It was on account of the recent tragic incidents in the country, especially the collapse of religious and residential houses which claimed scores of lives, that
I argued in my recent article that tragedy and exploitation always lurk when any aspect of public life is left unregulated.
The cost is hardly ever recovered, but there is a harvest of bullets, blood and tears. That was my conclusion in that piece. Often caught flat-footed by many tragic incidents, Nigeria is derided by many commentators as being a master of fire brigade approach to addressing public challenges. We are said to relish soaking ourselves in medicine after avoidable death. Such appellation, of course, is an indictment of policy practice and regulatory processes in the country, and the onus is now on the nation’s policy makers to review various aspects of our public life and come up with pragmatic regulations and solutions to many issues that usually snowball into crises and tragedies when not addressed urgently and holistically.
From environmental protection to food and drug control, traffic regulation, physical planning and urban development, social welfare, occupational health and safety, wildlife and forestry control, just name it, there are standards, procedures and specifications that ought to be observed. There are mechanisms and agencies for ensuring compliance and enforcement. There are self-regulatory mechanisms by the respective players. In addition, there should be incentives and encouragement for the public to comply voluntarily.
Why then do we get things so wrong that in spite of the existence of agencies of government and professional bodies as well as huge investments in acquiring
necessary monitoring facilities and training of officials, impunity and lawlessness still hallmark public conduct? One, or a combination of the following indices, is likely to be responsible: corruption, confusion
and contempt. When licensing and approval processes are corrupted or compromised, misfits and quacks
become the dominant players in service provision. Incompetent advisers and unqualified researchers rule as project consultants.
LPO merchants gain ground as big contractors and the nation is left at the mercy of murderers in search of fortune. But, government regulatory agencies also need to audit the fibre of their bureaucrats and ensure that they are impervious to corruption. This is not a matter
of just being well-remunerated, but of awareness of the graveness of their responsibility in preserving and protecting life and property in the country.
In some instances, it is neither the fault of victims nor of the offenders that tragedies are recorded but because of the confusion in our regulatory environment.
Where we do not have uniform laws and guidelines, for instance, between state and national regulatory agencies or where there is duplicity of functions
and responsibilities among various agencies, the citizens are
left to grope and take the easy way out, usually in non-compliance with rules and regulations
on the excuse of ignorance. In my estimation, the solution is not in just prosecuting and fining
offenders but in harmonizing conflicting laws and regulations on one hand, and streamlining
or aligning responsibilities among regulatory, enforcement and monitoring agencies, on the
other othe.. If this would mean mergers or a total wind down of some agencies, so be it, in so far as the public good will be served with such measure.
It is saddening that many enforcement and regulatory agencies are only active during national emergencies and once the cloud is clear and normalcy
returns, they are off the public radar until another season of anguish, bloodbath and tears.
Therefore, it is of utmost importance that regulatory agencies continuously engage the public by widely communicating their
programmes and activities and the benefits of their operations.They should keep the public
informed of trends, practices and technologies for prevention
and mitigation, in their peculiar briefs.
If ignorance is not tenable before the law, what of the contempt of the law? Really, many infractions of regulations in our public life result from contempt, either because they are out of tune with the realities of our socio-cultural milieu or they are
too punitive, instead of being genuinely redeeming, as they are often targeted at driving revenue for the government.
Heavy levies and fines from experiences in many developing countries deter voluntary compliance but open the widow of compromise and corruption through negotiated settlements. Ideally, regulations should be simple, transparent, but sufficiently
deterring and when they entail charges, they should be structured in a way that their essence is not defeated.
One other fact about regulation of public life which we must
take seriously is the need to always engage all the necessary stakeholders whose understanding of the essence of a policy or a regulation would facilitate the cascading of information concerning
it, public support and adoption. There is no doubt that Nigeria does not lack relevant regulations to address many of her public problems, at least from the avalanche of policy documents, enactments of the parliaments and other international codes to which the nation subscribes. What we need is to get serious and proactive, not necessarily harsh or vindictive. We must not wait for disasters to happen before we take action.
.Solanke writes from Lagos

Preventing disasters, regulating public life