Rightsizing governance

By Ropo Sekoni

Nigeria does not seem productive enough to justify having two full-time legislative houses.

President Muhammadu Buhari has started on a ‘trailblazing’ of some sort: He wants to reduce the cost of governance. Even some of his governors and senators are already jumping on the bandwagon that the president’s new pet project seems to have established. Even critical observers of the country’s governance may find the move to reduce money spent on governing a country that leaves very little for the masses a little belated but all the same necessary. Profligacy in government has been rising 1966 but efforts to stop it should not just focus on errant individuals but also causes of wastage in the system.

The president should not just “weed out possible corruption that exists anywhere,” he should examine agencies that function more like sites of jobs for the boys at all levels of government. One area of cutting the cost of governance that has received a lot of publicity in the last few days is about the justification for a bicameral legislature in a country with inadequate infrastructure. Of course,  nobody expects a senator or his/her family members to see any sense in the suggestion that there is no urgent need, if any at all, for a bicameral legislature in a country that is spending 25% of its budget on debt servicing. But it is a good thing that government policies and institutions are not created for the benefit of just a few folks with the money or connection to get elected into the senate or house of representatives. One legislature, whatever name it may be given, is enough until such a time that the country can afford the luxury of a senate.

Democracy can function in a unicameral legislature. What matters most is the degree of affiliation of citizens to the constitution and the degree of lawmakers’ patriotism to the country.  For example, lawmaking over 50 years ago in Nigeria was part-time and it was such a hallowed chamber to which the best minds in the society craved to belong. Each lawmaker had a regular full-time job and just came to Lagos or Ibadan to debate and deliberate with the best from the other communities to make laws.

For those who had lived through that time, it is not clear which improvement in the governance of the country has necessitated having two houses of legislature at the center and almost two assemblies—one for lawmakers and another for chiefs—in the subnational sector. Even when lawmaking was part-time in Western Nigeria, all chairs were occupied when the house was in session, unlike now when full-time lawmakers stay away most of the time and many of those who are present at work sleep through most of the deliberations. Nigeria does not seem productive enough to justify having two full-time legislative houses.

Indeed, what is needed may be just one house of equal number of representatives from each of the states. Such a legislature will capture the sense of balance and equal representation from the states that the current senate. With one legislative house, the country would save at least N60 billion annually that is currently reserved for servicing one of two legislatures. Similarly, in the states, one house without a House or Council of Chiefs should be adequate. Attempting to find relevance for pre-colonial rulers: chiefs, emirs, obis, obongs looks like rewarding obsolescence and promoting avoidable contradictions by having a republic in which unelected individuals participate in governance, on the basis of ascription or inheritance. To the average citizen, there is no outcome from governance at the federal level to justify having two legislatures of about 500 lawmakers who receive more public funds as salary and allowance than any other lawmaker on the globe.

But attention needs to be given to many other sectors that serve as sources of pork for politicians or their cronies. With a civil service that consumes almost 40% of the annual national budget, there should be no need for several aides for the president or the governors in the name of special advisers, special assistants, senior special assistants, etc. What are the people in the professional civil service expected to do? With a professional civil service that is expected to be loyal to whatever party in power, why should our presidential system need another layer of aides? Many citizens are unaware of the significance of civil servants, let alone a new horde of advisers and assistants for president, governor, ministers, and commissioners.

By way of digression, in 2006, I went to Akure with a boy of ten. We happened to be around the secretariat during closing time. On seeing so many people ooze out of the many buildings of the secretariat, the young boy screamed, “Daddy, who are these people?” I responded, “they are civil servants.”  He added, “What do they do?” I said that “they provide services for citizens.” Feeling surprised, he said, “what service—no electricity, no good road, no water, etc.” I told him our country is a developing one. What the young boy saw in Akure is typical of other states even till today. The resources being spent on the civil service in the states do not justify employing another layer of public servants to man the governor’s service. And the sitting allowances paid to traditional rulers whose salaries come from the public source is part of the pork that should be dispensed with.

Before President Buhari announced his commitment to reducing the cost of governance, he had called for resuscitation of the Oronsaye Report that had advised the federal government before Buhari’s first term in office to reduce its bureaucracy, especially by cutting down on the huge number of government agencies that compete to do more or less the same thing, and without showing convincing outcomes to justify investment on them.

Too many agencies are doing more or less the same thing: ICPC/EFCC; Broadcasting Corporation of Nigeria/Federal Radio/Television Corporation of Nigeria/Nigeria Broadcasting Commission; National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons/the Immigration Service; National Council on Privatization/Bureau of Public Enterprises; National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion/Ministry of Science or Technology; National Environmental Standard and Regulation Enforcement Agency/National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency; Niger Delta Development Commission/Ministry of the Niger Delta; Nigerian Export Promotion Council/Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority; etc.

Most importantly, there was a time the president very early in his first term had to bail out states for failure to pay salaries of their workers. A country of Nigeria’s size with 36 states is one that can be called an over administered state. It has been said many times that just two or three states; Lagos, Akwa Ibom and Rivers (because of allowance for oil) are sustainable. It is a no brainer that the current political structure came into being because of petroleum and later gas. From what happened in 2015 when the price oil slumped in the international market, it is also clear that the current structure is unsustainable without oil, until the new policy on diversification changes the country from a rentier state to one that can live on the brain and brawn of its citizens, like other countries that are largely self-sustaining without petroleum.  Even though we may be close to finding petroleum in the Chad and Benue Basins, the profitability of oil no longer rests with oil-producing countries alone, it is dependent on the taste and needs of developed countries that are also now capable of creating technology that can make oil obsolete and of little or no value in the near future. This may be an opportune time for the president to send a special bill to the house on creating a new structure for governing the country.

There was a time when Nigeria could boast that money was not its problem but how to spend it. Such claim is no longer possible when the country spends about 25% of its annual budget on servicing debts owed to external and internal creditors. Reducing the cost of governance at the level of the central government and encouraging governors to see the reason for a new vision beyond receiving allocations to pay salaries for work by public servants who embarrassingly have little to show for their presence is one legacy that many Nigerians may never forget.