. Nigeria needs its international friends to stop those big flows of illegal wealth leaving the country, and perhaps picking one or two things where DFID could say, “Look, we are going to help plug these holes while we are looking at the structural reforms internally”, could be a good way of packaging up the assistance.

Alex Duncan

I would just like to highlight the lower levels of Government and responsibilities. As you know, it is a federal system. Under the constitution, substantial Government revenues go straight to the governors of the 36 states. The states vary enormously in the quality of governance and accountability from really some quite impressive reformers—Lagos is a lot discussed—to ones that are run by people who are highly corrupt and unaccountable. DFID, through some of the governance programmes, such as SPARC and SAVI, and their successes that I am sure you heard about, do work substantially at state level. It is absolutely crucial to keep this level of focus because the extent of unaccountable corruption at the level of the state governments is extremely high. An area that is substantially neglected, and I do not have any easy ways forward, is the next level down of local government. There are 770‑odd local governments. This is the interface for important services with the population, with the people, particular in rural areas but not only. It is very difficult to see how the quality of performance of local governments can be improved. Little is known but one can only imagine that there is vast inefficiency and waste there. The occasional look I have had has confirmed that but I have not done anything systematic at all. The question is what an external agency can do, if anything, at that level. It is important to remind ourselves of how tiny aid is in relation to Nigeria. Here is a vast economy with very small amounts of aid as a proportion of national income or per capita of population, so one must not expect external agencies, DFID or others, to try to get overstretched, because it is extremely easy to do that. This is an area that is really crucial to dealing with corruption and improving the performance of Government, where we do not have simple answers, but it is really important not to lose sight of that.

Chair

Do you think, Alex, that there is anything that British local government could do to support that?

Alex Duncan

It is a really good question. The answer may well be yes. I have never thought about that. Wherever you look in Nigeria there are reformist people. That is one of the encouraging things about the country; whether it is the federal Government or some of the states or wherever it is, there are people who are very angry and upset about what is going on in their country and really wish to do something about it. It seems to me that if there is political economy analysis that has been systematically done, including at state level, if it can be kept up to date it can identify those would-be reformers who can benefit perhaps from external twinning. Who knows? It is not something I have thought about but in principle twinning can matter a lot—both local governments but also professional groupings, such as universities. The neglect of universities over the last 20 or 30 years by international agencies is tragic.

Joseph Hurst-Croft

Even if it is just rewarding those that are performing well and banning those others from applying to the opportunity in itself is a good message.

Alex Duncan

Twinning can be an effective instrument in a number of ways.

Albert Owen

DFID has identified working towards enhanced transparency and accountability in the oil sector as a key part of the governance programme in Nigeria. What progress has been made in improving governance in the oil and possibly gas sector?

Dr Hoffman

Just quickly on transparency in the oil sector, I would perhaps highlight that since the new Government was sworn into office and a Minister for the oil ministry was appointed, Kachikwu, there have been significant developments in the way those institutions or the institutions under his ministry have been working. I would point to the NNPC—the Nigerian National Petroleum Company—and the way it has been perhaps more open with its records in the last couple of months, reporting its incoming and outgoing expenses and its budget, etc. This is something we have not seen since it was put in place in the 1970s. I would certainly highlight improvements in accountability in that respect. There is a lot more to be done. There is a need for the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill. It has been in the Senate for many years. It has gone up and down. It is really a yo-yoing Bill. It is really hard to follow how that is going to pan out, but I am aware that DFID has given technical advice in the formulation of the Bill. It has been maybe revised or reviewed in the last couple of months by the Senate and people are looking into these revisions and what they mean for strengthening transparency in the sector. Certainly there is a lot more to be done and a lot has been done, but a focus on the passage of a robust and effective Petroleum Industry Bill is critical.

Albert Owen

What measures in the Bill deal specifically with accountability and transparency?

