THE NEXUS BETWEEN PUBLIC BUREAUCRATS AND POLICY IMPLEMENTATION FAILURES IN NIGERIA: EXAMINING CHALLENGES AND IMPLICATIONS

Abstract

The trajectory of policy implementation is its complexities and technicalities bordering on consensus-building of the various stakeholders such as policy formulators, civil organisations, labour unions, public executives, public bureaucrats, and citizens. Thus, the challenges behind the failure of policy implementation are multi-faceted. Interestingly, the most designed policy may fail since its success is not always the function of its merits. The existence of top-down and bottom-up implementation theories is a paradox in policy science with the advocates of each theory generating criticisms against the existence of another and thus putting the bureaucrats and executives, the leading implementers, in a state of dilemma, contention, and unprecedented errors during implementation. The drive of this study is to examine the various dynamic components that are responsible for policy implementation failure in developing economies such as Nigeria, Nepal, Ghana, Malaysia and others. The objective of this paper was to focus on those factors that usually interface with implementation of public policy by bureaucrats, specifically in Nigeria. Survey research design was employed in this study. This empirical study discovered from the data collected that some of the reasons responsible for policy failure in the literature actually affected the effective implementation of public policy in Nigeria.