Educated Elites Participation in Ensuring Accountability and Transparency in Governance of Ogun State ( 2003 - 2011 )

Abstract

Accountability and transparency has come to be one of the fundamental parameters for assessing the quality of governance in democratic societies across the globe since the last decade of the 20 th century. It is commonly accepted by scholars and international institutions alike that participation of citizens in different aspects of the governance process enhances the practice of accountability and transparency in governance. Nigeria, in spite of its endowment with high caliber human resources as well as enormous natural resources has continually failed to live up to its potentials, for various reasons, amongst which is high level public sector corruption. The study examined educated elites participation in ensuring accountability and transparency by public officials in Ogun state, one of Nigeria’s 36 states. Descriptive survey design was adopted, while 1720 respondents selected from eight local government areas, out of the 20 in the state, were involved in providing quantitative data for the study. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics. Qualitative data was collected through in-depth interview with key political functionaries as well as community leaders and private citizens. This was content analysed and integrated in the discussion of findings. A high level of apathy was found to exist among the educated elites as majority of them did not utilize the opportunities provided through different platform in contributing towards ensuring accountability and transparency in the governance of the state between 2003 and 2011.