Tag: responsibilities

When the original 13 colonies in British North America revolted against the Crown in 1776, their battle cry was no taxation without representation which was saying they would pay if their government was elected by them and responsible to them. The British loss of America was due to her refusal to understand this ordinary meaning of democracy. They did not quite learn a lesson from this experience because they repeated the same mistake in all their colonies and dependencies from Canada to the Indian subcontinent, Africa and Australasia. One after the other, the process of decolonization was completed whether Britain liked it or not. Colonies and protectorates have become history except in a few islands where there are too few people to make independence and self-government sustainable.

Self-government was conceded to the western and eastern regions of Nigeria in 1957 and the northern region in 1959. Nigeria as a whole became independent 55 years ago on October 1, 1960. We are expected to govern ourselves on the basis of government of the people by the people for the people with government expenditure provided by the people through taxation which could either be direct or indirect. Citizenship goes with responsibility. The fact that we in Nigeria have had our government run on funds accruing to us largely from taxes and sale of hydrocarbon resources has made corruption rampant since revenue of government is not derived from our labour and sweat.

In most modern democracies citizens do not only contribute money to run the state, they also offer themselves as soldiers in periods of national emergencies. The idea of a citizen army was fundamental to republican democracy as enunciated and practiced by revolutionary France through the levee en masse as distinct from the old type of armies controlled and commanded by the old aristocracy. The upshot of this piece is that if people desire to govern themselves, they must be ready to discharge their own part of the bargain by properly funding the government. This also enjoins the people to take possession of the government through transparent process of democratic elections. The people must ensure that those who claim to represent the people are legitimately elected on the basis of universal suffrage of one person one vote without any chance of rigging as had often been the case in our country. As we often say in Nigeria, people must assert and defend their democratic rights by not only voting at elections, but also protecting their votes until they are counted and collated.

All these are easier said than practiced because many times those who control the levers of power in the state have sometimes manipulated the organs of government to pervert the cause of electoral justice by depriving people of their legitimate rights to elect their own government. It is this kind of scenario that made John Locke to suggest that the people have the right to revolt and change the government because as he argued, government is based on contract between the ruler and the ruled and if and when one party breaks the terms of the contract, the covenant binding the two parties is therefore revoked and setting up a new government will be in order. Not only this, governments are set up for the good of the people and as the American Declaration of Independence  claimed that governments are set up to guarantee certain fundamental and inalienable rights such as the rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. In other words government is a serious business and should not be taken lightly and those who offer themselves for service must be those who are called and not those with Buccaneering intention of going into government for personal pecuniary self-aggrandizement. When governments are properly set up even the major religions of the world say government must be supported because God is not a God of chaos because without government man would revert to a state of nature in which according to Thomas Hobbes life will be short nasty and brutish without any form of civilization. In other words it is in the interest of right thinking people to preserve government.

What is government? It is characterized by a functioning bureaucracy answerable to the executive which also monopolizes all the organs of legitimate means of violence such as the police and the armed forces. The power of the executive arm of government is moderated and checked by the legislature constituted by the elected representatives of the people and empowered to make laws for the good governance of the state. These two arms are complemented by the judiciary which arbitrates cases between the people and the government and ensures legality in the affairs of state, as well as ensuring legality of relations among the people and various corporations and commercial activities in the state. Functional government is therefore expensive; however the existence of a functioning government is the hall mark of civilization.

I am going into all this to establish the fact that we have no alternative but to find ways and means to support our various governments in spite of dwindling resources available to the state following essentially what is the collapse of the global oil and gas market and consequent reduction in national revenue. For a long time our various governments have had to rely on unearned income from commission charged on oil and gas production. Taxes were hardly paid except by those earning salaries. The vast majority of our people paid no taxes at all. This would have been excusable if all who did not pay taxes were poor. But this included the rich entrepreneurs and captains of industry and commerce as well as big time farmers and proprietors, all kinds of institutions and medical facilities as well as all kinds of NGOS and sectarian bodies. There is a need for all states to levy property taxes on property owners and the burden of this would fall on those able to bear it with the proviso that those living in their own homes would pay less than taxes levied on leased out properties as currently the case in Lagos. This is the only way states will be solvent and not rely on borrowed loans to pay civil servants. These times call for everybody to fulfil their obligations to the state by paying their taxes.  It is the duty of government to ensure that all taxable adults pay taxes and that nobody has the right to enjoy national and municipal facilities without paying for them. There are no more free lunches anywhere. Whatever is good costs money be they be good schools, hospitals, roads, railways, communication and aviation facilities etc.; no one should be free-loaders at the expense of the state. There is no point for anybody demonstrating and demanding free education at all levels. There is nowhere in the world where that is available. Not in the USA, China, Cuba or anywhere. We can only talk about free universal primary education and one hopes our various governments would not only provide this but strengthen it. The travesty of what goes for primary schools in Nigeria need to change. I have always advocated that primary school buildings should be as good as university buildings as one finds abroad and in Southern Africa. The present sheds and huts called primary schools should give way to aesthetically architectured buildings. Primary schools should be so attractive that young people would want to keep coming there. The pupils there must be fed once in the afternoon every day. The present situation of children of the elite avoiding schooling with the children of the masses would have to give way correspondingly with the improvement in primary schools. What applies in the case of primary schools must apply to the secondary level where parents would have to contribute even if minimally to the cost of education at that level. Higher education would have to be paid for if standards must be maintained. Scholarships must be given to children of the poor by their local governments.

How we finance government in a time like this will require financial and administrative ingenuity. The size of government would have to be cut. Do we really need the horde of legislators at local, state and national levels? Must they also be full time? Do we need a bi-cameral National Assembly? Do we honestly need the horde of bureaucrats administering underdevelopment? Do we need 40 ministers and the existing ministries all over the place? Do we need 36 federal universities and 40 state universities that are poorly funded and requiring heavy administrative costs? Do will need the same number of poorly-run polytechnics turning out unemployable young people? We have so many questions which we must begin to pose because of the need for rational decisions to be taken if the purpose of government is to be achieved.

We cannot solve our problems in the course of this government or even in our own lives but we must begin in order to hand over to the next generation a legacy that will justify that we once lived in this environment or else our children and grand children will curse us and they will be right to do so. Government is too important to be left in the hands of those who are in government. We as guardians of the present must play our part by being watchful and ensuring that government would not depart or deviate from the well trodden path of good governance, political and fiscal rectitude.