10 Questions Every Nigerian Should Ask Those Who Seek to Govern

As Nigeria prepares for another political season, a new framework for evaluating candidates who seek public office has been proposed. Rather than focusing solely on promises and personal qualifications, the framework emphasizes the kind of governing system each candidate intends to leave behind. Ten questions are presented to help citizens, media, civil society, and political parties interrogate potential leaders and assess their long-term impact.

The first question, the Institutional Legacy Test, asks candidates to identify institutions within their responsibility that will be stronger upon leaving office. The focus is not just on personal accomplishments but on building institutional capacity that remains after the individual has served. The second question, the Sustainability Test, requires candidates to specify which major reforms should still be operational five years after their departure and how they plan to ensure their continued success.

Projects may falter, and administrations change, so these reforms need to become embedded in systems, laws, professional routines, and institutional culture.

The third question, the Self-Reliance Test, prompts candidates to convert powers dependent on personal discretion into transparent, rule-based processes. In other words, they should replace arbitrary authority with systems and procedures that function independently of who holds the position. The fourth question, the Independence Test, asks candidates to strengthen institutions capable of investigating, auditing, challenging, or sanctioning their own government, associates, and political allies if necessary.

The goal is to build institutions that can hold both opponents and friends accountable, rather than merely constraining opponents.

The fifth question, the Competence and Merit Test, focuses on ensuring that competence, rather than patronage, determines who enters, advances, and leads within the public service. No government can permanently outperform the quality of the state machinery through which it governs. The sixth question, the Performance Test, seeks measurable outcomes that citizens can use to judge whether the government is succeeding. These outcomes should be distinct from mere activities or the number of committees inaugurated.

The seventh question, the Transparency Test, emphasizes making important government processes sufficiently transparent so that ordinary citizens can scrutinize them without privileged access. Budgets, procurement, appointments, and project performance should progressively become matters of public information. The eighth question, the Consequence Test, demands that consequences for breaking rules be applied regardless of the offender's identity, transforming rules into institutional mechanisms rather than mere political tools.

The ninth question, the Succession and Continuity Test, asks candidates how they will ensure that government does not suffer institutional amnesia upon leadership changes. A functioning state should preserve knowledge, capability, and continuity across administrations, preventing the need to start from scratch each time. The final question, the System Test, asks candidates to build safeguards that prevent even incompetent or self-interested successors from dismantling what works or inflicting significant damage.

Essentially, this question seeks to build a robust system that enables good leaders to achieve extraordinary outcomes while preventing bad leaders from causing significant harm.