How to Evaluate Campaign Promises

One of the underlying philosophies of our party, the Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party (ANRP) is that we will treat politics and governance as an enterprise and run in it a viable and effective manner. We therefore believe that the electoral promises that effective politicians make to the Nigerian people must also meet these high standards. They must go beyond Big Hairy Audacious goals and must be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant andTime-Bound. The SMART criteria represent the same high standard that forward-thinking business people use in evaluating the strategic and tactical goals that are set throughout the organizations. In much the same way that we challenge each other in our organizations, then we must also challenge our political leaders to set and deliver SMART Goals. SMART Goals are not just about semantics, they actually make a difference in ensuring that the politician can work towards their achievement in a disciplined manner, and that the people can also have realistic expectations and monitor in clear terms the achievement of these promises and goals. 

Let me try to demonstrate what I mean with a few examples:

Specific: The campaign promises must be clear and focused on particular issues or challenges that everyone can identify, they cannot be vague and ambiguous. For example, if a politician promises that “we will deliver better health facilities” this will be vague. The more effective promise will be specific: We will increase the ratio of health workers to patients; or we will increase access to safe delivery in hospital and ante-natal care…”. These are more specific.

Measurable:Building on the earlier example, the promise to deliver better health facilities is not only vague, but also not measurable. Being measurable means that the goal has to be quantifiable in terms of value, weight, time or speed. So, a more effective promise will be something like: We will increase the ratio of health workers to patients from 1:200 to 1:40, or We will increase the number of safe deliveries in the community by 40%. These are measurable promises and goals.

Achievable:One of the things you have to be able to decide when you hear a campaign promise is the extent to which you believe it is achievable. In evaluating this, you should reflect on the specific role that the politician is seeking and if that promise or goal is within his or her control. For example, you may hear aspiring legislators promising roads, hospitals and schools, while in reality those are executive functions. This may be an indication that the promise is not achievable except the aspiring legislator can demonstrate how he or she will use their legislative processes to build the roads, hospitals and schools. Another way of evaluating how achievable the promises will be is to look at the capacity and skills of the politician – what are their antecedents, have they achieved similar things in the past, what skills do they have in that area? Everyone can dream and make big promises, but only skilled and competent people can get them done. 

Relevant:The question here is: how relevant is this promise to the people? This is about evaluating the extent to which the promises resonate with your own realities. It is also about how strategic and innovative it is. We need to be careful not to fall for “cheap” inducements and promises from politicians and hold them up to higher expectations. In the words of Bill Gates (when he visited Nigeria recently), we need to move on from just focusing on the “hard” infrastructure to the “soft” infrastructure that sets the stage for the real transformation of society. So just promising the same things over and over again is not enough. There are many things wrong with our society, so effective politicians are more specific rather than general when setting their agenda, and focus on agenda that are relevant to the real problems that people face. 

Time-bound:Finally, campaign promises must stipulate specific timeframes – by what time will you achieve the goal or promise? This is important, so that people can have a clear expectation and can match your promise to their realities. Open-ended promises are a set-up for failure and dashed hopes. A good promise will be something like: We will increase the number of safe deliveries in the community by 40% by September 2020. This way the politician can begin to take the appropriate steps to deliver on this promise within this time frame, and you the people can work with him and monitor his ability to deliver on this. 

Nigerians need to get beyond the cheap inducements that “establishment” politicians offer that seek to only play on our intelligence. We are much too sophisticated for those types of campaign promises. If we are going to achieve great things as a society then our leaders and our people must begin to run politics and government as an enterprise and inculcate some of the time-tested approaches and tools that have been used successfully in the business world like SMART Goals in the process of politicking and governance. #Let’sGetInvoved.