Tunji Olaopa
oil is fast becoming obsolete as a global economic factor. The telecommunication and digital technology revolution have shifted attention more to knowledge and technologies of knowledge than to traditional mineral resources. And countries like Japan, the United States and China with no significant resources are already the leader in the innovative development field. We should note the intense media campaign that is attached to the 5G network, and the furious race for who gets to it first. We should also note the alarming rate at which Nigeria’s crude oil is becoming irrelevant in the global economy.
The search for a new Nigeria, therefore, must be conceived in terms of a development agenda that is innovative and knowledge- based. This puts enormous pressure on the Nigerian leadership to focus on the dynamics of modernized policymaking protocol that will enable it to rethink its governance commitment to Nigerians. But much more than this, it places an onus on the government to critically begin to reinvest in NIPSS as a means of reinventing its conception and operational model. NIPSS came to life as a think tank whose mandate is to provide evidence- based research and policy analysis that will enable government to transform its policy conception and praxis. However, in a knowledgebased world, the task of think tanks themselves, are getting reformulated at a rapid state. In other words, thinking is no longer sufficient for any think tank worth its salt; ‘ doing’ has become the new imperative. And in a COVID- 19 dispensation, the new imperative is critical for the new normal. It is quite significant that the search for a new Nigeria become heightened at this period when everything we used to know has become destabilized, and all our certainties have been undermined. Old administrative and governance practices can no longer suffice as the basis for development.
To reposition NIPSS is to rethink its capacity readiness to deliver on the new imperative of think- and- do tanking. This will be difficult because, first, it was conceived initially as a think tank. And second, its dependence on government limits its internal capacity to reinvent itself. This is the fate of most government- owned think tank and research institutes. This therefore places the onus of institutional reform and repositioning on the government and the leadership of NIPSS. The imperative of the new Nigeria cannot be achieved through the principle of politics as usual. It requires innovative rather than extractive political reflection. And NIPSS constitutes a most fundamental focal point for such an innovative transformation of the Nigerian state. Essentially, it is an institutional context that is mandated to reflect on and dialogue about the institutional and infrastructural dynamics of democratic governance in Nigeria. And its has waited 41 years to step optimally into that role. Olaopa, retired Federal Permanent Secretary and Professor of Public Administration, National Institute For Policy and Strategic Studies ( NIPSS), Kuru, Jos.