Good Governance and Sustainable Poverty Alleviation in Nigeria: A Critical Assessment of Institutional Performance in Kaduna State

Good governance should facilitate transparency and accountability in the management of public resources. But the lack of transparency and accountability in service delivery and the people’s welfare, weakens the processes. The study therefore examined the extent to which transparency affect citizens’ access to basic social services and determined the extent to which accountability affect citizens’ standard of living. Descriptive survey research design was adopted, with 384 respondents sampled through multistage sampling technique. Data collection was carried out with the aid of a structured questionnaire that was thoroughly validated and achieved a reliability coefficient of 0.87 using the Inter-Rater Reliability Method. Descriptive statistics comprising frequency distribution, mean and standard deviation were employed for descriptive data analysis, while hypotheses were inferentially tested using one sample t-test through SPSS, 29. Results showed that transparency had significant effect on citizens’ access to basic social services [t(4) = 96.238, p < 0.05)] and that accountability had significant effect on citizens’ standard of living [t(4) = 128.572, p < 0.05]. Government should reinforce transparency through budget and expenditure reports, which can be supported by the improved access to government information through open data portal, and reinforce accountability through independent audits, monitoring and citizens’ inputs through civic feedback, on the use of public resources. The study fills the evidence gap in Kaduna State by examining the relationship between transparency and basic social services outcomes in Kaduna State and between accountability and citizen’s standard of living in Kaduna State, thus providing location specific.

Keywords: Good Governance, Transparency; Accountability; Institutional Performance; Basic Social Services; Standard of Living.