The wealth of many African political leaders is at the expense of their poor people. It is because politicians on the continent largely see the administration of domestic affairs as a lucrative business and the corridor of power as an avenue for private accumulation.
It is relatively easier for them to declare their assets when they enter government, but most of them feel reluctant to admit that they have accumulated huge wealth after leaving office. Ill-gotten wealth is for the few; the burden is shifted to the poor who are many and wallow in squalor, desolate and unheard.
Swimming in opulence when the disadvantaged poor are in want of one meal per day is the height of insensitivity; it is unjust, provocative, and oppressive.
What President Bola Tinubu has done by cutting the cost of travel expenses and “Estacode” allowance for his aides was partly in response to calls for the reduction of wastes associated with officialdom. But it pales into tokenism unless lawmakers (federal and states), governors, ministers, council chairmen, and other top government officials take a cue.
Also, as the government tries to cut costs, there should be a renewed war against other forms of institutionalised corruption: graft, sleaze, pilfering, misappropriation, and embezzlement of public funds.
The budget should ordinarily show the direction. Whenever the recurrent expenditure rivals the capital expenditure, a big problem arises. A recurrent estimate is funding for a bloated bureaucracy, whereas the totality of governmental structures, which comprise political appointees and the typical civil service, is usually less than five per cent of the general populace.
The greater benefit that accrues to the greatest number of people is through capital expenditure, particularly when the budget is faithfully implemented by honest leadership at the national and sub-regional levels.
A culture that should be discouraged relates to the perception that any person who is given a political appointment has hit the gold mine. Political appointments are celebrated, not for being a privilege to serve but for being perceived as an opportunity to access state resources.
Although it should be a vocation, many now erroneously embrace politics as a career; a big and rare occupation of economic and social value.
Government, therefore, is attractive because of the pecks of office, which may come with or without much sweat. The corridors of power are perceived as avenues for primitive accumulation by elected and appointed officials, instead of being taken as means of service delivery. This is counter-productive. It is a wrong orientation.
Not all politicians or public servants follow the path of aggrandisement. Men of the old order were far better, more patriotic, honestly cautious, and committedly service-driven. But the tribe of those bubbling with a real sense of vision and productive service appears to be on the decline. The attraction, to the majority, is money and what it can do: how to acquire choice properties in Nigerian cities and abroad.
At issue today is the cost of leadership, the cost of administration, and the cost of governance.
This has ultimately become an institutionalised drain, a collective burden, and a liability.
Why, for example, should a former governor, who is now a minister, senator, or ambassador, collect pensions while still collecting a salary due to his current position? What is the wisdom in paying millions as annual pensions to a former governor and his deputy by states that cannot afford to pay N30,000 minimum wage? It is the tragedy of a country that likes to indulge in waste, an economically fragile nation overburdened with the payment of double emoluments to certain privileged persons.
In utter sensitivity, some states have tried to alter the pattern. For example, Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has tried to halt the implementation of the pensions law that grants retirement benefits to his predecessors and their deputies. This is the semblance of value engineering, a creative method geared towards cost reduction which has elicited some applause from stakeholders.
But pension laws are not the only problems. By nature, the executive presidency is not cost-effective. The political bureaucracy is akin to an employment opportunity and the key to the sharing of state resources.
Under the presidential system, the cost of governance is too high. The President is expected to preside over the Federal Executive Council (FEC), which comprises at least 40 ministers, ministers of state and special advisers, Senior Special Assistants, Special Assistants, and Personal Assistants. The ministries and departments are usually duplicated, extended, and expanded.
In the Second Republic, while President Shehu Shagari had a minister of education and a minister of state for education, he also appointed a minister of student affairs. He had a Special Adviser on Political Matters. Yet, he appointed another person as a “Political Adviser”. It was a case of jobs for party men and women, and surrogates.
The National Assembly is bi-cameral. In the Senate, there are 109 members. The House of Representatives has 360 legislators. All of them have special assistants and other legislative aides. The size of the government is too bloated, making the recurrent expenditure account for over 55 per cent of the budget in the past, leaving only 45 per cent for capital projects.
Governors at the state level also have over-sized Excos which, in some cases, have 40 members or more – commissioners, senior special advisers, and special advisers. These appointments have their aides who draw emoluments from the treasury. At a time, a state had 72 SSAs and SAs. On another occasion, a governor had hundreds of liaison officers in the districts, constituencies, and local governments.
Not all the states are buoyant because not all of them are equally endowed. The 36 states are not the same. Their sources of revenue differ, so are their priorities. But it is one of the wonders of the Nigerian brand of federalism that governors are placed on the same salary structure, even though their states are different in terms of resources, opportunities, endowments, and potential. Nigerian federalism is about uniformity, not peculiarity.
