To save Nigeria we must, among other things, go back to Education, Healthcare and Infrastructural development, Cut The High Cost Of Governance, with the President, ministers, governors, legislators and all other political appointees taking a substantial pay cut to save money that could be spent on the welfare of the citizenry – Chief Philip Asiodu, in an interview titled: ‘Where Nigeria Went Wrong’.
The challenge of once, and for all, finding a lasting solution to the astronomical cost of governance in Nigeria is by no means new.
It is one problem most Nigerian presidents have toyed with, but shied away, from. Indeed, the most outrageous aspect of it all – the National Assembly’s totally outrageous emoluments – about the highest to Congressmen anywhere in the world – has been attributed to none other than former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
In this regard, the respected Chief Phillip Asiodu wrote: “After the 1999 presidential election, I became Economic Adviser under President Obasanjo, who did not satisfy the requirements to be the PDP candidate in 1999 because to become a candidate you must win your ward, local government and state. He did not win any of these, but it was waived for him”.
“After his election as President, he appointed me his Chief Economic Adviser together with three deputies of the rank of Ministers- of- State. I urged him to let us implement Vision 2010″.
The country was literally at his feet. But he refused.
“If he had agreed, and started, by the time he was leaving office in 2007, Nigerian economy would have attained a growth rate of no less than 10% per annum and the government would have become so popular National Assembly members would not have had the temerity to vote enormous perquisites for themselves, even far above the recommendations of the Revenue Mobilisation And Fiscal Commission ( RMAFC) which arose from his second term ambition because he needed their support. Otherwise he would have been able to constrain them”.
Also, because of his own second term ambition, attempting to have their humongous salaries and allowances reduced was a no go area for President Goodluck Jonathan who, however, set up a Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government’s Parastals, Commissions and Agencies Committee, headed by Stephen Oronsaye, a former Head of Service, but whose recommendations he knew he would treat with benign neglect just as he did the recommendations of the 2014 National conference.
Outright listlessness, and a measure of self interest, arising from having packed nearly all the agencies, parastatals, Departments and commissions with Northerners who must not be touched under any circumstances, ensured that President Buhari paid little or no attention, whatever, to the report until very late in his administration.
Indeed, his late approval to implement the recommendations went to nothing.
With respect to this nerve racking problem from which many of his predecessors simply turned the blind eye, President Tinubu is, no doubt, in a situation analogous to that of the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo when the following were written about him:
“To accomplish these, Awo and his colleagues were determined to blast their way through whatever problems, and compel the force of any adverse circumstance to serve their will. This was because they had put in, long and hard preparations, to meet the challenges and they had evolved elaborate plans which they were ready to launch at a moment’s notice”. What is more, and here am quoting the Avatar:”we had an abiding, flaming faith in the soundness and practicable-ness of our plans. We regarded ourselves as crusaders in a new cause, and as eminently qualified for the pioneering role which we had imposed on ourselves”.
With considerable justification, after his 30 years of productive engagement in the politics of Nigeria preparing for ‘his life long ambition of becoming the Nigerian President’, President Tinubu should be able to own that assertive pronouncement by AWO, regarding his own preparedness for office.
In consequence of that, he should now go ahead and deploy all his well known qualities as a dogged strategist, combined with his wide and varied experience, as well as his not inconsiderable network, to tame the conundrum of Nigeria’s unsustainable cost of governance, especially the atrocious emoluments of members of the National Assembly which is actually the elephant in the room.
It is, without a doubt, a difficult task; difficult mainly because he will be confronting, head on, powerful politicians and their hangers-on outside, whose primary interest is SELF- LOVE, as against concern for the welfare of the people or even the country’s infrastructural development.
For these utterly self – centred Nigerian politicians, Chief Obafemi Awolowo may very well have been talking to the marines when he wrote as follows in PATH TO NIGERIAN FREEDOM:”The purpose of governance, its raison d’etre, is first and foremost the security of the lives and property of citizens. Next, in order of importance, is the enhancement of their freedom and liberty; and finally, there is the welfare function of promoting equal opportunities and happiness for all”.
To today’s generation of politicians, especially those now populating the National Assembly – most of who would probably think that ‘Path to Nigerian Freedom’ is the title of a Nollywood video, all the Avatar wrote, will mean nothing.
Their primary concern, in those hallowed Chambers, is the good life, but strictly for themselves.
This will, therefore, be one of the President’s main problems in office given the key role of the Legislature as a co- equal arm of government. While political will shall be very important in resolving it, it will not be enough because they are a congenitally selfish lot.
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This is where the President would, therefore, have to lead by personal example; one that would be irresistible and which, combined with the respect and goodwill he has attracted in his few weeks in office, will make the legislators see reason and play ball.
Here the President must demonstrate, beyond any shadow of doubt, that the Nigerian presidency became a life ambition for him only because he saw the office as the utmost position from where he could both meaningfully, and positively impact the lives of Nigerians, irrespective of clan, tribe or religion. For him, this is the driving force propelling him all along.
“True leadership”, wrote former Ekiti state governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, one of President Tinubu’s proud mentees in his lecture titled ‘Of Values and The Building of A Successor Generation in Nigeria’, is influence”. “It is driven by core convictions, values and ideas. In a profound sense, leadership is living out one’s values and ideas. It is the sheer power of personal example that projects
influence”.
All these – values, convictions and leadership – are qualities President Tinubu possesses in quantum, and they are the very things he must now bring to bear in negotiations with those who are rather being over paid from our common purse. He must encourage, and persuade, them to willy nilly, take a substantial cut in their very high emoluments which run into multiples of millions of Naira per month.
He should let them know, if they don’t already, that Nigeria is on tenterhooks.
The same treatment – cut in salaries and allowances – must be fully extended to the executive branch where the President must lead by example by not only announcing a massive cut in his own emoluments, but ‘decree’ an end to the outlandish wastages that have characterised the executive branch over the years.
The states will, naturally, replicate all these in their own areas of.jurisdiction.
That done, the next thing for the President should be the immediate implementation of the recommendations of the Oronsaye Committee.
Set up by the President Goodluck Jonathan government on August 18, 2011, the Oronsaye Committee was given the following mandate:
“to study and review all previous reports and records on the restructuring of Federal Parastatals, and advise on whether they were still relevant; examine the enabling Acts of all the federal agencies, parastatals and commissions and classify them into various sectors; examine critically, the mandate of the existing federal agencies, parastatals and commissions and determine areas of overlap or duplication of functions and make appropriate recommendations to either restructure, merge or scrap some to eliminate such overlaps, duplications or redundancies; and advise on any other matter incidental to the foregoing, which might be relevant to the desire of the government to prune down the cost of governance.”
The approval allegedly given for implementation by President Buhari, and forwarded to the Head of Service of the Federation did not see the light of day until that government left office.
Apart from the fact that Nigeria now spends 96 per cent of its revenue on debt servicing, according to the World Bank, public-spirited Nigerians have long expressed concern over the absolutely unsustainable cost of governance in the country.
A country that serially borrows, year in, year out, to implement its annual budget should, if led by a serious government, never run a government half as expensive as Nigeria does without a hint of shame.
Worse is the fact that the country presently suffers a huge revenue shortfall, a fact not helped by the ever decreasing income from its hydrocarbon assets – no thanks to massive oil theft that has run like for ages.
The President, no doubt, should be well aware that cutting the cost of governance is long overdue, and no longer a stitch in time which as they say, saves nine. It is now already far too late.
Over then to President Tinubu. Nigerians are waiting to see him rescue them, and generations yet unborn, from the. hands of these swashbuckling, and parasitic, rent seekers happily devouring our nation.
