“the only way social problem can be ascertained and identified, is when relevant data are collected, analyzed, interpreted and translated to guide public policy making”
By Engr. Kabiru el-Hussain Rumah
We are now in the era of “EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE (EBP)”, which started with Medical Sciences and now extended to almost all professional practices, such as Management, Politics, Accounting, Economics etc!
In Politics, it’s called “EVIDENCE-BASED PUBLIC GOVERNANCE (EBPG)”, in general and “EVIDENCE BASED PUBLIC POLICY (EBPP)”, in particular and:
Let me illustrate what “EBPG” and “EBPP” are all about, with a typical case study, as follows:
During my One-Month Policy, Strategy and Leadership Course (PSLC) 43 Course at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Plateau State, in 2023, an interesting case study was shared with us, as follows:
There was a certain community in Nigeria that, the children of the Members of the Community use to treck, for kilometers to fetch water, for drinking, cooking and other domestic usages, for their various families!
Government recognising this obvious problem intervened by constructing a manual borehole for the members of that Community and with view to solve the problems of the water once and for all for them!
But after some months, when the project monitoring and evaluation team came back, to the community, to see how they are faring with the newly constructed borehole, to their greatest surprise, they discover that, the borehole was vandalized and hence not functional!
The team tried but could not figure out, why the Community allow that to happen and after a lot of personal guesses and private pleadings, with the Members of the Community, one of the Members of the Community confided in the team that, it was the Community Members themselves that vandalized the borehole and for an usual reason, as follows:
Almost all the members of the Community live in one-bedroom apartment and hence only have one chance, for the husband and wife to mate as husband and wife, i.e when the children treck those kilometers to fetch water and before they come back, but now with the new borehole the children are always at home and hence no time for the husband and wife to mate as usual – for this singular reason the Community decided the borehole must go and so it goes!
Who really notice the most immediate social problem of that Community, is not really water, but housing problem and that, the only way that social problem can be ascertained and identified, is when relevant data are collected, analyzed, interpreted and translated to guide public policy making and certainly not really what appears to many as the social problem? – this is what we called Evidence-Based Public Policy Making (EBPPM), in particular and Evidence-Based Public Governance (EBPG), in general!
© Jakadan Rumah (2025)!
