By Raymond Mordi
Since the return to civil rule in 1999, Nigeria has experienced stability in government, as the military is now confined to its traditional role of defending the nation against external aggression. But, the country is groaning under the weight of the bloated size of government at different levels. Deputy Political Editor RAYMOND MORDI examines how high cost of governance is thwarting progress and how the federating units are being crippled by a dependency syndrome and impunity on the part of elected officials.
In spite of the numerous shortcomings of Nigeria’s current democratic dispensation, it is remarkable that the country has just marked 20 years of unbroken civil rule. During this period, the country witnessed the first civilian-to-civilian transfer of power from one party to another, for the first time in its 59 years of existence. From all indications, military involvement in politics appears to have become an aberration.
But this comes at a huge cost; as each year, so much money is voted for recurrent expenditure, while a not too significant percentage is earmarked for capital expenditure requirements in critical areas of infrastructure, health, education and other key sectors that enhance the quality of the life of the people. Perhaps, it is for the above reason that Nigeria’s system of government has been described as “feeding bottle federalism”. The country runs a federal system of government, with 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (Abuja), modeled after that of the United States of America USA). As a result, it operates a presidential system of government, with a bicameral legislature; all of which have dire consequences for the money spent on administrative processes, otherwise known as the cost of governance. Besides, the 1999 Constitution makes it mandatory for each state to be represented by a minister at the Federal Executive Council (FEC), but successive administrations have always exceeded that requirement, by appointing at least 43 ministers; meaning that some states are represented by more than one minister.
Too many parastatals, agencies
Besides, Nigeria has hundreds of parastatals that contribute little or nothing to the country’s development. For instance, the country has a full-fledged Ministry of Science and Technology and 58 research institutes. Yet, it imports toothpicks, pencil and handkerchief from China.
Meanwhile, all the parastatals, boards, authorities commissions and commercial ventures, in addition to full time civil servants manning them, have boards of directors earning salaries and fat allowances at the tax-payers’ expense. In saner climes, boards of organisations are supposed to formulate policies for corporate governance for the management and staff to run the outfits, but in Nigeria board appointments are seen as “settlement” for retiring politicians, party stalwarts, friends and well-wishers of government.
Many concerned Nigerians believe that the high cost of governance is the reason why the country has been categorized as “the poverty capital of the word”, because it is burning its candle from both ends with the over-bloated system of government it is operating. With the 36 states and the FCT as the federating units, as well as the presidential system of government adopted since 1979, Nigeria has been running a political economy that has become a drainpipe on the coffers of the nation. The system and the ravaging attitude of politicians have encouraged greed, selfishness and corruption on the part of politically exposed persons.
For instance. at the federal level, the number of personnel required to run the system is too large for an economy that is still struggling to find its feet. The list includes the President, the Vice President (VP), about 43 ministers and about 130 personal aides, as well as 426 ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) whose officials are all drawing mouth-watering salaries and allowances from the national treasury. This year alone, the Federal Government budgeted the sum of N4.72 trillion for recurrent expenditures, out of a budget of N8.92 trillion, with only N2.87 trillion allocated for capital expenditure.
For example, the President, his wife, the VP and some close associates have a retinue of aides that are on government payroll. The President and his men had had about 127 personal aides during the first term; most of whom were reappointed for the second term. These aides, who are mostly political appointees, include the Chief of Staff to the President; Deputy Chief of Staff to the VP; Principal Secretary to the President; Principal Secretary to the VP; Special Advisers (SAs); Senior Special Advisers (SSAs); Special Assistants; and Personal Assistants. Some ministers, such as the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice and the Minister of Information, as well as the Chief of Staff and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation equally have some aides attached to their offices.
A similar structure is in place at the state level. The list here includes the governors, their deputies, about 20 commissioners on the average, a horde of SAs and advisers, hundreds of MDAs with thousands of civil servants on government payroll. Most state governors have an average of 100 political appointees, including commissioners.
Meanwhile, most of the governors say they do not have the funds to pay the new minimum wage of N30,000 to civil servants. But no expense is spared when it comes to political appointments. For instance, Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State recently announced his plan to appoint 800 aides, in addition to the 4,000 appointments already made by his administration.
