Parties gain power at elections, and the institutions govern the nation. Whether political ideas can live long-term after they leave the campaign rhetoric and go into government execution is what separates national success and enduring progress in the nation.
The Alliance between the All Progressives Congress (APC) and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government in Nigeria is a significant case study of the role that party ideology, institutional arrangements, and party-to-government policy communication can play in forging the trajectory and course of government.
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The APC’s campaigns were premised on the Renewed Hope agenda in 2023 General Election. After Tinubu won the elections, the political platform became the blueprint for an executive programme aimed at tackling economic restructuring, infrastructure development, security, energy, agriculture and social investment.
The challenge was no longer those days of “soft sell” at the ballot. It was a matter of implementation in the intricate structure of the Nigerian state.
That distinction matters.
The direction a governing party gives in politics needs to be interpreted into public policy in the ministries, departments and agencies.
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Parliament must legislate. It is essential for the executive to co-ordinate. Civil servants are responsible for implementing. It is not just what citizens need to know about the government, it’s why difficult choices are being made.
This is the structure of new government.
Institution-building, coalition management and recognising the need for institutions that can carry an idea beyond the person that is the hallmark of Tinubu’s political fortunes. That philosophy is put to the test most strongly as the President.
Low degrees of unified government can cost Nigeria, to an astronomical extent. In the absence of coordination, reforms weaken as the political goals go in one direction while administrative institutions go in another. They sit together and express priorities and government becomes more capable of continuity and delivery.
The APC has thus a responsibility more than reactionary towards the administration. It has to emulate continuously the role of an intellectual and political link between the expectation and the action of the government, as a governing actor.
The impact should not be only in mobilising voters, but in communicating the policy message, collecting feedback and keeping its ethos in touch with the lived experiences of the electorate.
During times of reform, communication of the policy is especially vital.
Economically required decisions can be politically risky, if citizens lack transparency about their anticipation of purpose, timeline, and expected benefit. Hardship cannot be avoided through communication but clarity can enhance understanding of the public. Government need to articulate reforms with evidence, accept that there are challenges but don’t become defensive about them, attribute current costs to likely future benefits.
In this case institutional leadership is essential.
The national psyche space between the presidency and the cabinet, between the legislatures and the party leadership and public service, and between a multitude of offices and ministries are not aligned to the same constitutional space, but the national interest demands a strategic coordination among that. Not necessarily just rolling institutions under one another.
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Effective governance of the estuary recognizes boundaries but fosters collaboration for the shared national goals.
The depth of a political movement can be revealed by the strength of its ideas, as well as its slogans. Renewed Hope is not just a campaign promise, it is a management ordercheck which must be gauged in terms of institutional success, economic opportunity, infrastructure, security and better public services.
But, for Tinubu, the challenge is bigger than anything related to maintaining party dominance. It is to illustrate the development of political organisation into good statecraft.
Governments are only remembered if they create systems that outlast politics and political cycles. Parties are consequential when they create ideas that can enhance the institution. A vision supported by communication and execution becomes a transformational leadership.
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This historic governance will consequently not be built with politics as its foundation. It will be constructed on the foundations of discipline and synergy, of the collaboration between party and institution, of leadership and accountability.
This is the way electoral mandates get translated into governing purpose. Political movements turn to devices of national development in this manner. And that is the way renewed hope is to have to become renewed confidence.
