The Osun belt-tightening measures -By Alabi Olufemi Adekunle

“Every adversity in life makes us bitter or better, every problem comes to break us or make us. The choice is ours whether we become victor or victim” – Anil Sinha.

Governor Aregbesola of Osun State

Adversity can be turned into opportunities if only there is a determination to do it. As the quote above goes, adversity has the tendency to bring out the latent talents which would have otherwise remained dormant in prosperous circumstances.
It is a thin line between people who make use of adversity and break records and those who breakdown due to adversity.

Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending. This may be triggered by various events, such as a financial crisis, an external trade shock, an adverse supply shock or the bursting of an economic bubble.

At a point in time, the economy of most countries in the world was affected, a period of global economic slowdown or declining economic output.

It’s no longer news that most states in Nigeria are seriously challenged and state governments, up until now, are finding it hard to meet up with their major obligations including payments of salaries and pensions and embarking on capital projects.

For some time, the revenue accruing into states in Nigeria’s treasury has been dwindling steadily, owing to the glut in the international oil market.

Due to the continuous decline in monthly revenue from Abuja, there are calls from all angles that states begin to look inward on how they can boost their finances to meet up with the challenges of paying salaries and provide basic amenities for their citizens.

For Nigeria, the state of affairs at the moment is not new. The oil boom had given way to oil doom in the middle of the 1970s, as the glut in the international oil market sent the oil prices tumbling and crashing. With this came the fall of many economies, Nigeria inclusive. A mono-product economy, an oil-based country could not withstand the shocks associated with the global recession.

Several governments that have served the nation came up with different cushioning measures to salvage the situation. Alhaji Shehu Shagari as the President of Nigeria initiated a series of austerity measures and stabilization policies in 1981.
General Buhari and Idiagbon in the 80’s introduced a comprehensive package of austerity measures, where it closed the country’s land borders for a period to identify and expel illegal alien workers and placed severe restrictions on imports and heavy penalties on smuggling and foreign exchange offenses.

There was the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida that introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which promoted floating interest rates, relaxation of the Indigenization Decrees, controlled the rate of growths of money supply by squeezing domestic credit, placed an embargo on appointments, froze wages and de-regulated the economy in general. At the same time, fund to the educational sector was cut by about 35%, schools were closed or merged, subsidies were removed from social services, petroleum and related products, and emphasis was placed on regular debt servicing.

The present situation calls for toughness on the part of the states of the federation, “tough times don’t last, tough people do”. To stay buoyant, they must look internally on how they will steer the ship of their state through the stormy weather and land at a safe harbour. Recently, the Government of Osun in a bid to stay afloat in the face of the paucity of funds, has introduced some belt-tightening measures to cope with the current challenges posed by the development.

The Governor of the State, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, having brainstormed with the critical stakeholders had agreed that certain measures be implemented. Some of these include the suspension of overtime allowances to workers; the creation of Osun Teachers’ Establishment Office, automatic conversion of University graduate teachers as Education Officers, while National Certificate on Education holders shall be Education Assistants all over the state.

Other measures introduced by Aregbesola include certificate-based transfers and the diligent collection of Internally Generated Revenue to achieve an exponential increase in the IGR in the state for government to meet its financial obligations to workers and people of Osun.

The state held that it is embarking on the measures to ensure liquidity of the state and to safeguard regular payment of salaries. Of course, the government’s suspension of the payment of 25-35 percent overtime allowance being enjoyed by staff of some agencies of government are likely to be frowned at. But, in the face of the dwindling resources, what choices are open to the government which must carry on with basic duties of governance?

Under the new regime, only teachers deployed to remote towns and villages will continue to enjoy any form of extra allowances in Osun.

In line with its reforms, the governor approved the establishment of the State Teachers Establishment which would be responsible for the appointments, promotions, discipline and administration of salaries and allowances of elementary and middle schools’ teachers with district offices across the state for proper monitoring activities.

Osun also approved that the office of the Auditor-General for the State and Local Government shall henceforth verify the payroll of the entire workforce of government two weeks before the computation of salary on monthly basis by conducting visitation to all government offices.  Verifying the payroll every month is part of the measures aimed at cleaning up the payroll and removing ghost workers while staff verification will also help government to do away with overstuffed personnel, eliminate laziness and idleness, block all avenues for embezzlement and leakages and make government work.

Expectedly, the government of Osun may have drawn flak for these bold moves but as in many of the initiatives, it had boldly faced, states wont have alternatives but to follow this track if they must survive the blowing wind of economic crisis.

One of the major obstacles to development in Nigeria is the massive loss of revenues through corruption, tax evasion among others.  Other state governments should emulate Osun by trying to plug all leakages in collectible revenues and ensure full and transparent disclosure of same. It is in this light that the electronic payment of all revenues must be adopted if all forms of crafty means of funds conversions are to be averted.

Under the new belt-tightening measures, the office of the Head of Service shall in earnest begin the collation of names of officers in the core civil service and local government services with certificates in Agriculture, Medical Sciences and Education for immediate re-deployment to where their knowledge and skills would be relevant.

Agriculture remains the mainstay of the country’s economy before the discovery of oil in Nigeria. The discovery of oil affected agriculture so much that people played down agricultural activities to the detriment of the nation’s economy.

-Adekunle, a journalist, writes from Ibadan, via bubblerlomo@yahoo.com