Lack Of Rigour In Governance -By Adekunle Adekoya

Looking back at our experience as a social collective since return to civil rule in 1999, I have come to the conclusion that the Nigerian power elite, irrespective of which faction is in government at any time, simply lacks the rigour required to battle the challenges facing our dear country.

This becomes evident in the campaign rhetoric we get every four years since 1999 — the eternal promises to ensure stable power supply, provision of potable water, motorable roads, good education, and all the other promises that have never been fulfilled, and given the look of things, will never be fulfilled.

What we all face together as a people now is survival. The three basic human needs of food, clothing, and shelter have now become herculean to meet, especially since May 29, when the subsidy on petrol was imperiously removed without due consideration of its rippling and crippling effects.

Having seen the effect on the ability of ordinary people to make ends meet, which was very difficult during the Buhari administration, coupled with the agitation by Organised Labour, government came up with a number of afterthought gestures called palliatives, which, we were told, would “cushion the effects of subsidy removal”. We all know what the palliatives are.

They include asking a whole state of the federation to share 3,000 bags of rice, for example, which, at the distribution centres, came to asking no fewer than 80 people to share one bag of rice. Many people left such distribution centres with just two cups of rice after spending a whole day on the queue. Never in my life have I seen a situation where a government of any country demeans and insults her own people in this manner.

Organised Labour took the gauntlet thrown by subsidy removal and tried to engage government. After a series of meetings, one of the labour centres, the NLC, called a two-day warning strike, which they might not have bothered to call, given its effect. After this, there continued much sabre-rattling by the Labour leaders, including a call for a nationwide strike from midnight of Tuesday October 3.

Many Nigerians suspected the strike would not hold, as it would be aborted one way or the other. In fact, it can safely be deduced that many Nigerians did not want the strike, as they saw it as a needless disruption of scheduled activities in the pursuit of life and living. And true to widespread belief, the labour leaders after a meeting with government officials led by the president’s Chief of Staff, the strike was “suspended for one month”, after reaching an agreement with government, chief of which was a concession by government to do a wage award of N35,000 to federal workers. In addition, the provision of CNG-powered buses was restated, among other palliatives.

My take is that Organised Labour joined the Federal Government in its myopic approach to the entire issue. How many people, relative to the entire population, does the Federal Government employ? The Integrated Personel Payroll Information System, IPPIS, indicates that the Federal Government employs 1,139,633 people in 696 MDAs.

That still leaves more than 198 million people outside the N35,000 wage award. Are the 198 million not Nigerians? Is it only federal workers that are affected by subsidy removal? I am surprised that Labour did not engage government on the cogent points around this issue, which it had highlighted earlier. This is the issue of local refining of crude and getting our refineries to work. If government had been determinedly engaged on these, then Nigerians would know that the pains they are enduring now is akin to the discomfort of a pregnant woman. After birth, the pains will cease, and the body will revert to normal functioning.

But engaging with government on palliatives sends across the signal that the ill-thought palliatives and their poor execution can wipe out the pains of subsidy removal. It is very clear that palliatives can also last not beyond a given time. Pray, how can two cups of rice and CNG-powered buses remove the pains of subsidy removal?

This takes me back to my earlier point that the present generation of the Nigerian power elite lack the rigour to deal with pevailing national issues. There is a reluctance, and if you like, deliberate refusal by the power elite to deal with the issues that have turned the administration of subsidy into the cesspool of corruption that it has become.

The Customs, a dedicated border agency, cannot check smuggling, even when petrol is smuggled across our borders in tankers and jerry cans. Tankers and jerry cans are items that are so big they cannot be hidden from eyes that really desire to see where they are going. In addition, much of the sleaze that attended subsidy administration is done through paper work.

Does it mean Nigeria does not have auditors that can check and cross-check the paper work before spurious payments are approved? Why do we have accountants in government service? Why do we have a Special Frauds Unit in the Police? Why do we have EFCC and ICPC? Why can’t these agencies be made to work to deliver on their mandate? Why must the ordinary citizen be made to pay for inefficient governance?

At times like these, one remembers people like the late Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande, first civilian governor of Lagos who worked round the clock during his tenure to solve inherited problems like massive flooding, a school system that operated shifts for pupils and a massive housing shortage, all of which he resolved within four years. When will people who have passion for the poor like Jakande make it to government houses again? All we see now are starched agbadas and peaked caps all over the place.