By Bukar Zarma
Senator Ahmad Lawan, President of the current Senate, was at great pains last week to stress the principle of carrot and stick in getting public officers to do their job.
“If you employ someone”, he said, “give him personal targets and if the target is not met without cogent reasons, he/she should go . . . when we hold people responsible, they are likely to do their job”.
The background to this homily is fairly well advertised by recent rancorous calls on President Muhammadu Buhari to sack the heads of the security services for their failure to stem the current security emergency in the country. So far as I know, this question is still blowing in the air.
And yet, the barrage of criticisms of the president on account of his failure to punish alleged poor performance by heads of the military services misses one important ingredient of fairness and equity.
The critics ought to have similarly criticized the president for failing to offer special rewards and incentives to some of his other appointees doing a hell of a good job.
If they had done so, the president might well have been better prepared to see the merit of their interventions or the suggestions being made.
Applying the doctrine of carrot and stick in running the government as suggested by the Senate President may prove to be the magic wand for climbing up the desired ‘next – level’ of achievement for this government .
Let’s illustrate how this might play out in real life. Each time critics seek to put pressure on Mr President to sack General Tukur Buratai, the Chief of the Army Staff for failing to totally decimate Boko Haram, they should remember to also urge him to identify and reward the likes of Colonel Hamid Ali, (retired), another military officer deployed as the Director-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, for his exceptional performance in that office.
Since taking office in 2015, Colonel Ali has waged the war against graft and fraud with uncommon devotion in an institution whose name is often confused with racket.
Because of his personal exertions, every year since 2015, the Nigerian Customs Service was able to beat its own ambitious revenue targets.
The trillion naira ceiling was broken in the second year of his taking office. Two out of the four years Colonel Hamid Ali exceeded his revenue targets, the economy was officially diagnosed as suffering from recession.
Under this template, it is considered inappropriate for critics to train their search lights on the vulnerable General Buratai while ignoring the valiant Colonel Ali.
This example can be found across the government and the public service under the watch of the president.
His attention should be invited to the extraordinary accomplishments of the achievers in the same way his attention is constantly drawn to the ‘failures’ from the others.
Consider the case of another Buhari appointee doing an amazing work; Ahmed Lawan Kuru, the Managing Director of Asset Management Company of Nigeria, AMCON.
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As a matter of fact, if in spite of what Ahmed Kuru has done, Nigeria’s taxpayers still let the notorious 20-man squad run away with 70% of their N5 trillion Naira, it can only be their choice; it won’t be due to any lack of awareness of the robbery.
Malam Ahmed has shouted ‘thief… thief’ long enough. He has even gone to the National Assembly with a re-drafted law to try to catch them. Sadly, with all his exertions, he could recover only a paltry one-and-a-half trillion Naira so far.
The case of the youthful Hadiza Bala Usman, Managing Director of the Nigeria Ports Authority, NPA, also stands out in bold relief.
Although daughter of Dr Yusufu Bala Usman, the well-known rights activist and anti-corruption campaigner, she could not possibly been fighting the racketeers on the instructions of her father, having died over 15 years ago.
The press has constantly reported on the epic clashes this fearless woman was having with the mafia who won’t have her restore the job description of the NPA as revenue generating not a revenue racketeering agency.
Last week, the papers carried the report of another heavy brawl between the gadfly with some vested interests who had fed fat on the revenues that naturally and legally belong to the NPA and the people of Nigeria.
As it turned out, Ms. Bala Usman’s public brouhaha with the behemoth, Intels, was but a rehearsal for a wholesale and audacious review, revocations, termination and outright cancellation of various concessions, leases or pseudo agreements all bearing the imprints of graft, jobbery, extortion, even old- fashioned theft.
Hadiza Bala Usman is a good example of many fine public officers doing a hell of a job; the type President Buhari should showcase and take a legitimate credit.
Instead, the reports one hears in the social and the mainstream media sounds very much as though it’s oozing out of the mafia media.
Indeed, one can only imagine the level of threats and intimidation these public officers are putting up with. They alone would know the meaning of Nuhu Ribadu’s favourite catch phrase: ‘ when you fight corruption, corruption will fight you back’.
Still, it is the duty of all of us, Nigerians, to make sure the fight against corruption is won. Our lives depend on it.
One way is to urge the president to give appropriate rewards to all public officers that have remained devoted to the war against corruption come rain or high waters.
- Zarma, a former editor of the New Nigerian, is Secretary – General, Movement for Peace & Unity.
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