Dr Hoffman

Some of the things that the NNPC is doing currently are things that have been reflected in the Bill, as in reporting revenue collected. The current Administration has introduced or is implementing the Treasury Single Account. That is what has been in place in the last couple of months. Through revenue generation and collection, Government agencies like the NNPC and the Federal Inland Revenue Service are putting income into this account, so you have one account. The Government can see how much money they have. If an agency is struggling to collect or support its programmes, they can transfer money in that respect. I would like to perhaps say that the federal Government is making efforts to effect some of the elements that this Bill would bring about when it is passed.

Albert Owen

It sounds as if there is progress. Is DFID right to concentrate so much on this?

Joseph Hurst-Croft

I think so, because that is where the money is for delivery of governance and alleviating poverty. There are the structural reforms under the PIB that DFID has been advising on and making sure you have separated income from regulation. Before it was just one big agency. That is going to be a huge shift to then put the transparency mechanisms you have in place. Also, there has been big progress on public engagement with the oil sector. That is something else that the DFID programme has improved on. I worked on a programme tracking oil spills and the negative impacts of the oil sector and the environment ministry was supported to put a mechanism in place where it could publically track the oil spills and people could comment on whether a spill had been cleaned up or not, which was impacting all of their livelihoods. It was very much a bottom-up process. That DFID support for transparency in the oil sector is not just the big numbers; it is also giving people accountability.

Albert Owen

Will this be further complicated by the privatisation of the power sector in Nigeria because when you centralise things, when you are dealing with things, it is very easy to look at it, but when you have smaller companies or foreign companies or offshore companies involved, is that going to complicate it?

Joseph Hurst-Croft

I do not think so, because allowing a national oil company to raise the money through bonds or whatever, which is what the PIB will allow it to do, takes it out of the national purse, and they can use the Government’s money for addressing governance challenges. Having a formalisation of the energy company—I am not quite sure what they are going to call it—will allow that to operate on the private markets and free up a lot of the capacity and resource that should be there for governance, so I see it as a good thing.

Jeremy Lefroy

I was told by someone who was in a position to know that at one point up to half the oil produced in Nigeria was stolen or went through illegal channels. What is your estimate of what the situation is now?

Alex Duncan

I do not have a quantitative estimate. It clearly continues to be enormous.

Jeremy Lefroy

Even given these changes and this accountability?

Alex Duncan

I am not the person to give you an informed answer on that.

Joseph Hurst-Croft

Unfortunately I have done a lot of work on it and the system is still there, but because the oil price has come down so much the transactional cost of bringing in ships and stealing oil means that it is not as profitable as it once was. It is not that the systems we have in place plug it; it is just that there is not so much being stolen because it is not as profitable, so it is a good moment to begin to plug those things because when oil goes back up, the gaps are still—

Jeremy Lefroy

So literally ships would come in and steal whole loads of oil.

Dr Cameron

Written evidence that we received indicated from DFID that its approach in Nigeria is about influencing how Nigeria uses its own resources. How would you assess DFID’s capacity to improve governance to the benefit of development outcomes?

Dr Hoffman

Perhaps it would be useful to point out that improved governance is in the interest of Nigerians, firstly. DFID should emphasise engaging with Nigeria’s politics and not being afraid or concerned about the connotations of challenging ideas and policies and programmes and actions by the Government that do not reflect well or will not produce the kind of prosperity that is possible. I am aware of DFID’s programme or attempts to integrate technical advisers into various ministries and agencies. That is a reflection of an awareness of the challenges these agencies basically have with technical skill. For example, the trade ministry should be supporting negotiators and staff who engage in trade policy formulation and what the implications are for Nigeria’s trade policy with its relations with its neighbours. I am aware of those kinds of efforts, especially as well in tax collection with the Federal Inland Revenue Service. I have spoken to a number of people who have supported the chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service agency and the efforts they are making to support these agencies that collect Nigeria’s revenue, doing it in a transparent and an efficient way. The resources that are collected are published and made available to the public and the public itself can monitor the way Nigeria’s Government institutions use its resources. It is about making those connections or enabling the environment in which those connections can be made. The Nigerian public itself should be the one and will be the one to put the necessary pressure on Government to use the resources collectively generated to improve the economy and support development.

