Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai drew the first blood early this April when he needled the National Assembly to open up on its notoriously opaque financials. Speaking in a goodwill message at the closing of a five-day retreat ýof NASS management personnel held in his domain, the governor flagged NASS’s reputation for lack of transparency in its budgeting and advised urgent redress. “The National Assembly is seen as being in opposition to the fight against corruption…and that image has to be worked on now that we are going towards the election year,” he was reported saying.
There is, in my view, substantial integrity deficit in the self-confessed motivation for el-Rufai’s advice to the NASSists, namely image reengineering towards the election year, rather than what is right for public officials to do at all times – even outside remote eyeshot of elections. But that is just by the way.
Politics has a way of poisoning the well. And it isn’t unlikely that NASS chieftains had the election year in mind as well, with their sharp rebuff of an ordinarily helpful counsel by the governor. Senate President Bukola Saraki, represented by Senate Leader Ahmed Lawan, was diplomatic; he professed valiant exertions by the Legislature in fighting corruption, adding: “Nigerians would change the country (its leadership?) if we ýfail to perform.”
House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara took el-Rufai’s open admonition more sourly. “We are not happy with the statement of the governor that the budget of NASS is not transparent…I will like to challenge you (the governor) to champion the call for transparency in the budgetary processes of NASS to other arms of government. We want to see clearlyý how chief executives of states are paid, what they spend monthly as security vote, and also publish what happens to local government funds,” he said.
el-Rufai is reputed as battle-tested in political warfare, and it didn’t take much for him to square up with the Speaker’s challenge. My guess is: posturing towards 2019 can’t be ruled out in the ripostes that ensued, but these were helpful for transparency in governance.
The governor outed with Kaduna State’s security financials for 2017 and directed Dogara to online sites where the state’s budget and that of the local governments had been published since the previous year. For icing, he released his February 2017 pay slip that showed his net earning at N470, 521.74. “The amount may appear puny, but it reflects what the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) approved as the salary and allowances of every state governor, adjusted to reflect provision in-kind of accommodation and transportation,” his spokesperson said in a statement laced with taunts for NASSists to follow suit.
It would have been an obvious defeat for the Speaker not to respond, if only by half, and he did that in a barrage. Details of the NASS budget remained work in progress that must be awaited because the leadership had even before now directed the Clerk of the National Assembly to publish its budget for 2017. But not so the details of Dogara’s personal emoluments, on which he obliged pay slips for the past six months that showed his net earning as N346, 577.87. NASS didn’t spare el-Rufai some mudsling, though. “We wish to advise the Kaduna State Governor, Malan Nasir el-Rufai, to concentrate his efforts on governing his state and stop undermining and distracting the National Assembly from playing its constitutionally assigned role in nation building…We are aware that there are serious security issues he should be grappling with in southern Kaduna and other governmental issues facing him. He should not give the impression that he has no challenging work to do in Kaduna State,” the Chair of House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Abdulrazak Namdas, sniped.
There have been loud plaudits for their excellencies in some quarters over the respective pay slip publication. But perhaps I need to be educated, because I don’t get it. The official (emphasis intended) pay line of public officers, including that of the President, is in the public domain from the RMAFC. That body, in 2015, publicised the approved ‘Remuneration Package for Political, Public and Judicial Office Holders’ that showed State Governors’ inclusive annual salary as N11, 540, 896; that for Senators as N12, 939, 549; and for Representatives as N9, 740, 310. The document outlined the emoluments of all other public officials – down to councilors in the Executive arm and magistrates in the Judiciary.
And so, while their courage in the ego match was remarkable, their excellencies stole no one’s thunder by outing with pay slips on their official remuneration. Suspended lawmaker Abdulmumin Jibrin raised the flag on Dogara’s pay slips, saying if the indicated figures were true, it meant that he as a floor member earns more than the Speaker. But that offered no help, because he stopped short of disclosing what he earns.
The issue with rewards for political office in Nigeria is the unofficial earnings that fuel manic desperation for access to power. Some Nigerians saw through the foil even while the Dogara vs. el-Rufai drama raged. Activist lawyer Festus Keyamo, for instance, tweeted on his handle: “The latest comedy showing at cinemas is some guys showing their 300k-a-month pay slips, but spent billions to get the job!” And that is the point.
Let’s face it: many of our politicians do not break banks, spend insanely, kill mindlessly, bribe electoral officials with mind-boggling sums and infract statutory procedures to no limit, just to land some pittance job that they must rebid for if they would – and they always do – four years after. It simply doesn’t add up. There are countless jobs in the private sector, even consultancies in the public sector, where they would earn multiples of that without inputing a jot of the desperation being levied in ‘capturing’ political offices.
The gravy train is obviously outside the pay slip items; and much of that, I dare say, is illicit. The least in this regard are monetary benefits from contractors’ patronage that have afforded some low-level officials, who were tenants before contesting elections, erecting lavish estates within early years of their getting into power. And that isn’t counting the access to the public treasury that some, at least from past experience, have stolen blind. That is where the typical desperation for power comes from, not the earnings indicated on pay slips. These are the areas to look at in defusing the characteristic desperation.