Umahi made the remark when he announced 200 additional appointments, in spite of the initial 185 Executive Assistants (EAs), Senior Technical Assistants (STAs) and Technical Assistants (TAs) already engaged by the administration. He said: “We would be getting about 800 EAs, STAs and TAs by the end of this meeting and from this moment, the task of making similar appointments is taken from me and given to the people from the ward level.
“This means that we will appoint three more TAs from each ward and the stakeholders will sit and nominate two, while the party – the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – will nominate one. The criterion used was that not all the past appointees returned but 80 per cent of the appointments included former appointees, especially those who did well. The EAs will receive N150,000 (N100,000 salary and N50, 000 for overhead costs), while the STAs will receive N120,000 (N80,000 salaries and N40, 000 for overhead cost). The TAs will receive N100 (N70,000 salaries and N30,000) for overhead cost. We would approach the House of Assembly on the issue of liaison officers, to bring their salaries to N60,000 in order to create additional ones, especially for women (widows). We intend to have two liaison officers in the wards – one for men and one for women and if you add party executives at the ward level, we will have about 4,000 appointees.”
This sort of wastefulness is replicated at the legislative arm of each level of government – federal, state and local. At the federal level, the legislature is bicameral (it has two chambers), with 360 members in the lower chamber, otherwise known as the House of Representatives, and 109 in the upper chamber, which is called the Senate. The legislators at the National Assembly themselves have hundreds of SAs and administrative staff, all earning billions of naira in salaries and allowances from government.
Impunity of state governors
The bloated size of government is compounded by corruption and a pervasive culture of impunity involving elected and appointed officials. For instance, state governors are always travelling abroad at public expense, under the guise of looking for investment. Besides, most state governments use state funds to sponsor a retinue of aides, party supporters and friends on pilgrimages to Mecca and Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, many states are groaning under the weight of their annual budgets. But, based on the endowments of each entity, there is no state in the country that cannot be financially self-sufficient, if the various governments put on their thinking caps. Apart from Lagos, Ogun and Rivers states, most of the remaining federating units did not generate much of their revenues internally in 2018, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
In that year, Lagos State retained its top position, with N382.1 billion IGR, which translates to 59.5 per cent of its total revenue; it received N260bn from the Federation Account within the period. Lagos is followed by Ogun State, which generated IGR of N84.55bn, representing 47.6 per cent of total revenue; and Rivers State with N112bn IGR, which amounts to 32 per cent of its total revenue; the state received a federal allocation of N237bn in 2018. Thus, aside from the three states, others rely on handouts from the Federation Account for their survival; the ratio of their monthly allocations from the centre and their IGR is in the region of 80:20.
It was former Central Bank governor, now Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, that brought the issue to national limelight during the Goodluck Jonathan era that a situation where the country is spending 70 per cent of its resources for payment of salaries and entitlements of public servants does not augur well for her development. The huge recurrent expenditure, at the expense of capital expenditure, is the reason why many Nigerians believe the 36-state structure is unsuitable for the growth of the country and are insisting on restructuring, to make the current six geo-political zones the federating units.
Their reasoning is that one of the cardinal objectives of any serious government is to improve on the living standard of its citizens. This, it is said, can only be achieved when capital projects are executed and social amenities are provided. In Nigeria since 1999, the federal and state governments have only improved on the living standard of very few people — members of the executive, the legislature and other appointed public office holders.
Lawmakers’ jumbo salaries
The debate on what lawmakers earn monthly has been a recurring one and varying figures have been bandied as their monthly take home pay. In June 2018, however, Senator Shehu Sani, who represented Kaduna Central in the 8th National Assembly, gave an insight into what he and his colleagues earn monthly, when he revealed that a senator receives N13.5 million monthly as “running cost”. In an interview with TheNews, Sani said the running cost does not include a N700,000 monthly consolidated salary and allowances which they also receive. The controversy generated by the disclosure only lasted a short while, despite the clear absurdity of the matter.
Against this background, Senator Rochas Okorocha said the obvious when he called for a reduction in the number of legislators representing each state at the National Assembly recently, as a way of reducing cost. The senator, who represents Imo West on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), had advocated for one senator and three House of Representative members from each state, saying this move would help cut cost and ensure effective representation. He made the remark, while briefing reporters, against the background of the observation during plenary at the Red Chamber that the nation’s annual revenue generation could not fund the recently approved Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP), because crude oil was the major source of income.