The cost of “local governance” is also huge. Council chairmen crave autonomy to free themselves from state control exercised marginally by the governor, the ministry of local government, and the House of Assembly. The grassroots administrative system has been a bastion of corruption.
Local government chairmen – or mayors – pose as “local governors” with a measure of semi-autonomous executive powers and functions. Presidentialism is also practised at the local government level with appointed supervisory councillors and elected councillors and their countless aides competing for the meagre council revenue. Even the SSAs and SAs in many councils also have aides.
When new governors and Houses of Assembly are inaugurated, states are overburdened by new expenses. The governors, commissioners, special advisers, Speakers and other lawmakers are not to inherit the official vehicles of their predecessors. New vehicles have to be purchased. The offices have to be refurbished. Old cars pale into a subset of severance allowance. It is a recurring decimal.
Times have changed. The pathfinders of history are not emulated. In the old Ondo State under the late Governor Adekunle Ajasin, commissioners had to drop their official cars in office on Fridays unless they had official assignments at the weekends. Some of them lived in their private residences.
That was what Chief Obafemi Awolowo taught his disciples. Instructively, Premier Awolowo, who never lived in Government Quarters, had admonished his associates in government not to embrace the lifestyle they could not sustain outside office.
Now, at the national level, the accommodation provided for National Assembly members is sold to them at give-away prices. That means public office is exploited as a gateway to kleptocracy.
The legitimate pecks of office are in order. But the penchant for wealth accumulation by public officers is anomalous. Indeed, many government officials often capitalise on loopholes to perpetrate graft. There is no fiscal discipline. Therefore, national development is sacrificed on the altar of corruption among many public officials. It would appear that governance is just for the benefit of those in power, their lackeys and confederates.
In 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) slashed their salaries by 50 per cent. They also reiterated their commitment to the anti-graft war to stem the misappropriation of public funds. The National Assembly members, governors, and elected officials refused to emulate them.
Today, some elder statesmen have attributed the high political expenditure to the neglect of the parliamentary system. But this is debatable. The only difference was that non-ministerial parliamentarians were not full-time legislators. Therefore, they kept their jobs as teachers, lawyers, businessmen, and professionals in their fields. They only took time off from work to attend parliamentary sessions.
However, to reduce rivalry between the crop of parliamentarians who were ministers and those who were not, the latter were also appointed as parliamentary secretaries; others were appointed to boards of corporations. The Senate was ceremonial, like the Regional House of Chiefs.
Under the presidential system, the competition for elected offices is fiercer. As the treasury becomes the inheritance of the political class, there is the pervading feeling that the quest for political power is tantamount to political investment for which the investors must always garner returns. As those in power get rich, the electorate is abandoned in spiraling penury.
How would citizens not perceive the government as a burden when its recurrent expenditure is repeatedly higher than its capital expenditure, which should impact positively on the economy, especially in employment generation, investment, and other activities that propel growth?
This is the challenge that stares some states in the face. It is obvious that less than five per cent of the projected 200 million population consumes the higher part of the nation’s wealth. The effects of over-bloated political bureaucracies involving the big Federal Government, 36 state governments and 774 local governments are alarming. There is disquiet among experts who believe that when recurrent expenditure is high, it may impact negatively on the implementation of capital projects and hamper the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Delegates to the 2004 collapsed National Political Conference in Abuja were alarmed by the retinue of presidential aides and appointees at the state levels. They recommended that the structure should be trimmed. During the Jonathan administration, some technocrats also suggested that certain ministries and departments should be merged or fused.
Also, some experts have lamented that the rising cost of governance has not been accompanied by corresponding service delivery and efficiency of structures for optimal performance. For example, they explained that the defunct Western Region has been split to eight states. However, the output of the states has not matched the pioneering achievements of the golden era of Obafemi Awolowo’s premiership.
Up to now, the salaries paid to senators continue to generate controversy, although the total package is unknown. It has been suggested that Nigerian senators and Representatives earn more than their counterparts in Europe and America, which are more advanced economies.
Governors and council chairmen also have convenient access to resources through the inexplicable security votes. In fact, the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission had been overwhelmed by the mounting allowances of public officers across the three arms of government at the state, federal, and local levels.
Apart from basic salaries, allowances cover other details, such as accommodation, furniture, overseas trips, motor vehicle loan, car fuelling, medicals, special assistance, domestic workers, entertainment, leave, and severance gratuity.
At a time many parts of Nigeria lack potable water, stable electricity, and quality schools, budgetary proposals and political emoluments should reflect national soberness.
The current political class needs to learn lessons from the selfless service of the men of the old order – Ahmadu Bello, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Aminu Kano, Adekunle Ajasin, Lateef Jakande, and Awolowo.
President Tinubu is showing the way now. Other leaders should emulate his steps.
