The current system that feeds states and local governments with monthly allocations is not only unsustainable; it also promotes corruption, just as keeping so much money with the central government that has very little direct responsibility to citizens and communities encourages corrupt behaviour on the part of morally weak individuals in public service.
From all appearances since his emergence as president, General Buhari has kept to his promise to fight corruption. It is already part of the nation’s urban folklore that he and the EFCC chairman cried when they first saw mountains of data pointing at corrupt acts in various sectors of the polity. Understandably, President Buhari does not seem to have enough time or space to get corrupt individuals punished, largely on account of the ubiquitous nature of venality in the preceding administration of President Jonathan. It is, therefore, not fair to accuse him of not talking about how to institutionalise ethicality in governance and socialise the population into a culture of honesty in public service.
Given the frequency and magnitude of corrupt acts unearthed so far, nobody can blame the Buhari administration for not announcing already details of its vision and mission about how to create a governance and public culture that is devoid of venality. Many citizens who thought that Transparency International was being racist or anti-African for ranking Nigeria one of the most corrupt counties in the world for several years must, after hearing of the various types and levels of corrupt acts only in the last six years, now feel ashamed. So must those who criticise masters of ceremonies who spice party talks with tales of corruption in the country have realised that reality can be more unbelievable than fiction. The reality, as reflected in media reports, is that too many of those who get to the corridor of power as political appointees and as administrators in the nation’s public service are morbidly corrupt.
It will be no exaggeration for anyone to think that it is mainly kleptomaniacs, those who steal compulsively or pathologically, that are more prominent in public service than those who are honest. How else is an average citizen to view the news of heinous crimes of stealing that cut across the public sector, from the executive to the legislature and the judiciary? In other climes, the frequency and magnitude of stealing by political appointees and public servants would have called for intervention of psychiatrists. When an individual in charge of managing an office chooses to steal the funds for managing such office in order to buy outlandish luxury items, as many of those already accused of looting the treasury have done, it should be difficult for non-psychiatrists not to feel that stealing must be in the DNA of such individuals.
When a former senior civil servant friend of mine remarked with noticeable seriousness in his voice and on his face that should Buhari choose to detect and punish every act of corruption in the public service he would not have time for anything else, most of us within earshot felt depressed about the quality of people who get into public service as politicians and professionals. More importantly, I also believe that President Buhari must not only worry about the corrupt people of today; he must give attention in his initiatives on corruption to preventing the grooming of new thieves of state as politicians or civil servants.
As human beings, children can, more than adults, be re-oriented to know and accept that stealing is not good, regardless of the religious sensibility of such children and their parents. Punishing dishonest adults can also serve as a great deterrent to young people. The president’s men must give more thought to promoting moral values among children in particular and adults in general. It is a sociological fact (that may not be as Hobbesian at it may sound) that rules and punishment for violation of rules keep many people out of crime. According to a Yoruba proverb, “Gbogbo eniyan ni ole bi ile baa da,” meaning human beings are likely to steal if there are no rules and rule enforcers. In other words, an atmosphere of impunity encourages venality. The growth in the culture of impunity in public life in the last sixteen years or more must have induced the recklessness of thieves in public service, to the extent that the most recurrent topic among citizens today is corruption of men and women in power.
One area of intervention that is not being emphasised in the media is institutional re-engineering. If so much moral decay has been exposed within six months of the Buhari regime and only in relation to the federal government, the national embarrassment would be much more pronounced if EFCC also becomes active about investigating corruption in states and local governments of the country. Apart from Lagos or perhaps Abuja, media presence in the states and local governments, like the presence of anti-corruption agencies, is negligible. There is no reason to believe that the Nigerians in the public service of the states and local governments are morally superior to those in the federal service. Given the fact that over 50% of the nation’s earnings is kept with the federal government, it is likely that more funds may be stolen at this level of government than in others. But should EFCC searchlight be beamed at the subnational levels of government, there is no chance that the embarrassing acts of senseless looting of nation’s resources will be any less than what we read about every day in the media.
It is, therefore, imperative for the Buhari government to pay special attention to the structure of government in the country. The current system that feeds states and local governments with monthly allocations is not only unsustainable; it also promotes corruption, just as keeping so much money with the central government that has very little direct responsibility to citizens and communities encourages corrupt behaviour on the part of morally weak individuals in public service. The history of a federal system in which the constituent parts live almost solely (except Lagos State) on transfers from the central government is too obvious to be rehashed here. It came into being during the military era when the dominant philosophy of government was over centralisation and subordination of federating units and at a time when those in power believed in the omnipresence and omnipotence of revenue from petroleum. Creating mini/local governments and running them with regular allocations from a central purse limited the imagination or creativity of most governors and LG chairmen. This military policy also directly or indirectly encouraged corruption and lack of accountability at the subnational level, just as it did at the central level. The result of funding governance from rent collection now stares all of us regrettably in the face.
Returning the culture of self-reliance and accountability to every level of government is one way of discouraging corruption. The current system of sustaining states and local governments with funds from non-renewable minerals– whether liquid or solid– needs to be reviewed as President Buhari gets to his promise to “entrench true federalism and the federalist spirit in the constitution.”
NATION
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