It should be for President Buhari and the ruling party to recognise the need to empower states to be centres of production, rather than remain as sites for consumption of petroleum revenue that they have been for decades.
You are coming on board the ship of governance at an interesting time. So much has been said about the state of our economy. It is expected that we make the running of government at all levels as lean as possible, avoid waste and conserve resources. As ministers, you must be the vehicle that will administer the change.–President Mohammed Buhari at a special retreat for new ministers.
In the statement above, President Buhari was preaching the message of change to his new ministers. If the country is not to be seen as an example of the saying that “the more things change, the more they seem the same,” dispassionate deconstruction of the culture of governance in the last 50 years has to take place as soon as possible, especially within Buhari’s cabinet. Petroleum and the complacency that rises from a manna mentality about revenue from sale of petroleum have driven the design and working of government in our country for too long. There can be no better time to move away from the petroleum mode than one in which a major goal of the party in power is change, for the better.
While it is proper to punish cases of corruption under past governments, doing this may not be enough to right the wrongs of decades of governance philosophy and style in the country since the age when Nigeria was quoted across the globe as a country “where money was not a problem but how to spend it.” If we get fixated on corruption under Jonathan, we may miss the negative impact of how Nigeria was governed since the 1970s on what Nigeria is today. There is no doubt that corruption could have reached its apogee under the PDP and Jonathan, but Jonathan did not create a mode of governance that made corruption easy for men and women of small or low character who find their way to government. In addition, corruption under Jonathan does not narrate the whole story of Nigeria’s gyration without movement in several decades, nor of what appears to be a lack of stamina in the way the country has been governed in the last half century and how citizens have responded to failure of governance, despite its deleterious effect on society.
One place to look at for fuller explanation of the country’s problems, apart from corruption, is the response of leaders since the Biafra war to the role of petroleum in the governance of the country. It is salutary that President Buhari has called for a new way of governing the country “as if we have no oil.” But this new way may not be achieved if we are not critical of the culture of indulgence of political officer holders that has been a part of the politicalculture in our country since the coming of military dictatorship and the various constitutions authored at the instance of military dictators, including the 1999 Abacha-Abubakar Constitution.
Governing Nigeria has been for the ruling class having the ability to design how to share the funds flowing almost limitlessly from petroleum in a way that makes every state and local government dependent on monthly or quarterly allocation of funds from the federation. Under this philosophy of government, 37 states and 774 local governments were created to serve as units to spend the easy and growing funds from petroleum. Each military dictator apart from Buhari made sure he created states and local governments to increase the number of sites for consumption of the revenue from petroleum. Even under President Jonathan, the national conference of 2014 concluded that 19 states be added to the 36 or 37 already in existence, all in the name of enhancing national unity by bringing government close to the grassroots. Sharing, rather than baking the national bake, was the driving vision of rulers. Even now that slump in the price of petroleum has shown that money is a problem for the country, many Nigerians are still urging President Buhari to increase the number of states to 55, thus showing that the country is still in the petroleum or manna mode, even after it has become clear that salaries are not paid on time in all of the three tiers of government.
The military created all constitutions that have turned holding public office into a commercial venture and winning elections to the legislature or being appointed ministers into qualifications for special social welfare checks for legislators and ministers. Under the military, convoys for ministers and even local government chairmen became a part of the political culture. Convoys became a form of ‘festivalisation’ of power by those who find their way to the corridor of power. Buhari’s ministers should not need convoys at all, so the call for reduction of the size of convoys is anti-change. Convoys create spectacle of power more than they enhance security of those in them. Worse still, the Buhari government is acting, despite its rhetoric, as if the mountain of dollars that killed agriculture and even manufacturing in the country was still growing. How else is one to explain the insistence on having 36 ministers and 15 special advisers? If it is the number of ministers and advisers that make a government successful and a country grow economically, Nigeria should have been one of the richest and best governed countries in the last sixteen years. It is hard to find any other country with a higher number of ministers and advisers than Nigeria from 1999 till 2015, the beginning of the Change Era.
Old habits appear to be dying hard in the country. We still seem to be holding on to the view that government is a pork dispensing agency, ‘one that distributes funds, jobs, and other favours mostly to gain political advantage.’ Just before the end of Jonathan’s regime, Stephen Oronsaye was commissioned to rationalise or right-size the country’s governing units: ministries and agencies. The recommendations of Oronsaye, then considered the doyen of the civil service, were largely ignored after congratulating him for a job well done. Given the recent appointment of 36 ministers, there is no evidence that hundreds of agencies that had been recommended for rationalisation will not be packed with political appointees, not to talk of announcement of 15 special advisers already approved for the president. Consequently, Nigeria, despite the noticeable effect of huge loss of revenue on the economy, will still have more ministers, special advisers, and board chairs than any other country of its size. Its legislators still remain the highest paid lawmakers in Africa (if not in the world). For example, apart from emphasising a pork mentality, what value can a special adviser on education or any other subject add to governance that the minister cannot add? Why would ministers need to look for special assistants when their ministries have tens of underutilised experts?
The mentality in vogue in the days of oil boom is now outdated in an era of dwindling revenue from Nigeria’s economic mainstay, crude petroleum. Migrating from petroleum to agriculture and mining of solid minerals is not likely to happen overnight. It will take more than the four years of Buhari’s tenure for this to impact on the life of citizens. It, therefore, does not make economic or political sense to continue the culture of pork barrel governance at a time that our government should cut its coat according to its cloth. Even states that are receiving bailouts to pay workers’ salaries are still appointing as many commissioners and special advisers as they used to do in the days of high prices of petroleum. Lawmakers are still resisting any cut in their allowances at a time that some lawmakers are opposing payment of 5,000 naira to unemployed youths. Under the system of example of power, our country was pushed into poverty by policies of profligacy in terms of creation of subnational units of governance and extravagant incentivisation of political office holders. This is the right moment for Buhari to deploy the principle of the power of example to bring sense back to compensation of political office holders.
While it was easy for rulers to run governments as favour-dispensing agencies to friends, associates, colleagues, and constituencies when the main source of revenue was the manna from petroleum, it may not be that easy, once citizens (as workers or owners of companies) are made to pay for the cost of governance through taxation. Taxation increases citizens’ sovereignty and citizens’ power to call government to order. It is not realistic to expect that the design of government in the country since 1975, particularly the view of rulers that government is a source of pork for various constituencies and individuals can be sustained. The challenge is not just for ministers. It should be for President Buhari and the ruling party to recognise the need to empower states to be centres of production, rather than remain as sites for consumption of petroleum revenue that they have been for decades.
– To be continued
NATION
END
Very Very Very Very APT!!!