Good Governance and Economic Development in Nigeria: A Public Administration Perspective — An Opinion-Based Review

Good governance has become one of the most widely invoked yet inconsistently practiced ideals in the discourse on national development, and Nigeria offers a compelling, if troubling, case study of the gap between governance rhetoric and governance reality. This paper presents an opinion-based review of the relationship between good governance and economic development in Nigeria, approached specifically through the lens of public administration. Rather than relying on primary data collection and inferential statistics, the paper adopts a narrative, desk-review methodology, drawing on secondary literature, institutional reports, and the author's reasoned interpretation of the Nigerian administrative experience since independence. The review argues that public administration, as the operational machinery of the state, is the decisive variable that determines whether the abstract principles of good governance, participation, transparency, accountability, rule of law, effectiveness, and equity, translate into concrete economic outcomes such as productivity, infrastructure, investment, and improved living standards. The paper contends that Nigeria's development challenges are not primarily a shortage of policy ideas, natural resources, or human capital, but rather a persistent failure of public administration to institutionalize the principles of good governance in bureaucratic practice. Weak accountability mechanisms, politicized bureaucracy, corruption, poor policy implementation capacity, and fragmented institutional coordination are identified as the central administrative pathologies undermining Nigeria's economic development. Drawing on dynamic capability and institutional perspectives adapted to the public sector, the paper submits that improving Nigeria's economic fortunes requires deliberate administrative reforms: professionalization and depoliticization of the civil service, stronger public financial management and audit institutions, digitalization of service delivery, and a governance culture that rewards performance rather than patronage. The paper concludes that good governance is not merely a political aspiration but an administrative discipline, and that Nigeria's economic development will remain elusive until public administration is reoriented from a culture of control to one of service, competence, and accountability.