The government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as led, last week, did as governments in the country are wont to do in recent years. In the face of an economic crisis of no mean proportion ravaging the land, which predicament was aggravated by the government, the best the same government could do in the name of tackling the nagging issue was to throw money at the problem. Money that was borrowed. Money that will be repaid down the line by hapless citizens who barely got a farthing of the hefty sum scrounged from abroad, or indeed had no whiff of the money.
The aphorism that habit dies hard was amply reinforced last week when the government released N185 billion to the states to share to citizens. Apparently, the money splash was the best initiative the All Progressives Congress (APC) government under Bola Tinubu could take to address the existential threat posed to Nigerians by hunger, immobility, inflation and gross impecuniosity.
How the Tinubu-led government arrived at the decision that throwing a token at Nigerians is a viable means of showing its seriousness in addressing the deepening economic woes of the country remains baffling. And to imagine that the APC largely brought Nigeria to this pass. The money-sharing policy, whether as a stop-gap initiative or whatever, speaks of bigger economic danger for the country. Where is the promise of hope in this puerile approach?
The sheer lack of creativity in the money sharing outreach, not to talk of the wide room for misappropriation of the allocated sum of money to state governments, rankles. The culture of government throwing money at problems, in the guise of addressing serious issues may not be new in Nigeria, but the present programme appears to be the most transparently dubious of these tendencies. It draws, sadly, from the dubious template of the immediate past government. It is all APC, anyway.
The allocation of N5billion apiece to state governments for onward sharing to citizens, is, without doubt, nothing more than a mid-month bonanza to state governors. How on earth does this translate into a sustainable economic programme in an economy with poor productivity status and an inflation rate that is literally running away? The Arewa Consultative Forum’s outright dismissal of the N185billion largess to states as shambolic, can easily be understood. Interestingly, a number of state governors are reported to have complained about the money; not that they do not want it, or that they are opposed to the policy. Their complaint reportedly concerned the provision that states will be expected to refund the money down the line. As it were, the state governors will prefer the money to be outright benefaction. They may yet get what they desire. They often do.
What level of economic development analysis and impact projection culminated in the design of this brazen broad day corruption-prone enterprise? The chances of a chunk of the N5billion per state, if not all of the amount, entering ‘voice mail’, to adopt the common Nigerian parlance, ought to be apparent to those who cobbled up this money-sharing programme. It depends anyway, on what the actual intention of the exercise is. It certainly cannot be a meaningful economic relief to citizens.
In any case, what register of citizens or economic classification of the needy, will the state governments use to distribute the money to their citizens? Is this not an opportunity for the governors to literally corral all wards and all towns along the political line of their choice? The Tinubu-led government having earlier discredited and dismissed a phantom register which the Muhammadu Buhari government was said to have used to execute its own money-sharing scam, it remains curious now what other register is available for this latest trip to the same destination.
Newspaper reports last weekend listed less than ten states as lacking the requisite structures for distributing palliatives. It will be interesting to know of any reliable structures and data available to any state or the federal government, for such logistic need in the country.
There can be no doubt at all that the N5 billion allocated to the respective states will come in handy for most of the governors, each according to their respective needs and political agenda. For the governors who will be statutorily leaving office in the next few months, Christmas just arrived early this year. The money will be useful in tidying up few commitments before heading away from government house. For the ones who have elections in the next few months, a better omen for the challenge ahead could not have manifested in any other form. Collection of whatever pittance they will offer the people, will surely be in exchange for their voter’s card.
It is only in Nigeria and under APC, that you see governors going for re-election in three months and you hand over N5billion to them for onward distribution to their citizens as palliative. They surely, will do so, the way the APC-controlled Senate under Buhari appropriated a princely sum for Kogi state government for road rehabilitation, barely few months to an election in which the party’s state governor was seeking re-election. Of course, the governor subsequently paved all the roads of Kogi state in gold. Sleazy!
Of course, there are a number of other governors whose emergence at the prickly 2023 general election is presently being contested before the tribunal. This category of governors will definitely hasten up to share out their own bonanza before the judgment day. You never can say. Ditto for the resident at Aso Rock. This unsettled status of a number of occupants of government houses across the country makes the enterprise of securing loan and sharing it out supposedly to citizens as palliatives a very worrisome development.
It is not clear now whether the sharing formula for the borrowed money is different from the initial outline that set aside N70 billion for the National Assembly of 460 citizens and N10 billion or so for the judiciary. After the initial public uproar about the government laid out plan for sharing out the borrowed money, chances are that the government is very much on its original trajectory. That is the way Nigerian democracy works; the people have the right to make noise and the government has the right to ignore the people and do whatever it wants to do.
In all this, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and other labour unions, representing the working class of the country, were not even consulted by the government. From all indications, the government Tinubu leads, sees Labour as a nuisance. The government, with its absolutist tendencies, has not hidden its contempt for Labour. Were the mindset different, the government would have had meaningful consultation with Labour, leading possibly to much more meaningful economic and enduring social plans that will serve majority of citizens, different and better than this hullabaloo (yes!) over allocation of N5billion to citizens of each state, which money, you can bet, an overwhelming majority of Nigerians will not smell.