Dr Cameron

Do you think that will require a cultural shift? When we visited it was mainly a cash-based society, and I am wondering about collecting taxes and how transparent that is currently. If technology can improve that is another issue in terms of electronic transfer of money.

Alex Duncan

There are some very promising opportunities sometimes created by technological advances. You put your finger on an area where this might be possible. The whole reform of the fertiliser subsidy area is enormously significant. They are using smart cards to try to reform the area. What was described to me by a distinguished academic and former chief economic adviser is that the second largest area of corruption in Nigeria after the oil sector was fertiliser. Significant improvements have been made with a 40-year problem of fertiliser subsidies, partly through transparency, partly through a DFID-supported programme doing research that showed that 89% of the fertiliser subsidy did not get through to the intended beneficiaries. That was used by Ministers in speeches and the President in a speech. The technological advance has offered a way forward using smart cards. If I could answer your question more generally, the thrust of DFID’s Nigeria programme to help Nigeria make better use of its own resources makes total sense. Aid is tiny. What this means is that it is fundamentally an agenda of institution-building and of seeking to influence the way that Nigerian institutions and processes work through trying to achieve maximum leverage with very small financial and staff resources. If I could diverge for a moment, I am concerned about DFID’s staffing. It seems to have got quite a lot thinner. Too much is being handed over the big implementers.

Chair

That relates directly to our next question, so can I interrupt you and I will come to you first on the next question? We are slightly running out of time, but we have three more questions and I am really keen to get them all in.

Mr Sharma

DFID has adopted a new approach to development, which is thinking and acting politically, and it has a number of advisers embedded in federal Government ministries. Is this likely to be an effective strategy in supporting necessary reforms?

Dr Hoffman

I would answer that question by highlighting some work that DFID has done on researching and understanding the dynamics of the informal economy. I was involved in that project last year. Initially it was to try to make sense of how Nigeria’s economy works, but the research project evolved to looking at how the informal economy works and how the informal sector works and how the Nigerian Government can encourage more and more people in that sector to formalise and move from operating under the radar and being engaged. What are the advantages of engaging with the informal sector, for tax collection purposes and so on? In doing that project we did engage with the Nigerian customs services. Regarding some of the recommendations, I would perhaps recommend that the Committee does get a hold of the report that we made and look at the way the recommendations were constructed. The agencies and the bodies of the Government that they addressed reflected lots of the input that we received from advisers that we embedded in the trade ministry, for example, and the ministry of finance and the ministry of agriculture and the Federal Inland Revenue Service. There was a lot of joined-up thinking and confirmation of the challenges businesspeople told us about—corruption at the borders and not being able to move their goods in and out of Nigeria, despite a protocol in place for free movement, etc. Just to conclude on that, the strategy of embedding or providing technical assistance on the ground to Nigerian officials and agencies is critical and is important and is very, very useful in understanding how truly the Nigerian Government works and why in certain respects it does not.

Chair

Alex, please do complete your earlier point as well.

Alex Duncan

Yes, if I could. Emphatically yes. A Nigerian said to me, “In this country the political trumps the economic.” If you do not understand the political context for programme design and implementation you are not going to succeed, and important work and advances have been made in the direction of thinking and working politically. It is very important that programmes are flexible. They have to be able to adapt as they go along in the light of experience gained, so I would really endorse that general thrust. It is really important that DFID staff, if I could come to the staffing point, themselves are able to internalise the lessons from the implementing companies that DFID takes on to implement the programmes. I look at the scale of the staffing of the DFID office in Nigeria and I do worry. Institution-building is really difficult. You really need to bring sustained, substantial, high-level thought processes to this and your management has to be prepared to respond. One of the important things about international staff, for example, is that they can bring international norms and ways of doing things. I worry in some of the areas—the economic growth team and the governance team and so on—that that is getting pretty skinny. It is also extremely important to make use of informed senior Nigerian staff, and DFID has a partially good record on that but could do more.

