POLICY EVALUATION

Policy evaluation is a systematic process for assessing the design, implementation and outcomes of public policies, evaluation uses social science research method including quantitative and qualitative techniques, to examine the effects of policies. Some policy scholars such as the famous political scientist James Adreson described policy making as a sequential process marked by distinct steps such as Agenda Setting, Policy Formulation, Policy adoption and Policy Implementation. For Adreson and others, Evaluation is the final step in policy process. However they question that the public policy process is ongoing with evaluation often resulting in policy changing which are implemented and evaluated again.

In considering policy evaluation as simple and straight forward as some politician suggest factors that complicate evaluations include identifying goals measuring performance and isolation,  although it attempt to assess policy in an objective manner. Evaluation activities occurs within a political environment, policy makers often want immediate information on policy that will not be known in short term.

FUNCTIONS OF POLICY EVALUATION

Policy evaluation involved participants in the policy process which include the legislators, executives, stakeholders, and agency official, to write but few, the measure degree to which program has achieved its goal asses the effects and identify any needed changes to the policy. In addition, many states and local governments fund program with federal grant which evaluation is required. Below are some of its functions:

1. Realization of Efficient and high Quality Public Administration.

2. To ensure Public Accountability.

3. To Critically check the effects of the policies of respective ministries.

4. To assess the policies in term of necessity, efficiency and validity.

5. To score the performance of public servant and civil servant.

PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVE OF POLICY EVALUATION

Policy evaluation is taken after policy has passed through the formal adoption of laws, rules or actions to implement the policy. However the purpose of evaluation is to determined whether an implemented program is doing what its suppose to (through) evaluation, we can determine whether a policy’s effects are intended or unintended and whether the results are positive or negative for the targeted population and society as a whole.

Essentially policy evaluation is made to ascertain whether policies corespond in line with what they were created for, favorable policy evaluations tend to perpetuate the implementation while unfavorable may lead to termination or revolutionalization of program or policy. More so, policy evaluation appears to be a straight forward concept, however closer inspection and process reveals that policy evaluation can be equally as political as any other stage of the policy process. Policy evaluation provides additional opportunities for the political interest groups and policy actors to attempt to influence the life of a specific policy. Favorable evaluation of the impact of a given policy will tend to perpetuate the implementation and life-cycle while unfavorable evaluation may give rise to change or possibly policy termination, depending on the pro-active of the interest groups on policy actors, the perception of how well a policy or a program is forming or being implemented can have far reaching impact. In policy evaluation a number of constraints are employed such as time, budget, ethical considerations and policy restrictions (Theodeoujou and Kofins 2004). Those constraints determined a policy or a program’s success and failure.

CONCLUSION

Policy evaluation is a very broad aspect of public policy analysis, indeed its strength forward in term of assessing the policy or a program of government, to showcase how a policy affects our lives or improves our living standards. However, without a policy been evaluated, lack of commitments and dedications to responsibilities will continue to bedevil in both public and private sectors of a state. Corrupt politicians will continue to amass wealth to their pockets; interest groups and stakeholders have to be very vigilant to ensure a successful policy evaluation.        

Read More

'INSIDE JOS POLITICS' PART (4)

Peace, good life and egalitarian society is the virtue of a state, in absent of any, the political system remain in limbo as fascist scholars argue that ‘best thing that a mother can do to her child is to sent him to war” and that ‘the dream of a man is war and a women is fantasy’. Series of attacks and counter attacks, ethno religious crisis in Nigeria especially northern part is not a new scene of massacred of human soul. Chauvinism and chaos makes Nigerians lives in abject existences. Jos city is well know in instability and uncertainty due to occurrences and reoccurrences of crisis, is hardly for a celebration especially religious once to come and go with out any turmoil of bloody conflict among the dominant religious group.

Really thank ALLAH our Eid-Fitir, was celebrated joyfully without any turmoil within or beyond jos metropolitan, also for the first time in Diary to recommend the effort of Governor Jang for banning commercial motorcycles in jos and some local government area of plateau state, even though their was insufficient kekenape and other commercial car’s that would circulate the city, that makes citizen to track especially student of university of jos, saw hundred of them and  pity them, no enough vicheals that would transport them from main camp to p-site indeed most of our youth remained unemployed because ‘okada’ is the only means of self sustenance to them, some has wives and children’s. Now it has been ban. On the other way round death bodies was not been found here and there, because no ‘okada’ more less ‘okada men’ to enter ‘no go area’ of both parties to be kills, which often escalate crisis. Plateau state government need to empowered the youth to provide job opporturenities in other to make them busy because ‘an idle mind is a workshop of devil’. More so to removed the sentiment of enthnocentricism, because the state government has sideline jos city, no meaning project, no good road and no standard market. All project of Jang administration has cantered in his village and other related local government of his natives.

