The National Orientation Agency (NOA) and Democratic Governance in Nigeria: An Assessment of Citizen Awareness, Trust, and Policy Legitimacy

Abstract

The  National  Orientation Agency  in  Nigeria  was  created  to  close  the  gap  between  the government and the governed. The core argument of this paper is that NOA has sensitised citizens, increased their trust in institutions, and strengthened the resources for political legitimacy in Nigeria's governance. Its theoretical foundation is based on Habermas's 'Theory of Communicative Action. On their part, communication and dialogue become all about the rationalisation of discourse and mutual understanding in a dialogical process, to which is attributed the character of valid democratic communication. In that sense, this study places some heavy demands on data sources. Anything from policy reports and institutional publications to scholarship can be documented in the hodgepodge – yes, there would be some element of judgmental control with bibliographic reasoning (deductive) exercised around the product. The results of this project demonstrated that NOA is not a bad program as designed. However, policy errors have rendered it incapable of serving as a reliable source of public opinion and have locked in these deficiencies, turning them into barriers. The paper concludes that for NOA to play a positive role as an honest mediator of democracy in Nigeria, it must be implemented with strategic reform. Administrative authority should be decentralised, and its organisations really should have very substantial autonomy.