It may not be the most palatable new year message for Nigeria’s President Muhamadu Buhari, even in its life saving import. And such is the truth that unless there is a change of heart among serving governors in Nigeria, he is on his own with respect to the reformist agenda of his administration. This condition is not restricted to his party the All Progressives Congress (APC), nor the opposition front comprising the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the main force to be reckoned with. In five months, it will be May and time to mark the second anniversary of the administration. Whether it will be marked with garlands or grudges, remains a matter that the administration needs to start bothering about at this time. However, in whatever manner the administration decides to package itself, one factor that will prove decisive remains the role of state governors, whose individual administrative activities will determine the failure or success indices for Buhari at the centre.
The Constitution which the President and the state governors publicly swore on oath to defend clearly provides in several portions that the states should mirror the general direction of the federal government in its actualisation of the provisions of Section 16 under the Fundamental Principles of State Policy. The provision assigns to the President and governors the task of serving as managers of the economies of their respective constituencies.
However, the daily run of affairs in the country actually accentuates the fact that Nigerians do not differ in tribe and tongue alone, but even in the administrative styles of the various state governors. Every state boundary means another system, leaving the centre as the only place where standard behaviour in governance is possible. This is therefore an area where the President needs to build capital towards fostering a convergence of the federal government and the states, if his reform measures shall cross the boundaries of the federal capital territory.
Incidentally this is the budget season for the country, and by implication another round of open plunder of public resources; just as much of the fiscal culture in Nigeria usually amounts to. Citing the tradition of indicative budgeting in Nigeria’s governance terrain, the various budget submissions comprise to a large extent copious financial provisions for items that were never intended to be executed.
While space may fail this column to offer a detailed appraisal of the budgets of the various states in terms of their convergence with the federal budget, a basic issue such as the remuneration of civil servants who run the very machinery of government in terms of salaries, pensions and gratuities remains instructive. The historical attitude of some governors to this statutory obligation has left much to be desired.
A typical example is the complement of tales of the absurd associated with the Imo state governor Rochas Okorocha. Just some months ago he shocked many Nigerians with his recommendation that civil servants in the state should adopt a three-day work-week in order to spend the rest of the week in farming. As he had reasoned, the government would then pay them for three day per week and thereby reduce the salary bill. Not done with the oddity of that proposal, of the 24 months pension arrears which the state government owed its workers, he offered to pay 13 months while the workers forfeit the balance. Later, his government proposed to pay only 40% of the total amount involved and went ahead to distribute forms among the pensioners in order to impose on them an unconditional undertaking to forfeit the 60% balance of their hard-earned money. As at the last count, in response to his efforts at denigrating the public sector workers, pensioners in the state went on a public demonstration in Owerri, protesting not just the incidence of arrears owed them, but more importantly the manner of resolution of their plight by the government.
As if to accentuate that the governor may not be alone in the syndrome of Quixotic disposition to governance, the state’s Commissioner of information Mr Nshirim went to town to spread his principal’s version of gall-laced aspersions on the entire Ibo race when he lamented that 70% of Ibos were not disposed to read newspapers, nor listen to radio, and ostensibly do not watch television as well. At least he did not say that they only watched African Magic films on television. Mr Nshirim did not stop there but went on to lambast pastors that apparently did not see eye to eye with the Okorocha administration.
This author was disposed to expect a rebuttal by the Commissioner of such patent misinformation. At least he would have simply pleaded being misquoted by the report, even if such enterprise flies in the face of the truth, as is the tradition of many a government spokesman in Nigeria. Since no such counter claim has been offered it becomes convenient to assume that indeed Obinna Nshirim said so. The issue here is not to contest whatever grouse the Commissioner may be helping his principal to bellyache over, but to highlight the unprogressive choice of the government to chase darkness instead of light.
Painfully, Mr Okorocha is not alone in this misguide enterprise of denying public servants their due wages and other benefits in the name of governors seeking comfort zones for themselves. Mr Rauf Aregbesola – governor of Osun state has a record which dwarfs Okorocha’s of muzzling public servants through denying them their salaries and benefits. Against the backdrop of a long running and scandalous rape of the rights of workers, Aregbesola recently announced that at last he had cleared the workers arrears, even as there is evidence that all is not well with his claim. Meanwhile workers in Benue State may have to wait until the rosy days of 2017 to receive their arrears, as governor Samuel Ortom justified owing the state public servants with the argument that he was not in office just to pay workers salary. Even the poster boy of rabid opposition to Buhari in office – Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State, is in the red as far as payment of salaries is concerned.
Seen in context, nobody in his or her right senses expects any governor to pay public sector workers from own pocket. Rather the mandate of leadership at the level of a governor is to lead the state into higher levels of fulfilment including building capacity to pay government bills including workers salaries and benefits, contractors payments and any other form of indebtedness, as and when due. This is the letter and spirit of Section 16 of the Constitution.
Put succinctly, when all that a state governor in Nigerian can be engaged in is paying salaries and other benefits, then the elevated position of governorship has lost its glory and relevance. Thanks to information technology, these days all that is needed to pay salaries is the Automatic Teller Machine (ATM). Has Rochas and all the other governors in the country, whose main occupation in their states has been the issue of paying and owing salaries, pensions and gratuities, reduced themselves to mere ATM facilities? If so, would it then be wrong to refer to them as ‘ATM governors’?
Where then are the provisions of the Constitution which they are on oath to defend and which clearly defines for them a mandate to lead their various states into economic prosperity. For the way and manner many governors conduct themselves in office, it remains doubtful if they actually read the whole Constitution, and not some sections of it that suit their fancy.
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