As part of tradition after Eid, Muslims will eat and rejoices with their family and friends, to also thank Allah for his infinite mercy and blesses. Then to visit relatives, clans and kins. I started my visitations from my neighbourhoods, visit almost six houses of different streets. Each street that I visited, saw children of 5-6 years old with ‘toy guns’ with bullet firing it on air while others are even demonstrating war. Hmm began to wonder what type of society are we? Or a new style of celebration?

Is the impact of crisis which occurs and reoccur for almost 13 years in jos and plateau state in general. It soils the children mentality and thinking, which is very bad of our children to grow with enmities and hatreds among inhabitants. Children’s that are know to be learners and students in both theological and western knowledge, to grow with sense of humanity and love of nation, but crisis has transmitted unlawful attitude which to them, the consider as a ‘play’.

Parent need to engage their children in extra lessons and home work, to also warn then against bad friends, to even know ‘who is a friend to your child’. We are neither in Hobbesian state nor fascist state. We need peace and pray for peace every day of our lives.

Read More

FAMILY PLANNING IS NOT SUBSTITUTE FOR DEVELOPMENT

Have to apologise for not been here for quiet a number of days, very much sorry! Am much busy with lectures and assignment. The worse part is, am allocated to a very dirty and stupid hostel, no light. This article was written by zainab usman  in ( THINK AFRICA PRESS). Zainab Usman is a Nigerian freelance writer. She has a BA in International Studies from Ahmadu Bello University Zaria and a Masters in International Political Economy and Development from the University of Birmingham. She is currently working in Brussels, Belgium for an International NGO dedicated to the prevention of violent conflict around the world. Zainab is an advocate of good governance, poverty reduction and women and youth empowerment. She regularly blogs at zainabusman.wordpress.com.

“I want to stop giving birth... because of the difficulties I encounter each time...”

Hadiza Damina received a contraceptive jab in a rural part of Jigawa state, Nigeria. Damina, who has had three children and six miscarriages, falls into two categories of women.

She is one of the millions of women contributing to Nigeria’s rapidly growing population - it is projected that the country's population could reach 400 million by 2050 - and part of a trend that has prompted the Nigerian government to mull over birth control legislation. On the other hand, she is the subject of renewed international focus - one of the over 200 million women in poor countries who, according to the recently convened London Summit on Family Planning, jointly organised by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK government, lack access to family planning and contraceptives and are thus at risk of pregnancy-related deaths.

Bringing family planning back on to the global agenda will ensure that deserved attention is given to socially and economically marginalised groups of women. However, the suggested international approach also carries substantial risks: top-down, prescriptive policy may provide short-term gains but at the same time obscure wider structural deficits in domestic health and education sectors.

A “family planning cures all” approach

Nigerian women are some of the 200 million women in poor countries who lack access to contraceptives. These are the women that the London Summit seeks to aid in this regard by mobilising “global policy, financing ... and service delivery commitments to support ... an additional 120 million women and girls in the world's poorest countries to use contraceptive information, services and supplies by 2020”.

Birth control is advocated as both a solution to developing countries’ rapidly growing populations, and as a means of improving reproductive health. According to Melinda Gates, this is the route to empowering these voiceless women.

Conveners of the London Summit posit that women’s access to contraceptives could result in over 200,000 fewer women and girls dying in pregnancy and childbirth and nearly 3 million fewer infants dying in their first year of life. According to this logic, making contraceptives widely available to women in developing countries would improve maternal and child health, reduce female school drop-out rates, improve literacy, reduce poverty and hunger, and save governments revenue on public services.

Addressing the symptoms without considering the causes

However, the focus on family-planning as a solution to reproductive health challenges downplays the underlying governance issues which are the root causes: public sector corruption, mediocrity, waste and mismanagement. For instance, in Nigeria these problems helped to establish an inefficient healthcare system where surgeries are sometimes performed by flashlight or lantern, with decaying infrastructure and lack of basic medical equipment and supplies.

