How stronger institutions, inclusive governance, and fiscal discipline can transform policy ambitions into measurable development outcomes.
Nigeria stands at a defining moment in its governance journey. As fiscal and political pressures intensify, development expectations rise, and major reforms transition from legislation to implementation, the ability of governments to adapt, respond, and deliver results has become more important than ever. In this context, Policy and Legislative Resilience (PLR) offers a practical framework for strengthening governance systems, improving fiscal efficiency, and ensuring that public policies remain effective even in challenging political and economic environments.
Resilience is not a passive state; it is a matter of inner strength, determination, persistence, the willingness to look inward and subsequently move forward with Clarity of Purpose. My conviction in the importance of Policy and Legislative Resilience is rooted in years of experience working across peacebuilding and inclusive security, Federal and National Affairs, the National Assembly, and state-level governance. These engagements have revealed a recurring challenge: well-intentioned policies and laws often fail to achieve their objectives because institutions lack the resilience needed to sustain implementation, adapt to changing realities, and maintain focus on development outcomes. PLR seeks to address this gap by building stronger institutions, improving accountability, and creating governance systems capable of delivering lasting impact. Experiences from fiscal optimization initiatives such as those associated with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, demonstrate the value of looking inward, identifying efficiencies, and building systems that can withstand political and fiscal pressures.
What is policy and legislative resilience, you ask? PLR refers to the capacity of sub-national governments to adapt and respond to political, fiscal and development challenges through policies, laws, and regulations. It involves strengthening institutional frameworks, enhancing citizen engagement and inclusivity, improving communication between budget planners, legislators, and citizens; promoting visibility and accountability to drive sustainable development, quality expenditure outcomes, and inclusive governance.
Policy and Legislative Resilience (PLR) is a crucial yet often overlooked factor in Nigeria’s struggle with governance and fiscal efficiency, particularly in domestic revenue generation and expenditure for human capital development. State governments in Nigeria are experiencing an inward-looking deficit and insufficient Policy and Legislative Resilience (PLR), causing revenue opportunities and savings to be overlooked. Without robust PLR, states must improve in identifying consolidation possibilities, eliminating wastages and bottlenecks, tracking expenditure quality effectively, and sufficiently engaging communities along the planning and budgeting value chain. This inward-looking deficit is laid bare by recent fiscal data: even as subnational revenues nominally double, 21 states still depend on federal FAAC receipts for at least 70% of their total revenue (BudgIT “State of States Report” (2025)). This leads to missed opportunities to optimize revenue, increase the savings base, improve spending quality, and deliver better outcomes in priority sectors like health, education, agriculture and other social protections. Policies that collapse under political or fiscal pressure. PLR was built to fix that. It’s about ensuring development plans, policies, and that supporting laws hold up under stress and move from legislation into implementation without losing intent.
Why PLR matters now
Nigeria is in a rare alignment. Major reforms are moving from the statute books into implementation. Political, Insecurity and Fiscal pressures are forcing harder choices on revenue quality and quantity; the nation’s legal construct, as well as expenditure quality and outcomes. Fortunately, States now have more robust systems for tracking and benchmarking development and economic progress than ever before.
Across Nigeria, citizens are increasingly mobilizing to demand resilience in their communities. This shift reflects a growing awareness that sustainable development must be rooted in the lived realities of the people.
Policy and Legislative Resilience requires that laws and policies are not static, but responsive to the evolving needs of communities. Citizens are vocalizing these needs through organized engagement, needs assessments, and direct advocacy. They are moving beyond passive receipt of policy to active participation in shaping it.
To strengthen PLR, we must institutionalise community-led needs assessments as a standard input into legislative and policy processes such as budget development and appropriation. Create accessible channels for citizens to articulate priorities and track how those priorities are addressed in law and budget appropriation. Build feedback loops between communities, legislators, and implementing agencies to ensure policies are responsive and adapt when realities change.
Resilience is not only about infrastructure and security. It is about legislative frameworks that anticipate shocks, protect vulnerable populations, and empower communities to lead their own recovery and development. By centering citizen voices in policy design and review, we make governance more inclusive, effective, and resilient.
What PLR looks like in practice
PLR rests on four pillars:
- Inclusive representation, communication, and coordination: The Executive Governors, Budget planners, MDA focal persons, legislators, and citizens need to be in the same loop with responsive consultative feedback mechanisms. Without that, policy and appropriation lose value, and impactful implementation stalls.
- Supporting policies and bills for sustainability: Policy consistency and regulation stability matter. As legislation and policy must continue to evolve, there must be sustained analysis, review, advice, and advocacy with the view of fostering an enabling environment that reflects public needs. Leveraging proven approaches and building institutional routines for sustained results, such as visibility policies in budget-tagging of releases to verified outputs, financial incentives for performance, and embedding a culture of results.
