I didn’t see any fire service. They said the firefighters complained of lack of water and went back. Goods worth about N200m were lost to the fire. The number of shops burnt were over 500”
– John Nwokoye, January 27, 2016.
The failure, often catastrophic, of governments and institutions to deliver social goods, because of mismanagement, corruption, or indifference in varying combinations is a distinct feature of our era, not just in Nigeria, but across the globe. Only last week, Americans and the world were scandalised by the report that for 18 months, citizens of Flint, in Michigan had been exposed to water contaminated by lead which they drank freely from corroded public taps. The scandal is a result of an ill-considered decision by the municipal authorities to switch the city’s water source from Detroit where the water was treated with corrosion control chemicals to the River Flint which lacked control infrastructure. It is a story that has opened shockingly a Pandora’s box of the incompetence, corruption, and inattention of local officials. Needless to say, that the public outrage has brought in its wake a torrent of public demonstrations, law suits, and other civic actions by a bewildered public. Interestingly too, though somewhat late in the day, city officials had, in an emergency fashion, supplied households with treated water and schools with potable water.
We may note in passing that Nigeria’s public water system, which was once efficient, had so hopelessly broken down that many residents have lost count of when last, water gushed out from any public tap. The ubiquitous boreholes, which is the citizen’s replacement for a moribund public water supply, environmentalists warn us, is fraught with long term dangers to the environment. But that is a matter for another day. In our country, the cost of disorder as the opening quote from the Vice-Chairman of the Kaduna Market Association, John Nwokoye, illustrates , can be very steep indeed. In the spate of fire tragedies, which have ravaged the country in recent times, two recurrent decimals are observable, namely, the causal influence of erratic power surges, no thanks to a dysfunctional electrical supply system; and the tardiness and lack of resources of an underequipped fire service. Usually, it is either the fire service operatives arrive after most of the damage has been done, or they arrive promptly but go back because they do not have water or other resources to work with. For example, in the Kaduna incident, Nwokoye’s lament regarding the incompetence of the fire service was corroborated by Paul Aboi, Acting Director of the Kaduna State Fire Service when he told The PUNCH, (January 27, 2016) that his men had difficulties in getting through to the scene of the fire. In Kaduna, the cost of disorder is computed conservatively as the loss of at least one life, and the destruction of over 500 shops containing goods worth millions of naira.
Sadder than our lacklustre response to such emergencies is the fact that, there will be no important take-away from the tragedy until another one occurs almost in the same manner. What you get most of the time is an almost choreographed visit by the governor to the scene of disaster, tepid messages of condolence, reinforced by a promise to set up an inquiry and to pay compensation which will of course take its time in coming. Before pursuing the matter however, I crave the reader’s indulgence, to enter a short take.
The recent comment by the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, that his party is broke opens a window for the nation to reopen conversation on the issue of best practices in political party financing. Interestingly, the Editorial Page Editor of The PUNCH, Joel Nwokeoma, while discussing with me last week had thrown a challenge to Nigerian political scientists to come up with a corruption-free model of party financing. That concern remains topical in the aftermath of#Dasukigate which is a horrendous diversion of public funds, earmarked for prosecuting the war against BokoHaram into financing campaign expenses. As Segun Ayobolu, columnist of The Nation, recently argued, what is exceptional about #Dasukigate is that it took an endemic and structured practice of the Nigerian political class to new heights of depravity. In other words, all political parties in Nigeria have routinely attempted to solve a financial gap problem by carrying out disguised official raids on the state treasury. To throw up a recent example, The PUNCH (December 13, 2014) reported that in the prelude to the 2015 elections, the party primaries of both the Peoples Democratic Party and the APC were characterised with dollar and naira rains for delegates, most of whom received 7,000 dollars each. This is only one minor dimension of a high-rise political process, characterised by the intensity of expenditure. We may justly quibble about the propriety of showering expensive gifts on delegates to party primaries, if only because, it unduly privileges political barons and entrepreneurs who have deep pockets. What we cannot do however, is to deny that for parties to survive, and to win elections need to bankroll such activities as the opening of offices across the country, the printing of party logos, brochures and other identification mechanisms, and to carry out publicity whose rising cost is denominated in millions of naira.
If the political system is to overcome the entrenched habits of plundering state resources to finance political party activities, then, we must somehow emphasise the subscription model of party financing by which is meant, money raised from levying members of the party and from investments legitimately made by parties. These apart, we must revisit a subvention and subsidy model in which the government transparently funds parties which have received a certain amount of voter endorsement in successive elections. This implies that the accounts of these parties, as stipulated by law, but observed in the breach must be regularly audited with copies of the audit submitted to the National Assembly.
To return to the main discourse, Nigeria would only become a lovelier country when those elected to govern seek to minimise the rising cost of dysfunction by paying close and detailed attention to the many ways in which ordinary Nigerians are traumatised by incompetent institutions. For example, apart from the recent occasional spat between the MTN and the Nigerian Communications Commission, it is hard to believe that anybody or any institution is performing oversight functions on the rip-offs and unfriendly customer relations that characterise the telecoms sector. Services have become so woeful, that Nigerians who can afford them have to carry around three or more phones, in order to navigate the effects of poor service delivery.
Nigerians bear the cost of disorder in other ways, for example, by sending their children or wards to overseas institutions at soar away cost, because Nigeria’s education is increasingly fictional. To reduce the cost of disorder, government must embark upon massive institutional renewal backed up with public performance contracts and a charter of service for key government departments.
Finally, as the ongoing civil uproar over contaminated water in the United States shows, Nigerian civil society must hold a running vigil over incompetent institutions to bring down the cost of disorder.
PUNCH
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