Yet the Summit convenors regard the wide availability of birth control pills or the Depo-Provera injection, as the panacea that would drastically reduce Nigeria’s maternal mortality rate of 630 deaths per 100,000 live births due to pregnancy-related complications, and ensure young women stay in school, allowing the government to redirect freed-up funds to the provision of other public goods.

This approach leaves the needs of other groups of women completely unaddressed. As Wendy Wright of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute rightfully noted, contraception “does little to address the true needs of (already) pregnant women... or newborn children”. To address maternal and child mortality, discussions need to be had about building affordable medical centres, paying skilled birth attendants, providing emergency obstetric and other basic medical care, building better roads to clinics, particularly in rural areas.

The Summit fails to consider how developing countries’ deplorable health care systems, still grappling with treating malaria, typhoid and post-partum bleeding, would manage the side effects of long-term usage of hormonal contraceptives such as the birth control pill and especially the contraceptive injection on a large scale. It’s difficult to imagine how rural women, at the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder, would deal with possible harmful side effects to their hormonal balance - these have been known to include thinning of bones, an increased risk of osteoporosis, an increased risk of STDs, breast and cervical cancer. The many who will require follow up treatment will be left unattended - especially if governments divert funds from a sector they view as being fixed.

Top-down and prescriptive

This “big push” to bring family planning back onto the global agenda is prescriptive and ignores the dynamics of different societies. It carries with it an overtone of cultural neo-imperialism.

The Gates Foundation have proclaimed that “more than 200 million women and girls in developing countries want to delay, space or avoid becoming pregnant” but do not have access to contraceptives, “resulting in over 75 million unintended pregnancies every year”. However, not every pregnancy in advanced economies is intended. By outwardly seeking to empower women, are they indeed robbing these women of their agency? How faithfully have the views of women in developing countries been represented?

Should the Contraception Prevalence Rates in Nigeria (15%) be equal to France’s 71% or the United Kingdom’s 84%, given the disparity in the levels of development? Do Nigerian women, with an average birth rate of six births, want to have two children given the dynamics of such societies where polygamy and large families are the norm among the urban middle classes or the rural poor? The risk of curtailing a country's cultural norms looms large.

International examples have not been encouraging. Top-down family planning approaches have led to the coercion of many vulnerable and poor people by governments eager to meet targets of population control in China, Namibia, Peru and India. Setting numeric targets, such as giving 380 million women access to contraceptives by 2020, risks tampering with people’s legitimate reproductive rights. The approach fails to address the genuine concerns raised by those sceptical of the family planning agenda for religious or cultural reasons or for fear of a coercive population control agenda. These groups have genuine reasons to be concerned given the length some governments have gone to achieve targets in reducing population—such as the on-going forced sterilisation in India (an initiative part of a programme funded by the UK's Department for International Development).

Polarising and contradictory language

So how have these risks been glossed over? At the level of semantics, the language employed by birth control discourse presupposes its benefit. By subsuming women’s rights and human rights within its purview, it polarises the debate: pro-family planning advocates are seen as moral champion of women's rights, other groups with legitimate cultural oppositions - religious and otherwise - are seen as out of touch with them.

Family planning has been framed within a human rights narrative as giving the world "a moral obligation to help ensure that everyone, equally, has the right to access family planning”. At the outset, religious leaders are shown to oppose family planning, without giving the organisations an opportunity to defend their work in development. It is worth noting that well-known abortion providers such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International were partners of the London Summit.

Going forward

The concern is that the London Summit approach to family planning will mask wider structural change. Sub-Saharan African women need access to affordable and quality education, better health care services and economic opportunities. As Ms. Theo Sowa, CEO of Africa’s Development Fund noted at the London Summit "Education is one of the best family planning techniques we have, so let's educate and empower our women". A study by the United Nations Population Fund in Nigeria shows that the contraceptive prevalence rate increases with education, literacy and wealth. Thus, a government’s socio-economic policies are a precondition for women voluntarily deciding to have more manageable family sizes.

There are no shortcuts to economic and social development. Political leaders should not be given reasons to excuse their governance failures towards citizens - education and health care, employment and economic opportunities—by blaming population growth or a lack of contraceptives. Service delivery rests with reform-minded leaders implementing transformational economic and social policies, not with birth control policies.

Read More