Some Reflections on the Political and Administrative Functions of Provincial Authorities in Northern Nigeria
| Published date | 01 April 1966 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1966.tb00257.x |
| Author | John D. Chick |
| Date | 01 April 1966 |
Some Reflections on the Political and
Administrative Functions of Provincial
Authorities in Northern Nigeria
By
JOHN
D.
CHICK
Mr.
John
D. Chick is Lecturer in Political Science, Ahmadu Bello University,
Nonhern
Nigeria.
MR.
KIRK-GREENE'S recent article describing the development
of
Provincial
Administration in
Northern
Nigeria! provides a very useful and perceptive
discussion
of
the
background to
the
Provincial Administration Law
of
1962.
At the same time it raises certain questions which may profitably be given
further consideration. One is prompted to wonder, for example, what has
been the precise nature
of
that
change, initiated by the Law, which is char-
acterized as the 'politicization
of
the provincial administrative system'.2
The
term 'politicization' is ambiguous.
It
is sometimes used in place of
the
more common 'political socialization' to describe
'the
process of induction into
the political
culture"
ofan
individual or
ofa
social group. Here, however, this
Usage
is clearly
not
applicable, and two alternative meanings may be suggested
as having particular importance for the study
of
provincial administration•
. (a)
The
word may be used to define
the
process whereby an office or an
l1lstitution, which has previously functioned within the limits
of
the existing
POwer
structure
of
a policy, changes its role in such a way that it comes to
POssess
an influence, either actual or potential, upon the framework
of
the
POwer
structure itself.
If
such a change takes place, the office or institution
involved may be said to have ceased to be purely administrative and to have
acquired 'political significance'. In practice the great majority
of
officespossess
some measure
of
political significance
of
this kind, and it is possible to make
Somecomparisons between
them
by considering the balance
of
the active
and
passive elements in the relationship
of
each with its power environment.
Clearly no exact measurements can be made,
but
it is often useful to be able
to refer to one office as being 'more politically significant' or 'less politically
significant' than another, and, in many cases, careful examination makes
such
ajudgment possible.4
----------------------------
1A. H. M. Kirk-Greene,'A Redefinition of Provincial Administration:
The
Northern
Nigerian Approach,' Journal of Local Administration Overseas, Vol. IV, January, 1965.
I am grateful to
Mr.
Kirk-Greene for reading the original draft of this article and for
making a
number
of valuable comments and suggestions for revision.
2Ibid., p. IS.
3Gabriel Almond and James S. Coleman, eds. The Politics of the Developing Areas.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960. p. 27.
• 4
This
approach is similar to that used, with more precision, by Apter and Lystad
~
their study of bureaucracyin the Gold Coast (David E. Apter and Robert A. Lystad,
Bureaucracy, Party and Constitutional Democracy', in Gwendolen M.
Caner
and
William O. Brown, eds, Transition in Africa. Boston University Press, 1958) in which
the terms 'specific' and 'diffuse' are used to 'represent the two poles of characteristic
r~le
action between which varying degrees of [functional) specificity or [functional)
diffuseness may be differentiated'. (Ibid., p. 19). A diffuse role would tend to have high
P~litical
significance (goals: alternative, implicit, wide; means: alternative, implicit,
Wlde)
and a specific role, low political significance (goals: required, explicit, narrow;
means: required, explicit, narrow).
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