States must rise to the challenges of the time. It is a call to duty and a clarion call to action, should they not be prepared for the challenge, they are likely going to be worse off than they were before the bailout loans. The Osun example provides a template that must be watched.
“Every adversity in life makes us bitter or better, every problem comes to break us or make us. The choice is ours whether we become victor or victim” – Anil Sinha.
Adversity can be turned into opportunities if only there is a determination to do so. As the quote above depicts, adversity has the tendency to bring out the latent talents which would have otherwise remained dormant in prosperous circumstances.
It is a thin line between people who make use of adversity and break records and those who breakdown due to adversity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending. This may be triggered by various events, such as a financial crisis, an external trade shock, an adverse supply shock or the bursting of an economic bubble. At a point in time, the economy of most countries in the world were affected by a downturn, a period of global economic slowdown or declining economic output.
It’s no longer news that most states in Nigeria are seriously challenged and state governments up until now are finding it hard to meet up with their major obligations, including payments of salaries and pensions and embarking on capital projects.
For some time, the revenue accruing to states from Nigeria’s treasury have been dwindling steadily, owing to the glut in the international oil market.
The continuous decline in monthly revenue to states from Abuja on one side, and the fact that most of Nigerian states are servicing or repaying one loan or the other to service on the other hand, has called that states begin to look inward, from all angles, on how they can boost their finances to meet up with the obligations and challenges of paying workers’ salaries, running governments, and at least providing basic amenities to their citizens.
For Nigeria, the state of affairs at the moment is not new. The oil boom had given way to oil doom in the middle of the 1970s, as the glut in the international oil market sent the oil prices tumbling and crashing. With this came the fall of many economies, the Nigerian one inclusive. A mono product economy, an oil based country cannot withstand the shocks associated with global recession.
Several governments that have served the nation came up with different cushioning measures to salvage the situation. Alhaji Shehu Shagari as the President of Nigeria initiated a series of Austerity Measures and Stabilisation Policies in 1981.
General Buhari and Idiagbon in the 1980s introduced a comprehensive package of austerity measures, where it closed the country’s land borders for a period to identify and expel illegal alien workers and placed severe restrictions on imports and heavy penalties on smuggling and foreign exchange offences.
There was the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida that introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which promoted floating interest rates, the relaxation of the Indigenisation Decrees, control of the rate of growths of money supply by squeezing domestic credit, the placing of an embargo on appointments, the freezing of wages and a deregulated the economy in general. At the same time, funds to the educational sector was cut by about 35 percent, with schools closed or merged, subsidies removed from social services, petroleum and related products, and emphasis placed on regular debt servicing.
The present situation calls for toughness on the part of the states of the federation, “tough times don’t last, tough people do”. To stay buoyant, they must look internally on how they will steer the ship of their state through the stormy weather and land at a safe harbour.
Recently, the Government of Osun, in a bid to stay afloat in the face of the paucity of funds, has introduced some belt-tightening measures to cope with the current challenges posed by the development. The governor of the state, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, having brainstormed with the critical stakeholders, agreed that certain measures be implemented.
Some of these include the suspension of overtime allowances to workers; the creation of Osun Teachers’ Establishment Office, and the automatic conversion of University graduate teachers as Education Officers, while National Certificate on Education holders would be Education Assistants all over the state.
Other measures introduced by Aregbesola include certificate-based transfers and the diligent collection of Internally Generated Revenue to achieve an increase in the IGR of the state for government to meet its financial obligations to workers and the people of Osun.
The state holds that it is embarking on the measures to ensure its liquidity and safeguard the regular payment of workers’ salaries. Of course, the government’s suspension of the payment of the 25-35 percent overtime allowance being enjoyed by staff of some agencies of government are likely to be frowned at. But in the face of dwindling resources, what choices could open to the government in carrying on the basic duties of governance?
Under the new regime, only teachers deployed to remote towns and villages will continue to enjoy any form of extra allowances in Osun.
In line with these reforms, the governor approved the establishment of the state Teachers Establishment which would be responsible for the appointments, promotions, discipline and administration of salaries and allowances of elementary and middle schools’ teachers with district offices across the state for proper monitoring activities.
Osun also approved that the office of the Auditor-General for the State and Local Government, which shall henceforth verify the payroll of the entire workforce of government two weeks before the monthly computation of salaries by conducting visitation to all government offices.
Verifying the payroll every month is part of the measures aimed at cleaning up the payroll and removing ghost workers while staff verification will also help government do away with overstaffed personnel, eliminate laziness and idleness, block all avenues for embezzlement and leakages, and make government work.
Expectedly, the government of Osun may have drawn the flak for these bold moves but as in many of the initiatives it had bold-facedly engaged, the state wont have alternatives but to follow this track if it must survive the blowing wind of economic crisis. One of the major obstacles to development in Nigeria is the massive loss of revenues through corruption, tax evasion among others.
Other state governments should emulate Osun by trying to plug all leakages in collectible revenues and ensure full and transparent disclosure of same. It is in this light that the electronic payment of all revenues must be adopted if all forms of crafty means of state funds conversions are to be averted.
Under the new belt-tightening measures, the office of the Head of Service shall, in earnest, begin the collation of the names of officers in the core civil service and local government services with certificates in Agriculture, Medical Sciences and Education for immediate re-deployment to where their knowledge and skills would be relevant.
Agriculture was the mainstay of the country’s economy before the discovery of oil in Nigeria. The discovery of oil affected agriculture so much that people played down agricultural activities to the detriment of the nation’s economy.
Government at all levels must in earnest begin to encourage people to go back to farms. This development must focus on commercial agriculture with the establishment of different funds to revive some of the moribund agricultural programmes.
Again, electronic devices will be installed in all government offices and public schools, and every official of the state must be bound to check-in and out of their duty posts via these devices.
With this, workers must modify their approach from seeing a government job as mere social security to a profitable venture; not for financial gains but for the business of providing social services.
They must be production minded; the helpful force of every agency of government must be felt in its own area of assignment and responsibility.
In education, teachers products must be found to be worthy in learning and character; in healthcare, health workers work must be reflected in a healthy citizenry. In agriculture, it must be in guaranteed food security and expulsion of hunger. This is why I cannot agree less with the Governor of Osun when he spoke at the inauguration of the Hassan Sunmonu committee on the apportionment of revenues two weeks ago. To Aregbesola and to all right-thinking people, there must be real work to show for public work.
Government in all tiers must start measuring performances as they are entering into a period of adjustment where they must get much from little, and achieve more with less.
States must rise to the challenges of the time. It is a call to duty and a clarion call to action, should they not be prepared for the challenge, they are likely going to be worse off than they were before the bailout loans. The Osun example provides a template that must be watched.
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