Over the years, the cost of governance has become a vexed issue that has continued to dominate socio-economic discourse. But, it has been more talk and less action. In an effort to prune the rising cost of governance, former President Goodluck Jonathan had, in August, 2011, set up a Presidential Committee on Rationalization and Restructuring of Federal Government’s Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies. The committee, which was headed by former Head of Service of the Federation, Stephen Orosanye, had recommended a reduction the present 263 statutory agencies to 161. The panel also recommended that 38 agencies should be abolished; that 52 should be merged and that 14 others be reverted to departments in various ministries. The agencies and parastatals employ varying numbers of workers estimated at 30,000 nationwide.
But, since most of these institutions are creations of the law, the recommendation has continued to gather dust on the shelves, because its implementation requires a strong political will to carry out. Last month, President Muhammadu Buhari was reported to have directed the Federal Executive Council to deliberate on the Oronsaye report, to guide the administration’s bid to reform the public service. The Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), Dasuki Arabi, was quoted as saying that the President has put him on notice on the matter. Arabi said the BPSR is awaiting the approval of the Federal Government for the full implementation of the report, to give meaning to the ongoing reforms in the public service.
As the saying goes, governments come and go, but the civil service remains to provide stability to the system. Civil servants, it is said, provide the foundation for corruption and bad governance. In the opinion of Obafemi Peters, a legal practitioner, civil servants who prepare the budget estimates and implement the appropriation act are the ones who reveal the loopholes in the system to political appointees and help them to stash away public money.
Peters added: “They frustrate the achievement of budget implementation milestones and when the budget fails, mop up the ‘unspent funds’ into their pockets and cook the books, to comply with due process. They are the ones who sabotage every attempt to introduce financial best practices into the system to plug the loopholes through which they salt away money. They look like the innocent flower, but appear to be the serpent under it. So, any meaningful reform should therefore begin at the civil service.”
Experts have also listed quality leadership, plugging of wastefulness in the system, providing incentives for the federating units to lead in generating revenue and reducing the number of states as essential. The key submission was that the country’s federal system has been distorted by the military, by creating more states and by instituting ‘unitary-federalism’.
The National Chairman the of the Unity Progressive Congress (UPP), Chief Chekwas Okorie, said one of the ways of plugging the wastefulness in the system is by tweaking the country’s federal system, to tackle some of the problems that are bedeviling the system. For instance, he called for the adoption a unicameral legislature. His words: “Nigeria can do with a unicameral legislature. In that case, we would need a National Assembly that is more widely spread than the Senate. We are looking at scrapping the Senate completely and having a House of Representatives with a uniform number of members like the Senate; it could be nine, because some states have more than nine. With that, we would have succeeded in reducing the number of lawmakers. In addition, membership of the National Assembly should be made part time; to reduce the allowances that is gulping all our resources.”
Okorie, however, posited that the more pragmatic solution will be to alter the governance structure or to restructure the polity by reducing the federating units to six and giving them more powers. His words: “The number of items on the Exclusive List has concentrated everything at the centre, including employment. When we restructure, a situation where recurrent expenditure makes up over 70 per cent of the annual budget would be prevented. If we restructure and restrict the Federal Government to functions such as finance, defence, foreign affairs, customs and excise and other national issues like that, we would have succeeded in making governance nearer to the people.
“Luckily for Nigeria, there is no state in the country that is not endowed with sufficient material and human resources to survive and make contribution to national development. Some people seem to think that a situation like that would make some states to grow faster than others; as if we are supposed to grow at the same pace.
“So, the idea of meeting to talk about minimum wage after a number of years would be something that would be handled at the state level. Some states in America pay much higher than other states, because the cost of living in those states is also higher. This is the way I think Nigeria will experience an exponential growth in development and also reduce the cost of governance to what each federating unit can bear. Also, when this is done, the clamour by various zones to produce the president will reduce.
“The way things are now does not encourage many states to be creative; they merely wait for the end of the month to go to Abuja and receive their monthly allocation. When we decentralise governance, everything will fall into place.”
