Good Governance: The Conceptual and Contextual Perspectives

Abstract

A discourse on good governance at any level requires a clear understanding of the concept
as one may erroneously assume that everyone understands what good governance means. Thus, this
paper not only evaluates the definitions of the concept of good governance, but also contextualized it
within the perspectives of what constitutes public interest, the leader’s idiosyncrasy; political party
ideologies and the expectations of donor agencies. The study is qualitative and as such its data were
documentary and the content analysis approach was used to analyze the data. Anchored on the good
governance theory and the cultural theory of governance, this paper found that while good governance
has been variously conceptualized, it has not been contextualized in the Nigerian milieu and that the
concept serves as a measurement scale in the hands of donor agencies for the evaluation of their
performances as tied to their operational objectives in the developing and less developed nations. The
study recommended among others that Nigerian political leaders should leverage on the donor agencies’
idea of governance to deliver development to their people and also evaluate their performance while
the political parties should reinvent political party ideologies that reflect current realities for the
resolution of the myriad societal ills bedeviling Nigeria.