By Olatunji Ololade
The most prescient portrait of the 36 states unfurl in the twilight of 2019. The image is instructive: governors disagree with labour and the federal government over N30,000 minimum wage.
Rising from a meeting in Abuja, the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) said, through its chairman and Ekiti governor, Kayode Fayemi, that governors would not pay beyond their individual capacity.
Fayemi told reporters that the federal government cannot determine what happens in the states.
In Fayemi’s statement, we glimpse the grotesque laws of primitive earth-cult: the federal government cannot compel state governors to pay the N30, 000 minimum wage but the governors can go cap in hand to seek alms and loans from the federal government to ‘run their states’ and pay workers’ salaries every month.
It’s a curious case of entitlement. But the governors present their argument persuasively, stating that, while “States were part of the tripartite negotiation and agreed to N30,000 minimum wage, states also know there will be consequential adjustments. That would be determined by what happened on a state-by-state basis because there are different numbers of workers at the state level, there are different issues at the state level.
“We have always been clear that this was a national minimum wage increase, not a general minimum wage review…Every state has its own trade union, with a negotiating committee and they would undertake this discussion with their state governments.”
The outcome of such negotiations are better imagined. Previous deliberations of such nature didn’t end in favour of the underdog, the underpaid workers.
The federal government and labour on October 18 announced an agreement on the implementation of the N30, 000 minimum wage thus averting a labour strike.
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) at its meeting, presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, approved the agreement and set dates for the take-off of the new wage and payment of the arrears between April 18 and December 31.
But Fayemi said the agreement and directive apply only to federal workers. The governors, no doubt, present persuasive arguments about constraints that may result and hinder their capacity to pay workers’ salaries and smooth running of their states, if they should attempt to pay the N30, 000 minimum wage; not with the dilemma of ghost workers, dwindling internally generated revenue (IGR) and an over-bloated civil service.
While such argument could be dismissed as duplicitous whining by the governors, it behooves civil societies and the citizenry to facilitate a forum whereby issues bordering on states’ insolvency, governors’ reckless spending, inflated budgets, unjustifiable borrowing, among others, can be debated with progressive results.
It also calls to question the current political system and its constitutional pitfalls. While most governors and politicians pay lip-service to fiscal integrity and true federalism, reality asserts that very few among them actually walk their talk.
Governors and deputy governors are entitled to N2,223,705 and N2,112,214 as annual salaries, states the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) but there are numerous allowances, including the controversial security vote not reflected in the figures.
Thus very few individuals, less than 50 in number to be precise, cost over 196 million Nigerians hundreds of billions of naira, every year, as salaries and other allowances for serving as governors.
The poverty report of the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) estimated the poverty rate at 67.1 per cent of the total population, indicating that over 120 million Nigerians live below the poverty line.
Amid the begrimed imagery, each governor nurtures a frantic lust to gift his state with an airport. This obsession is, largely, driven by a craving to embezzle state funds and provide a hanger for their existing or ‘soon to be acquired’ private jets.
The logic of constructing airports by governors, whose states are less than an hour’s drive from each other, like Lagos and Ogun, flouts managerial wisdom and common sense. Even so, former Ogun governor, Ibikunle Amosun sought to build “an international cargo airport in the state” thus rendering over 5,000 farmers landless and incapacitated, in a severely depressed agricultural economy.
If the roads were in good condition, Governor Fayemi would have no need to pursue a similar venture in Ekiti State. Funding and efforts wasted on such initiatives could be deployed in facilitating good roads and rail system by the governors across the 36 states of the federation.
But rather than reprimand culprits for being profligate and purblind, the federal government cuddles them with free oil cash and loans from the federation account. A 2016 report revealed, that, of the 25 airports managed by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), only the two in Lagos and Abuja are viable, according to aviation experts.
More governors have taken steps to establish their own airports thus adding to the Nigerian landscape, an assortment of dystopic airfields.
Its about time the NGF discarded the serpent desires of bowel and belly and seek realistic solutions to their states’ development challenges. Beyond their hysteria to construct airports, prospect for oil and embark on borrowing sprees, they could energise their states from the bottom up – grassroots.
Airports hardly cultivate economies outside Lagos and Abuja. Most of the governors preside over impoverished states with unexploited consumer markets, untapped potential for commercial agriculture and under-employed labour pools.
Governors must imaginatively engage grassroots and state-level actors in driving economy, combating insecurity and addressing post-conflict needs, in northeastern Nigeria, for instance.
President Muhammadu Buhari, as Page suggests, must also strike a balance between collegiality and coercion in his dealings with state governors. Let him deploy the carrot and stick approach with juvenile governors; he could give them loans in exchange for full transparency of state spending and accounts. He could also withhold financial bailouts from governors who shun needed reforms, thereby leaving them cash-strapped and politically vulnerable.
Regardless of these tactics, the onus is on the citizenry to vote out inefficient governors. But this can only be achieved in the long-run via better voter education – a reality that the youth and INEC are unable to actualise.
In the short-run, the 36 states will deservedly endure the affliction of mostly corrupt, inefficient governors – empowered by the constitution and cuddled by the NGF.
The latter’s stance substantiates my previous assessment of governors’ immoderate spunk as they resumed office, few months ago, as Initial Gra-Gra (IGG), sporadic outbursts of a feigned vigour.
Nonetheless, Fayemi bears the plague of validating the NGF as a ritual precinct of tin gods.
He is burdened to explain, refute and justify fellow governors’ established and future misdemeanours. He cannot control them but he endows their failings with his face and voice thus synthesising glassy intellect with the forum’s coarse flux.
Like I opined few months ago, it’s a good thing that Fayemi became NGF’s chairman, perhaps. But despite his initial flurry as the voice of the virile statesman, he flaunts no virility yet. Right now, he is forced to endure perception as the sacrificial mascot who may end up on a stake.
Sometimes, his colleagues would truly err. Sometimes, they would be misunderstood. But at all times, Fayemi would be parodied as an NGF idol and object, champion and captive, till he is buried – politically – or canonised as the bulging mass of NGF’s constipated frame.
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