Need for re-orientation
There is also the view that the problem is not so much the system but the way it is being practised. Observers say there is need for a reorientation, to force politicians do away with greed and personal aggrandizement. For instance, once somebody is elected into an office, he begins to think of buying a fleet of cars, buying or building new houses, siphoning some money into foreign bank accounts, marry a new wife and so on and so forth. Nigerians generally need to change their orientation and live within their means. Elder statesman and Second Republic politician Alhaji Tanko Yakasai subscribes to the above view. He said the solution is not an easy one, because what destroyed Nigeria is bad politics. The elder statesman said the problem is more deep-seated in the mindset of every Nigerian and that it is not just a question of the system of government adopted. He said what has brought Nigeria to its present state borders on the distortion of the concept of political leadership and the role of political parties in the entire set up.
His words: “Let me illustrate: In other countries, people choose politics as a career and the electorate respect them for that, because they love their country and have decided to commit themselves to the improvement of the welfare and security of the people. This is the way things used to be in Nigeria during the colonial era and the First Republic.
“Now, after years of military dictatorship, people who vie for elective positions use money to purchase the patronage of other members of the party, from top to bottom. So, people are elected without the necessary quality for leadership. As a result, when they come to office, their preoccupation is usually how to recoup their ‘investment’ and even make profit. In the process, they kill their normal business, because they no longer see it as a source of livelihood, as they are making enough money from politics.
“That sort of orientation also killed the quality of political leadership. For instance, people become party leaders, not because they merit it, but because they have money to pay for the position. At the end of the day, the party is not run by politicians, but by businessmen. The result is that the political parties we have today have no programmes to change the country for the better. So, everything in Nigeria has been distorted. That is the main problem; it is not just a question of the system we are operating.”
Nevertheless, Yakasai, 93, has not given up hope that things would change for the better. He said: “However, I am still hoping that things will be better, but I doubt if people like me can live to witness it. My prayer for Nigeria is a complete overhaul of the system; a new orientation where service delivery will be the watchword and the emergence of fresh political parties that can drive the new vision.
“Such parties will be led by politicians who will dedicate themselves to the service of their country. After they are elected as party leaders, they will look for competent people to nominate to fly the party’s flag in different elective positions.
“With that, we will be able to introduce policies. The way things are now, you can’t introduce policies, because the very people that are supposed to drive it are the ones that will kill such initiatives. This is because they have not come to serve, but to realize their personal ambitions.
But, Yakasai is hopeful. He said: “Why am I hopeful that things may change in the future? There was a time when the Philippines was worse than Nigeria. I knew when Indonesia was destroyed by its rulers, and when Brazil was nothing to write home about. Similarly, a country like South Korea, which is today ranked among the industrialised nations, was once battered the way Nigeria is battered today. It took the intervention of Park Chung-hee, an army general who led the country from 1961 to 1979, to reorient political leadership in the country.
“Park staged a coup, but later transformed into a civilian leader and established new political parties. Today, he is credited with playing a pivotal role in the development of South Korean economy. One of his main goals was to end the poverty of South Korea, and lift the country up from being a Third World economy to a First World economy via etatist methods.
“As military head of state, he compiled a list of those that looted the country’s wealth and where they stashed it. Afterwards, he started calling them one after another. He would tell them something like, you held this position between this time and that time. When you entered office, this was the amount of money you had in the bank, but after five or six years in public office, this is what you have in the United States, this is what you have in Germany and so on. I know you stole them, but I am not going to confiscate the money. If you are prepared to sign an agreement and surrender the money to Korean authorities to invest the way it deems appropriate, the money will remain yours and you will be entitled to so much share of the profit. Most of them accepted the offer, but others who rejected it were given the opportunity to hire lawyers to explain how they came by such stupendous wealth.”
He said that was how a large chunk of the stolen money was brought back to Korea. He addwd: “All the big companies that you hear of in Korea today, iron and steel companies, automobile companies, shipping lines and those manufacturing electronics, were established with the money confiscated through the above process.”
The elder statesman said President Muhammadu Buhari enjoyed enormous goodwill of Nigerians in 2015 when he was elected for his first term, but appears to have squandered same today on the alter of politics. He said: “No other Nigerian leader has enjoyed that kind of goodwill; people believed in Buhari like a prophet. When he eventually got it, he didn’t know what to do. For instance, he could not appoint his ministers until after six months. Even after he was re-elected, it still took him months just to re-appoint the same people he worked with in his first term.
Yakasai’s argument is that Buhari ought to have used his goodwill to make more far-reaching changes. He said though Buhari has initiated some changes, it is still business as usual to a large extent.
