This chapter introduces the ‘Lagos model’, a transformative package of pro-market developmental policies and reforms that was developed first in Lagos State, Nigeria, in 1999 and subsequently expanded to nearby Ekiti and Oyo. Under progressive Governors Bola Tinubu and Babatunde Fashola, the Lagos State Government reformed government agencies, introduced public–private partnerships, and oversaw an astronomical rise in the state’s tax base. In addition to serving as an effective strategy for building a political base for the opposition, the Lagos model won plaudits from international donors who saw it as a home-grown example of their good governance agenda. The spread of the Lagos model re-animated long-standing tensions in Yoruba politics, putting a vision of leadership rooted in epistemic superiority into conflict with a more socially embedded conception of legitimate rule. In the 2014 gubernatorial elections in nearby Ekiti state, the Lagos model was rejected in favour of its polar opposite. Whilst some have seen this as a straightforward material contest over the sorts of goods that governments should provide, this chapter argues that debates over the Lagos model reveal blind spots in dominant models of good governance.

Politics in Nigeria teaches us that power must be socially embedded for it to be accountable. Previous chapters drew on in-depth qualitative fieldwork in southwest Nigeria to theorise alternative conceptions of the constituent parts of the good governance agenda, namely, accountability, transparency, and the public–private divide. If we are to take the social dimension of these “ethnographically derived political concepts” seriously, then we need to rethink the neo-classical economic ontology of the dominant approach to good governance, which relies on principal–agent models. Thus, the book’s empirical analysis gives rise to normative political prescriptions which entail a methodological critique. The second part of the chapter argues that by neglecting the social dimension of governance, technocracy is vulnerable to populist challengers who leverage unmet demands for closeness and connection. Socially embedded governance intersects with three key debates of interest to theorists of democratic politics, concerning scale, inequality and conflict. By rethinking the contours of politics, we discover that the struggles of Nigeria’s fourth republic are not marginal to democratic theory – the struggles of a democracy yet to really get started – rather, they lie at the crux of what it means to wield power responsibly.

This chapter argues for a conception of accountability as accessibility. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with local politicians, market traders and NGO activists in Ibadan, Oyo State, it shows the ubiquity of calls for accessibility in Nigeria and beyond. Politicians are accessible insofar as they maintain spaces for direct contact between themselves and their constituents. At the level of theory, accessibility reveals a blind spot in dominant conceptions of accountability, which rely on principal–agent models, and poses new conceptual questions about the interaction between communication and sanctioning power. Thus, Nigerian political discourse gives us the language to describe a universal but neglected aspect of accountability and hints at a more socially embedded approach to good governance. Political competition in the twenty-first century southwest Nigeria shows how the politics of competing conceptions of accountability play out in practice. The rise and fall of the ‘Lagos model’ in Oyo and Ekiti states can be understood as a struggle over different conceptions of democratic accountability. Where technocratic notions of good governance insulate decision-makers from their constituents and favour abstract data over face-to-face interaction, it leaves open the field for populist politicians to promise accessibility through exaggerated, almost pantomime performances of connection and communication.