Intergovernmental Relations in Nigeria: Improving Service Delivery in Core Sectors

Abstract

Nigeria’s model of fiscal federalism represents a fundamental legal and institutional framework for policymaking in the country. As in other federations, it defines the core rules for resource allocation, distribution of responsibilities for service delivery, and mechanisms for interaction between different tiers of government.

Nigeria’s fiscal federalism arrangements are currently attracting increasing attention from both policymakers and analysts. This is a reflection of the fact that longer term perspectives of economic policy reform in the country are critically dependent upon improvements in the organization of inter-governmental arrangements. Such arrangements have direct implications for achieving national growth and poverty reduction targets. Simply put, there is a major need to strengthen the incentives of government agencies at all levels of authority to improve cooperation in designing of their policies and delivery of services. At the same time, capacity will have to be built to support such future intergovernmental cooperation.

Keywords: Nigeria, Inter-governmental relations, service delivery

JEL Classification: H72, H77, H53