- Strengthened oversight: Joint oversight between communities, legislators, and MDAs themselves is essential to track projects and expenditure outcomes. When oversight is shared, accountability improves and leakage drops. Visibility is crucial. By bolstering inclusive legislative engagement and the budget appropriation value chain, states can translate revenue gains and high-impact interventions that are visible and tagged throughout the ‘budget to quality expenditure cycle’, into tangible improvements in citizen welfare via prioritization, joint input, and joint oversight.
- Internal optimisation and consolidation: Inspired by models like Zohran Mamdani’s chief savings officers, city-level tax schemes, high-impact infrastructural projects awarded directly to citizens, and universal childcare for under two-year-olds, in New York City (2026); PLR pushes states to look inward first. With subnational overhead expenditures recently spiking by 62.66% year-on-year, the urgency to curtail operational bloat is clear. That means optimizing existing revenue bases, identifying consolidation opportunities, eliminating bottlenecks, and increasing the savings base before relying on new external inflows. This means aligning policy with national plans, offering fiscal and legislative incentives that draw in investment, and streamlining regulations so smallholders and SMEs can access markets and in turn increase their community IGR and savings base. It means linking these interventions to health systems, agricultural extension services, and other social protection programs so you’re not building parallel structures.
Challenges we have to confront
Institutional strength at the state level is uneven. Coordinating diverse stakeholders can be slow and complex. Fiscal constraints limit scope without crowding in private capital. Data gaps negatively affect decision-making, and political will can shift with election cycles. Visibility and accountability remain non-negotiable. Citizen engagement needs to operate in a feedback loop that leads to results in critical areas.
In Nigerian states, entrenched behaviours and cultural norms around insufficient inclusive planning and budgeting, coupled with insufficient joint oversight, have led to uneven Mapping, Monitoring, Evaluation and Engagement (MM&EE) outputs. There’s a lack of sufficient incentive to drive the use of IT/digitised evidence-based data systems, perpetuating a culture where data collection doesn’t translate to meaningful action. This has created a critical need for a behavioural shift that fosters a culture of inclusivity, visibility, evidence-based decision-making, promotes citizen engagement; ensures data-driven insights and evidence-based checklists inform decisions. Without this cultural transformation, governments will struggle to enhance accountability, improve service delivery, and make policies responsive to citizen needs, hindering impactful development outcomes.
These are reasons to apply PLR principles that are pragmatic, integrated, and measurable.
The path forward
PLR is about turning reforms into systems, policies and regulations that last. Done right, it creates value chains that carry social services, attract investment, and spur local social entrepreneurship. That generates additional revenue streams for states, improves inclusive security, such as health security, food security, socio-economic security, raises incomes, and expands employment.
The window is open while reforms move into implementation, and states have the diagnostic tools to track progress. The next step is acting quickly, with pragmatism and measurement built in. The current landscape in Nigeria presents a unique opportunity for Policy and Legislative Resilience (PLR) intervention. With major reforms transitioning from legislation to implementation, the country is poised to strengthen revenue quality and quantity, aligning with poverty alleviation and social priorities.
Nigeria’s government has been actively working on initiatives. In June 2025, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed four major tax reform Acts, the Nigeria Tax Act (NTA), Nigeria Tax Administration Act (NTAA), Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Act (NRSA), and Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act (JRBA). On June 11th, 2026, The House of Representatives officially passed the Constitutional Amendment Bill to establish State Police across Nigeria, while it passed second reading at the Senate. Late President Baba Buhari’s (Allah Ya Ji kan shi) National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), which included programmes like N-Power, Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), and the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, alongside broader administration efforts like the Ghost Worker clean-ups and Universal Health Insurance expansion. These efforts aim to improve community-based security conditions, address poverty, improve health outcomes, and enhance economic resilience. However, insufficient PLR can cause programs of this nature to fall short of their potential.
Given the political pressure, fiscal pressure and existing infrastructure, PLR can leverage this momentum to drive meaningful change. By focusing on inclusivity, visibility, accountability, and sustainability, PLR can support Nigeria’s development goals, from pilots to state-wide impact, and from impact to systemic change in governance culture and service delivery.
A key driver of this change is a behavioural shift towards promoting a culture of inclusivity, visibility, and evidence-based decision-making among executives, legislators, MDAs, and citizens.
A resilient Nigerian.
Hajiya Fatima Y. Usman-Katsina is Head, Federal and National Affairs (FNA). Pioneer Female Head, Peace and Inclusive Security, Nigeria Governors’ Forum.
