Citation:
Date Presented:
February 5Abstract:
“You have the right to be served right” is the motto of the SERVICOM policy, which was instituted in 2004 with funding provided by the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) to improve the quality of service delivery within government agencies in Nigeria. SERVICOM, which stands for Service Compact with all Nigerians, also represents the contract that the government entered into to provide good quality services to the citizenry as this reform was established. Drawing up literature on transnational governmentality, accountability, and the cultural production of the state, I examine the formulation and everyday culture of the implementation of this reform as well as its impact on the citizenry.
In the first chapter, I examine the contextual meaning of “accountability” in light of the audit practices and transnational dynamics of the reform. In the second chapter, I examine how a particular idea of the state is being constructed through the dissemination of “good governance” discourses and how this produces a sense of ambivalence among the citizenry. In the third chapter, I explore how the staff in charge of implementing the reform co-opt good governance discourses to justify the continued support of this policy and secure a livelihood for themselves. I argue that the technicality of the approaches and language that have been at the center of the implementation of this reform obscures how it functions as part of the political machinery for the production of power.