{"id":16924,"date":"2025-09-08T07:43:53","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T07:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/?p=16924"},"modified":"2025-09-08T07:45:59","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T07:45:59","slug":"dakuku-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/2025\/09\/08\/dakuku-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Chatham House And The Trust We Must Rebuild"},"content":{"rendered":"

By <\/b>Dakuku Peterside, PhD<\/b>.<\/a><\/p>\n

Trust is the everyday curren\u00adcy of democratic life. When it drains away, institutions may keep their names and seals, but they lose their weight. The recent Chatham House\/NBS findings do not merely offer another set of gloomy numbers; they describe a social con\u00adtract under strain. Almost half of Nigerians say they \u201cgreatly distrust\u201d the police. Roughly a third of the popu\u00adlation deeply distrusts the presidency and the federal government. Courts meaning judiciary, local councils, and state politicians also score poorly. Be\u00adneath these data points lies a telling paradox: while a majority believe that in their communities, power matters more than honesty, an even larger share still feels bad when others are exploited. In other words, Nigerians have not lost their moral compass; they have lost confidence that integ\u00adrity is rewarded.<\/p>\n

Trust is the quiet architecture that holds a nation together. When it erodes\u2014as it has in Nigeria\u2014it does not simply bruise reputations; it hollows out the very institutions meant to protect, serve, and stabi\u00adlise society. Courts become venues of suspicion rather than justice, the police a source of fear rather than se\u00adcurity, and ministries echo chambers rather than engines of policy. This column has warned about this drift before\u2014\u201dDearth of Integrity in Public Life\u201d (Nov 2023), \u201cGreed, Ethics, and Public Service in Nigeria\u201d (Jan 2024), \u201cTrust and Economic Recovery\u201d (Nov 2024), \u201cNigeria Decides 2023: Campaign Promises and the Issue of Trust\u201d (Jan 2023), and \u201cAccountability Deficit and the Transparency Ques\u00adtion\u201d (Sept 2023). The core message is simple \u2013 governance cannot function effectively without trust.<\/p>\n

This has profound consequences for the presidency. In every consti\u00adtutional democracy, the presidency is more than an office; it is a symbol of sovereignty, the locus where the authority to govern becomes legit\u00adimate in the eyes of citizens. When trust in that symbol erodes, so does the ease with which government can secure compliance, enforce laws, and maintain order. The distance between decree and delivery becomes wider; the cost of governing climbs; every reform meets friction, suspicion, and delay. A president may still command formal power, but the informal con\u00adsent on which power thrives becomes fragile. What is at stake is not just ap\u00adproval ratings; it is the state\u2019s capacity to act in the public interest without perpetual resistance or doubt. If the centre cannot convincingly demon\u00adstrate fairness and results, people be\u00adgin to conduct their lives outside the state\u2014through private security, infor\u00admal payments, and parallel services.<\/p>\n

Equally troubling is the report\u2019s revelation of a near-consensus that political and economic power now outrank honesty and constitution\u00adally guaranteed rights. When power eclipses principle, democracy be\u00adcomes performance. Citizens recali\u00adbrate their expectations downward, accepting impunity as usual and cor\u00adruption as inevitable. Over time, this corrodes social cohesion, as people re\u00adtreat into private coping strategies\u2014 such as ethnic solidarities, informal economies, and transactional short\u00adcuts\u2014because public institutions of\u00adten feel distant, arbitrary, or predatory.<\/p>\n

The economy also pays a price. Corruption is not just a moral wrong; it is an efficiency tax that compounds daily. It diverts public resources from classrooms, clinics, and roads. It weak\u00adens the rule of law and raises the cost of doing business. Nigeria\u2019s headline GDP invites comparisons with Afri\u00adca\u2019s largest economies, yet GDP per capita tells a different story about the prosperity felt in households. It is no coincidence that a country battling service-delivery gaps also records stubborn poverty levels. When citi\u00adzens see budgets without clear out\u00adcomes, they tend to disengage. When they are asked to broaden the tax base, they ask a fair question: where does the money go? Trust and tax morale are twins: you cannot raise one while neglecting the other.<\/p>\n

The trust deficit did not appear overnight. Nigerians have endured a quarter-century of anti-corruption campaigns whose headlines often outpaced their results. Party loyalty has too frequently trumped public interest; selective enforcement has too usually replaced even-handed jus\u00adtice; and institutional incentives have rewarded survival within a broken system rather than reforming it. The result is reform fatigue: people hear the right words, but they have learned to wait for proof before they believe. Each unfulfilled pledge quietly raises the \u201ccost of honesty\u201d\u2014the risk that playing by the rules leaves one poorer, slower, and excluded\u2014while lowering the \u201ccost of corruption\u201d\u2014the sense that wrongdoing is ordinary, profit\u00adable, and rarely punished.<\/p>\n

The divide between declarations and reality grows wider when official statements assert that corruption has been eliminated, while everyday experiences and independent data indicate the opposite. Leaders build public trust not by insisting that present hardships will lead to future benefits, but by clearly demonstrat\u00ading the connection between income and outcomes, and by encouraging external validation. Humility is not a weakness in leadership; it is the pre\u00adcondition for collective effort in hard times. A candid admission\u2014\u201cwe are falling short here; here is what we will do by these dates; and here is how you can check\u201d\u2014earns more trust than triumphal claims that do not match reality.<\/p>\n

