An interview with Lai Yahaya
Conducted by Jessica Lee
Lai Yahaya is a lawyer, development economist, a policy entrepreneur, and an ardent activist for probity, efficiency and best practice in government and the private sector. He is the current Team Leader of the Facility for Oil Sector Transparency and Reform (FOSTER), a donor-funded program that supports government and civil society in a bid to push for greater transparency, accountability, and reform in the Nigerian oil sector. Previously he was a technical advisor on the Nigerian Presidential Task force on Power and worked on the Roadmap for Power Sector Reform.
The Politic: What are your goals as a World Fellow?
There are so many different things you can get out of being a World Fellow. At one end, just the opportunity to audit classes and plug into the academic side of things, which— once you have been away from it for a while— is really quite interesting. It is good to refresh some things, debate, and discuss issues. At the other end, being a World Fellow allows you to tap into Yale and its network and develop individual projects.
The common thread amongst all of us in the group is the “change the world” mindset. We all have this extreme interest in making some sort of significant change in the way people think about the way the world works and how we solve problems.
What I find very interesting is the extent to which there are academics at Yale but there are also quite a few practitioners. There are quite a lot of people here who have some real world experience, which for me is great.
The Politic: How do you think the world of academia translates to real-time change making?
Sometimes policy makers end up doing just the business of politics and not policy. It is interesting for me to talk to senior faculty at Yale because these are people who spend their time actually thinking through situations, solving problems, and looking at models. Sometimes that gets relegated to the background. But there are a lot of issues today – poverty, healthcare, education, human rights – and policy makers need academics to do the thinking they either don’t have time for or choose to ignore dismiss as “impractical.”
The Politic: You are currently Team Leader of the Facility for Oil Sector Transparency and Reform (FOSTER). What are you hoping to achieve through this program?
The oil sector governance and natural resource management is probably the most important issue for African development. Several sub-Saharan African have resources and large, rapidly growing young population. At the moment, Africa is just a place where there are raw materials with neither opportunity nor benefits filtering down. Hence, this has been the cause of conflicts. This is what they call the “resource course.”
Nigeria is a test case of how not to do things. There is plenty of oil and so is a potentially phenomenally rich. But there are 160 billion people and 80 percent live below the poverty line. There is an extreme gap between rich and poor. [There is] corruption and conflict in the north. We have had civil war, we have had military coups, we have had dictatorships. All are really the result of this battle of resources.
When you have a “free” resource like oil that come from the ground and doesn’t belong to anybody in particular, groups will fight over the benefits. The government, flush with petrodollars, is not dependent on citizen tax revenue. When any government is not dependent upon its citizenry, it feels less beholden and becomes less accountable.
Our “theory of change” is to better educate citizens so they know more about these resources. The greater transparency around what is being produced, the activities of not just government but oil companies—Exxon, Chevron, Shell—and what are they actually doing. The thinking is that greater transparency about what this business is and how it works will allow citizens to ask questions, and that will lead to greater accountability. People will ask questions, and we are going to have to provide answers, which will lead to better governance.
What is policy entrepreneurship?
I call myself a policy entrepreneur. There are several people like myself, who are Western-educated, but who have gone back to Nigeria. People like myself don’t want to go into the private sector—I’m not interested—and I certainly don’t want to go into government—I have no interest in politics. The civil societies and the NGOs, I am not sure how much impact they have. This term policy entrepreneur is a new term that is used to describe people who are interested in public policy and making change through policy but who are not in government.
For example, when I first went back, I worked on telecoms. I go back and I find out to get a phone it was going to take six months. It is going to cost my about $2,000 just to get a phone line. And then, it didn’t even work very well. Then I asked myself, “why does nothing work?”
This is what policy entrepreneurship is. It is saying, “This is just crazy. Why does this happen.” It is having the confidence to then say, “You know what, we have a dysfunctional government, we have a private sector that feeds off of the corruption and government contracts. We have an NGO sector and people trying to do some health and education projects, but there is something missing.” Literally, [policy entrepreneurs] are networked groups of young people that say, “Let’s fix these problems.” Whether it is writing op-eds in newspapers that say, “Here is what you need to do to get this done. Why is no one doing this?”
The Politic: You constructed the Roadmap for Power Sector Reform, which has now been implemented by the government. Why did you take on that project in particular? Did the Nigerian government solicit your help with this project or was it your own initiative?
Everybody, especially the politicians, always say they want to do the right thing. There are always mechanisms in place for reform. Somehow, the government says they want it, the private sector says the want it, the NGOs say they want it, but it won’t happen.
There has been a power sector reform program for a long time because power of course is a major issue. Only 35 percent of people have access to it. It is a terrible thing, and every politician says that. They have been saying that for a very long time. But then, nothing changes. We come to this, those of us who are policy entrepreneurs, on the basis that there are solutions to these problems. There are no difficult problems to solve if people sat down and just did it, rather than getting caught up in the politics and so on.
We didn’t create this power-sector reform program. The means to make it happen were there, in terms of the wish and intention. All we were doing was connecting the dots and trying to figure out how to push things along and filling in the gaps where we can, then doing some the work that people should be doing.
The Politic: You have participated in several leadership training and fellowship programs. How have these training programs shaped your view of leadership?
A big focus for me is to train, develop, and network future leaders for the African continent.
There are two things [that come from fellowship programs]. The first is networking people from different countries so they can talk to one another. Leadership, I think, can sometimes be a lonely thing. [Leadership programs] are no different than being here. I am sure there are students who come to Yale who grateful to find other accomplished students with similar values. Students support each other and learn from each other and learn how to raise each other’s expectations. The second important aspect to develop is a certain type of leadership, which is a values-based, ethical driven leadership, which is public service.
The Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellowship Programme is one of the best programs. Every year it selects 20 people from across the continent who spend ten days in South Africa thinking about leadership and what it means, and then spend another ten days at the Saïd Business School. It is a very intense period; the programme tries to make it a very intense period. We were really encouraged to talk about our biggest fears. People got very emotional. We ended up with a group of lifelong friends from lots of different countries. We will all go on supporting each other as we become leaders.
The Politic: What appeals to you personally about the intersection of energy and policy in an African context?
The energy space is a critical driver of potentially very terrible things but also very good things. How can policy entrepreneurship realign the interests and make sure you get the right product? I think that is the challenge. I cannot think of anything else that would be more interesting than that.
The Politic: What is the single most important piece of advice that you have for Yale students?
Yalies should not take themselves too seriously. By taking things way too seriously from an academic sense, students will miss out on meeting extremely smart people from all over the world, with different backgrounds and with different experiences. Thinking back on my academic days, I got most out of the things I learned from other people. When I was a student, the level of rebellion was much, much higher. There was a lot more bad behavior, which was a good thing, because in the process people really did a lot more questioning of who they are. If you do not go through the process of really understanding yourself well, then it does not matter how excellent you do academically. We need more arts, more culture, more interaction, and even a bit more bad behavior.
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