Whether at the corporate level, as in when the Chairman of its Publicity Committee speaks, or individually as in Senator Smart Adeyemi haranguing us, reminding us he remains a journalist and would think nothing of leading a demonstration, it has been sabre rattling galore, threats and more threats, against any sensible voice that asks the National Assembly to drop, like hot potato, this their diversionary and, ill-advised, pre-occupation with wanting to make local governments an unprecedented, third federating unit to the Nigerian federation. What remains to be heard from these supposedly grassroots- loving National Assembly members is their readiness to abandon their stupendous, out of this world, quarterly forays into the national treasury which the Central Bank Governor once calculated to be in the region of 25 percent of the annual national budget. No, their love of country does not extend that far but it is our hope and prayer that somebody, somewhere, will have the presence of mind to demonstrate the political will to let them know it is evil to continue a waste which even the United States cannot afford, and which Nigerians know only too well is arbitrary, as it does not have the approval of the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission whose primary responsibility is to fix salaries and allowances. It is also hoped that they will climb down their high horse, eat the humble pie and be gracious enough to accept that there is nowhere under the sun you have three federating units in a federation.
Rather, what the civilised world has come to know is a federation of the centre and the composite states and this principle and practice had long been cast in stone.
This is the simple truth governors like Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State, Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti and Musa Kwankaso have this past week, and for the umpteenth time, tried to drill into them. But this has cut no ice with them since their primary intention is to divert our attention, and rather than accede to the popular demand of reducing their unearned, completely immoral allowances that eat up billions every three months, they want to replicate additional centres of ‘independence’ at both the state House of Assemblies and Local Governments by providing the two with constitutional provenance to ravage the treasury as they will be answerable to no higher authority. That way, they would have succeeded in muting the peoples’ opposition to their own financial recklessness at the federal level.
In order to perfectly understand this looming travesty of a constitutional review, we would need to quote, at some length, the views of governor Rabiu Musa Kwankaso who described this plot against the people most poignantly in a recent newspaper interview.
Dismissing the entire constitution review as a charade which will add no value to the lives of Nigerians whose needs are potable water, good roads, improved agriculture and other life-changing amenities, the governor said:
“You see, what we have in the National Assembly is what they want to transfer to the 36 state houses of assembly. Only the Almighty Allah can moderate what is happening in the National Assembly today, nobody else.
“We hear that some get N45 million or N50 million per quarter. This amounts to N15 million per month and half a million naira per day for every member, whether you are speaking, whether you are in the beer parlour enjoying yourself, you are getting that every day. What sort of business will you do in this country to get half a million naira every day?”
’Were these honourable members alive to their responsibilities and not keen merely to further create centres of unnecessary waste of national resources, they should need no lectures in realising that state governors are in a much better position to understand the needs of the people more than the most astute Local Government Chairman. They would also have known, without being told, that local governments exist solely as an arm of state governments for the propagation and execution of state programmes and policies at that level. All these chest-beating and sabre rattling by the National Assembly amount to nothing more than a sterile fishing expedition which is bound to fail at the end of the day.
Everything about local governments, its creation, its numbers and administration, should completely be under the purview of state governments which can much more meaningfully arrive at the appropriate number of local governments required for its needs. It will, therefore, be a mere waste of time for the National Assembly to attempt to formalise its many threats by granting autonomy to local governments because, we the people, more than the governors, will prevail on the state Houses of Assembly to ensure that fails.
Finally on constituency projects, what exactly should, in a corruption-free society, be the concern of the legislature with executive functions beyond its oversight function? What their colleagues in the U.S do- and they should be happy to be so compared – is to request that packs be approved for specific projects in their respective states and these, unlike here, are never executed by individual legislators but go straight to the approved projects. For Christ’s sake these people are there to make laws and conduct oversight functions; not become emergency contractors for projects that get mostly abandoned halfway as such funds are most often misapplied – apologies, Late Augustus Aikhomu.
This misnomer, if we remember, is a direct result of a succession of PDP rigged-in, weak and unsure presidents who subsequently had to do everything to crave the support of the National Assembly especially in passing their heavily compromised budg
ets. Should the practice continue, however, then our emergency honourable contractors should go learn from their colleagues from Ekiti –all A C N members – who pulled together most of their constituency allowances totalling millions of naira and have put it at the behest of the state government for the execution of a gigantic agricultural project which will fundamentally and positively impact the lives of their people back home rather than using Abuja to launch their miserable wars against their state governors as we are beginning to see in convoys running into convoys.
For once, the National Assembly should get serious and do something tangible for the poor Nigerian masses its members milk ever so easily and unscrupulously before its next coup against the Revenue and Fiscal Mobilisation Commission, as always happens; even if they have to borrow illegally from banks to meet their greed.
Happy birthday ebino topsy
Had I not so suddenly lost an uncle who impacted my youth so much, I should have , this past weekend, been ‘jollificating’ with my friend of 48 years; the one and only Chief Ebenezer Babatope, aka Ebino Topsy, who turned 70 to the glory of God.
Awe, what did we not do together, what risks didn’t we take as young, budding radical intellectuals who, albeit, decided to make University Administration our forte; and actually founded its Association where, with the likes of Talib Umar,later Federal Permanent Secretary, Pat Adaba, later Deputy Governor of Kogi State and our dearly departed Charles Balogun, who would later serve as Executive Secretary NISER, we were all ranking officers? Tinu and I send you and Biola our fraternal greetings and pray the Almighty God to continue to keep you and all yours safe. Amen.