Yet the Chatham House work also surfaces a quiet asset: civic readiness. Nearly half of the respondents believe their communities are willing to mon\u00aditor public spending on development projects. This is not trivial. Countries that have successfully turned the tide on corruption did not do so through elite willpower alone; they built re\u00adpeatable, citizen-centred systems that make wrongdoing harder, costlier, and riskier. Nigeria\u2019s opportunity is to shift from exhortation to architec\u00adture: empower communities to track projects, publish contracts, and create channels where complaints trigger action. What would a credible reset look like?<\/p>\n

An immediate acknowledgement from the presidency that trust is low and that rebuilding it is a national priority. This is not about blame; it is about alignment. A short, time-bound action plan should follow, with dates, owners, and public milestones. In po\u00adlicing, this could mean establishing independent complaints mechanisms that publish their outcomes, rolling out body-worn cameras in high-risk areas, and issuing annual integrity re\u00adports that identify trends and outline remedial actions. In procurement, make open contracting the default for all MDAs, and do not award ma\u00adjor contracts until the beneficial own\u00adership information is complete and publicly available. In whistleblowing, move beyond slogans: enact robust protections, guarantee anonymity, and demonstrate that serious tips lead to measurable enforcement.<\/p>\n

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Lanre Issa-Onilu, DG, National Orientation Agency<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Policing should be fair and mea\u00adsurable. Trust in the police is often formed at the roadside, not in policy documents. Create an independent complaints mechanism with power to investigate, publish findings, and recommend sanctions\u2014then follow through. Roll out body-worn camer\u00adas in hotspots with clear policies on usage, retention, and public release after critical incidents. Publish an annual integrity report that tracks complaints by type and outcome, stop-and-search data by location, and disciplinary actions taken. Train for procedural justice\u2014the science that shows people comply when processes are transparent and respectful, even when outcomes are adverse. Pair this with officer protections and incen\u00adtives so that good policing is safer and more rewarding than rent-seeking.<\/p>\n

Digitise justice to reduce waiting times. Justice delayed is trust denied. Effective case tracking is crucial and must transparently present, in sim\u00adple terms, the number of cases filed, the average processing time, and their outcomes. Establish service-level agreements for key stages\u2014filing, ar\u00adraignment, evidence disclosure, and trial scheduling\u2014and provide quar\u00adterly performance reports. Give pri\u00adority to corruption and violent crime cases by assigning specialist judges and setting strict time standards.<\/p>\n

Recognise that the social contract runs on evidence. The government seeks to expand the tax base. That will not happen at scale unless peo\u00adple see taxes turning into services and infrastructure in their neighbour\u00adhoods. Create a monthly \u201cMoney to Services\u201d ledger that tracks, project by project, how revenue becomes out\u00adcomes\u2014classrooms delivered, water schemes functioning, hospital wards equipped, roads drivable in the rainy season.<\/p>\n

Reform, of course, is not propa\u00adganda or a press release but a rou\u00adtine. To stay credible, it needs metrics. Publish a compact national scorecard each quarter: the share of citizens who \u201cstrongly trust\u201d the police, pres\u00adidency, and federal government (and a target to raise this by a defined num\u00adber of percentage points within 12\u201318 months).<\/p>\n

None of this will be painless. There will be resistance from those who benefit from the current equi\u00adlibrium. There will be reform fatigue among citizens who have heard manypromises. There will be disinfor\u00admation campaigns designed to muddy wins and amplify setbacks. And there will be economic shocks that test re\u00adsolve. Mitigating these risks requires sequencing quick wins (especially in frontline services), protecting reform champions, and communicating with rhythm and candour.<\/p>\n

Trust, ultimately, is rational. Peo\u00adple do not trust because they are told to; they trust because systems behave predictably and fairly. Nigerians have not lost their appetite for fairness\u2014 Chatham House\u2019s values paradox clearly demonstrates this. What they have lost is the expectation that hon\u00adesty is affordable. Rebuilding that expectation is the hard work ahead. It means reducing the cost of being honest and increasing the cost of be\u00ading corrupt. It means moving from anti-corruption as theatre to integrity as infrastructure. It also requires a dif\u00adferent posture from leadership\u2014one that treats legitimacy not as inherited authority but as a renewable resource earned daily through conduct.<\/p>\n

If we can make taxes visibly be\u00adcome services, make justice measur\u00adably quicker and fairer, and make wrongdoing reliably expensive, trust will follow\u2014not as sentiment, but as sense. That is the path out of cyni\u00adcism: a state that performs in ways citizens can see, test, and believe. And when trust begins to return, it will re\u00adturn as something sturdier than op\u00adtimism\u2014confidence earned by insti\u00adtutions that work, without drama, in the ordinary rhythm of Nigerian life. The work ahead is to make integrity cheaper than impunity and service more rewarding than cynicism\u2014so our institutions function not as for\u00adtresses of power, but as instruments of the common good.<\/p>\n

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