Windfalls and the fate of civil servants

This invites nostalgia.

When we were young – and you don’t need to enquire when that was my friend – government was the most important institution in the country. It was big; it was powerful; it had a long reach and every village felt its presence even if no one knew who or what the government was; it was rich, very rich. It did everything for the people. It built roads and hospitals, primary schools, secondary schools, teachers training colleges and universities. It built and maintained rail roads. The NA police was its messenger with the unholy responsibility of ensuring that the village thief or the village poor man who could not pay his poll tax did penance in accordance with the law made by the government. 

The civil servants were the most important people in our limited horizon. Whenever they received their regular monthly pay, we ministered to them in the watering holes because they paid for our drinks. Life was good because the government was good. Life had meaning because the government meant well for the people. Sure, there must have been people who illegally helped themselves to the government treasury but we never heard of corruption. No age or generation lacks thieves and other social deviants. But stealing from government was under the table, not over the table. Those who stole were too ashamed to strut the stage as important or respectable people. Because a good family name counted for something.

We did not know about millionaires because government contracts did not produce instant millionaires born of unexecuted jumbo government contracts duly paid for.

Then things began to change. By the time the train of our national progress chugged along to the second republic, government was no longer a faceless institution imbued with something of a fairy godfather. It had become human with a human face, human ambitions, human failings and human greed. And the civil servants were not that important any more. After all, but for Chief Jerome Udoji, we had come to know their pay was not jumbo but actually a pittance for a thirty-day work. They were no longer the sole payers for the liquid that inebriated. 

Then the governments multiplied from three regions to four regions to twelve states. By 1976, we had 20 governments. And time began to get harder for them, their civil servants and the rest of us. The pay for civil servants became irregular. State governors made it a point to crow each time they managed to pay the salaries of their civil servants. Road projects were abandoned; hospital projects were abandoned; housing projects were abandoned; school projects were abandoned; anything abandonable was abandoned. We did not hear of a government being broke; meaning it was really short of money to meet its basic obligations. Sacrilegious. How, indeed, could an institution so powerful and so rich and which earned all the money on behalf of the people, lack money? But the government being broke gradually became the rule rather than the exception. The wind had begun to blow, exposing the unsightly rear end of the chicken. Nothing has been the same.

Something good came of out of this. A new vocabulary was forged on the anvil of desperation in government circles. The state commissioner for finance issues a cheque in your name, waves it in your face and says, there is no cash backing. See? Cheque ready but no cash to back it up. This used to be a crime under the Financial Instructions. Not any more, apparently. It is part of of the change, change dole.

It led us to this ultimate sorry pass. We have 36 state governments and 774 local government councils in the country. If you add development areas, the number shoots up. It must be a source of immense pride that our country boasts of the largest number of governments in Africa. I doubt if the usually boastful and boisterous Nigerians can afford to take pride in the fact that most of these governments are impecunious.

Twenty-seven of these state governments cannot meet their basic responsibility to their civil servants and pensioners – the men and women who gave their all in their prime in the service of their state and country, are abandoned to the mercilessness of hardship and penury. There are unsettling ironies in this new face of government. The state governments earn more money now than before. Why can’t they pay salaries? Answer: there is a hole in government treasuries into which much of the fund accruing to the state governments simple disappear. A hole in a government treasury is a bad thing, I tell you. This is not corruption; it is simply a disappearing act.

Anyway, the good news is that the wind never fails to fall for these governments. Reporters call this windfall, meaning an unexpected flow of heavy cash into the treasury. The federal government, as the father of the governments, gives them bailout funds to pay the salaries of civil servants and the stipend to the pensioners. Yet the more the federal governments lends a fatherly hand to the states, the more things stay the same for the civil servants and the pensioners. In most of these states with holes in their treasuries, civil servants are owned between eight and 17 months of salary arrears. When a state government’s financial affairs are characterised by abracadabra, they invite tears, not cheers.

A few days ago, the wind fell again – and there is jubilation in many governors’ offices across the land. President Muhammadu Buhari authorised the release of N243,795,465,195.20 to the state governments. This wind fell from something called Paris Club refund. This is the second time the wind fell from this source. Will the state governors make proper use of the money accruing to them and pay their civil servants and pensioners? The first time this sort of payment was made by the Buhari administration, it made no difference to the states that have become chronic debtors to their employees. Nor did the bail out fund bail out the civil servants from their debts to some Shylocks around town.

However, there is a bright side to this. According to a statement from the ministry of finance, “The releases (of the fund) were conditional upon a minimum of 75 per cent being applied to the payment of workers’ salaries and pensions for states that owe salaries and pension.”

Who will ensure the compliance of the governors in the impecunious states with this sensible condition?