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Laws for the people, or people for the law? |
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Saturday, 11 September 2004 |
When I speak to fellow Nigerians on that most vexing of topics, “How To Sort Out Nigeria’s Problems”, one issue that pops up again and again is the issue of enforcing the rule of law. The argument basically runs like this: “If the government was serious about sorting out Nigeria’s problems, it would beef up the police force, empower the judiciary so that nobody could just break the law and get away with it”.
Of course, there’s some truth to this. When people see that there is a high likelihood of punishment for breaking laws, they are less like likely to break laws. But it’s obviously a lot more complicated than that - to say that all the government has to do to get people to behave in a particular manner is to pass a law and enforce it is to equate the people to sheep or zombies who will obey whatever command you give them. And we know this isn’t the case - there are other things that compel people to do things, other than the sanction of jail or a fine. So what this means is that the government should explore additional ways of getting people to do what it wants.
One approach to get people to obey the law other than by direct enforcement is to sell the law to the people by explaining what it’s all about and how obeying it will benefit them. And I really do mean sell the law, not just put out a badly worded press release. Here are a few ideas how this might be done:The government could publish an easy-to-understand document which presents the key aspects of the law in question-and-answer format.It could make professionally produced mini dramas aired on TV and radio about the law that helped to explain it. It might consider offering grants to home video producers if they agreed to include storylines in support of the law in their videos (of course, this should be done in a way that did not make the included storyline look out of place in the video). And since part of selling an idea to people is to give them time to feel comfortable with the idea, the government should begin the campaign to sell the law a long time before the law is actually passed, with feelers being put out to various sectors of society to find out what they might feel about the law so that the government knows which areas to address in its sales campaign.Another way of getting people to obey the law is the threat of social sanction if they don’t obey it. This relies on the fact that everyone, from the most virtuous person to the most lowdown criminal cares to some degree about how society thinks of him. And that’s why you don’t see corrupt politicians boasting in newspaper advertisements about stealing billions of naira. The government could take advantage of this aspect of human nature by publishing a convicted criminal’s name, his picture and details of his crime on a public website for a limited period of time. Then it could massively publicise the fact that if they wish to find out about the criminals in their area, they can do so by visiting that site. The shame of being on a site viewable to all and sundry might make some people think seriously before committing a crime.If I was in charge, I would call the website ‘Perpetrators of Stupid Crimes’ - people don’t mind being called bad, but nobody likes being associated with stupidity. And it’s the crime, not the criminal that’s being described, so I guess that should take care of the charge of libel. But government must be ‘serious’, so I guess that idea wouldn’t fly.
But there’s one very important factor that I haven’t mentioned up till now. When people are seen to be breaking the law, it’s easy to assume that the people are at fault, and what is needed is a double dose of law enforcement. But it is just as probable that the problem is with the law and not the people. I’ll tell a little story to illustrate.“There was this school which had a path which led from the hostels to the classrooms in a very roundabout route in order to avoid crossing the playing field. The problem was, the students hated taking the regular path which was not only a longer route, but was also laid out with loose gravel which made it more difficult to make progress. So the students often took the shortcut across the field, and this led to an unsightly path across the field.Naturally, the school authorities did everything they could to compel the students to take the gravel path. They posted school prefects and teachers to be on the lookout for erring students who they punished severely when caught. They put a little fence round the path to prevent students from straying from the path onto the field. But nothing worked - students kept on taking the shortcut in spite of the risks, and the unsightly path kept on growing.So the teachers had a meeting to see what they could do about the problem. One teacher proposed a novel solution. ‘The problem’, he said ‘is that we’re assuming that these students are behaving unreasonably by taking the shortcut. But there’s nothing unreasonable about taking a shortcut to save time, so I think the students are doing the sensible thing. What we should try and do is to propose a solution that makes the shortcut so unattractive that the students will regard it as unreasonable to take that way. In addition, we should try to make the regular route more attractive to the students.’So what the school did was to stick several flagpoles (complete with flags) at random into the section of the field that the shortcut passed through, including a few directly on the shortcut route itself. The flagpoles could be removed the few times that the field was in use for sports, but were reinserted after. This had the effect of ‘scattering’ the students so that instead of being able to go directly to their classes via the field, they had to negotiate a path around the flagpoles. This proved to be too disorienting, and eventually the majority of students were discouraged them from taking the field route. In addition, the school resurfaced the regular path with proper concrete slabs, making it easier to walk on.”
The point of this story is that to solve the problem, the school had to stop dealing with ideality and start dealing with reality; they had to learn not to deal with students as they would like them to be (complacent and robotic) and start dealing with them as they really were (desirous of wanting to get to their classes as soon and conveniently as possible).And so it is with many of our lawmakers today, who pass what I will call ‘bad laws’ that do not factor in how easy it will be for people to obey them. People end up disobeying these laws because the laws require them to do certain things which are alien to their culture, or because the laws impose some kind of cost (usually financial) on them which they find difficult or impossible to meet.The implications that this has for future law making is fairly obvious; the law making process should include contributions from people who are likely to be affected by the law so that creative compromises can be worked out. But more interestingly, this might mean that many laws that get broken today might need to be revised for the very same reason; perhaps the problem is not that enforcement is weak, but that the laws are simply unsuitable for the people.To take a very extreme example: there are laws against sanitation in Nigeria which regularly go flouted. Perhaps the problem is that the practice of disposing of waste in public is so deeply ingrained in Nigerian culture that it is futile to try and ban it outright, and instead it would be better to try and control people’s waste disposal behaviour. For example, the government could permit the disposal of paper (since it is biodegradable) but ban that of plastic wrapping (since it isn’t, and it can easily lead to drainage blockage). Or it could permit the disposal of any type of waste within designated zones which would make the collection of such waste easier. Then as things improved and public waste disposal became less part of the culture, such laws could be amended as appropriate.
But really, all I’ve written here depends on whether the Nigerian government is really interested in ensuring that the laws it passes are enforced... that doesn’t seem to be the case right now, so I can only hope that my views are available to someone who one day will be in a position where they can influence policy.
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Last Updated (
Thursday, 24 April 2008 ) |
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Posted by Robot| 12.11.2005 14:13