Jeremy Lefroy

Just really following up on that, the new public sector accountability and governance programme of DFID aims to focus on various pillars of governance, building accountable, capable and responsive Government engaging citizens and learning lessons on what approaches work to improve development outcomes. Do you think, given what you have said about the importance of internalising the political situation and development, this is a suitable approach in the Nigerian context or not?

Dr Hoffman

You said public sector—the programme.

Jeremy Lefroy

There is a public sector accountability and governance programme; DFID has placed an emphasis on politically smart development, which really follows up from what Mr Duncan was saying.

Dr Hoffman

I would perhaps expand on the previous point I was making on embedding advisers and support into institutions and just pointing, as well, to the support that DFID has given to third sector actors and civil society organisations who are involved in public sector accountability, activism and advocacy. One of the organisations I will perhaps highlight that I know DFID is supporting is the Budget Platform. They are a budget transparency and public finance management organisation who have made the effort to go to as many states as they have had the resources to and ask the state governments for their budgets, and they are also publishing this online making them accessible and making budgets understandable to the average Nigerian, especially with low literacy levels in Nigeria. In terms of efforts in that respect, these are efforts that are definitely positives and are worth supporting and even scaling up. It is not just the one agency or the one organisation. It is useful to have these types of organisations that are driven by Nigerians and operated or run by Nigerians at the state level as well as local government. We have talked about local government and corruption and inefficiencies at that level of the system. It useful to scale this up and broaden it out.

Alex Duncan

I was the team leader for the consultancy team that worked with the DFID office to design that programme, so just in the interests of transparency I am not sure you therefore want an answer from me.

Chair

What would be really helpful, and I said this to the first panel when we similarly ran out of time, is that there will be issues you have not had an opportunity to elaborate fully on and we welcome further written evidence from witnesses. I really want to ask the final question, which I am just going to put to Joseph because he referred to it earlier, although both of you have as well, and it is about last year’s national election. It has been widely viewed as the most credible electoral process in Nigeria since 1999, with much less violence than perhaps might have been anticipated. Can you explain how that was achieved, why you think there was not the level of violence that was perhaps anticipated and in particular to what extent you think support from donors, including DFID, contributed to that credibility?

Joseph Hurst-Croft

The first thing is the support outside of the election cycle is really key—not just having election money that came in on those 100 days before the election and the election itself. That support for making sure the proper civil society monitoring groups were there working, tracking and making sure that people know their terrain, so you can get out and know where the areas of violence are going to be. DFID also supported some really interesting engagements in the Niger Delta where there was potential for violence and had political debates and supported political debates, which had not happened before in that context, both on radio and on TV. It was very interesting to see politicians having to come and being pressurised to talk down the potential of violence. That is something that also helps—that political leveraging, which was not just DFID. The international community as a whole came together and that was really important. The other side of it is that awareness that we talk about in terms of the accountability side of things. Civil society and the media are getting braver. They are willing to being to say to politicians, “Hang on a minute. What are you going to do for us? It is not just something you do over there—elections. It is something we are involved in.” That is a really encouraging sign that DFID’s programmes need to continue to support and therefore see programmes around budget transparency as things that lead to groundwork and to the networks that can then switch into election-monitoring and election-observing at that time.

Chair

Super. Sorry I have not got time to come to everyone on this one. We have gone beyond the time. Many, many thanks to all three of you. You have been fantastic witnesses today and, as I said, we would welcome any further submissions into our inquiry, but thank you again for coming and giving us your oral evidence today. Thank you very much. Q43 Oral evidence: DFID’s programme in Nigeria, HC 676 2