Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Dr. Kingsley Moghalu has said the politicization of leadership positions in government agencies was one of the major reasons governance is failing in Nigeria.
Moghalu said in any political culture where there is no separation between independent institutions and politics, the outcome is usually incompetence and ineffectiveness, because loyalty rather than performance becomes the key metric for assessment.
In a post on his X handle on Monday, the ex-CBN boss cited former President Olusegun Obasanjo as an example of a leader who successfully separated politics from public administration.
“Obasanjo as President was good at separating these two things,” he said. “He knew who his political fixers were. They were not hidden. He also knew who his technocrats were. Politicians could not touch or interfere with them and their work.”
Moghalu, however, noted that China remains the only exception to this principle, having achieved economic and societal transformation despite requiring loyalty from technocrats to the Chinese Communist Party.
“The only exception to this principle that has achieved economic and societal transformation is China,” he said. “There, even technocrats have to be loyal to the Chinese Communist Party. But this works because it’s an ideological country and society.”
He explained that China’s governing worldview, which emphasises societal ambition, transformation and greatness, makes incompetence and non-performance appear contradictory to the ruling party’s ideology.
Moghalu said Nigeria lacks a similar ideological or philosophical worldview, a gap he blamed for the persistence of poverty and weak governance in the country.
“Nigeria has no ideological or philosophical worldview, so mixing politics and public administration perpetuates poverty and weak governance because there is no incentive for effective performance,” he said. “The politics, not the performance, is what is rewarded.”
