No summary may better describe governance as a serious business than a 2012 LinkedIn publication by SanmiAdekola published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/governance-serious- business-part-i-sanmi-adekola/?trk=articles_directorywhere the writer observed that “Beyond the façade, governance is a serious business. Great leaders give the people what they need, average leaders give the people what they want. Society progresses with great leaders,society stagnates with average leaders. With bad leaders come retrogression.
Trees produce their kinds – society deserves the kind of leaders they get.” Governance in Nigeria has typified all that governance ought not to be. To give it a name like “misgovernance” might be a euphemism. For those who call a spade a spade, it will definitely not be appropriate. At the different levels of government in Nigeria, appointments to political offices have become open sesame to riches. It is now a meal. Party loyalists are recklessly appointed to offices they are not competent to handle. Some even insists on posts they want simply because they supported the Governor, President or Local Government Chairman with funds or physical energy in traversing the length and breadth of the constituency. These individuals want to be in government as a means of patronage from their beneficiary government.
While I don’t quarrel with patronizing party loyalists that are competent, it cannot be all comers’ event, simply because you worked for the party. Our country has sunk so deeply that it requires competent people to rescue. It is on record and indisputable that government revenues are dwindling below levels ever contemplated. While the Federal Government is complaining of lack of funds, aside from the meager available resources being siphoned by greedy government officials, State Governments are complaining of internally generated revenues that have become stagnant if not reducing. Such revenues are insufficient to do anything tangible for the people, hence the over-dependent on federal allocations that have not been quite impressive over the years. It is unfortunate that State governments are unable to survive on what they generate except for a State like Lagos which was the only State that generated more than 200 billion Naira for the year 2022.
The total generated by Lagos was put at N651.2 Billion while Rivers State followed with N172.8 Billion. A State like Osun did not generate more than N24 Billion for the year while at the lowest ebb was Kebbi State with a paltry sum of N9.1 Billion for the whole year. In this dire economic strait, party loyalists are still being appointed to government offices for political considerations and patronage rather than what they have the capacity to bring onto the table. For so long as we have incompetent persons manning our political offices, for so long we are bound to remain under-developed.
It is not a curse but a reality of the country and we cannot afford to continue in this manner. Some State Governors were reported to appoint more than one thousand Special Assistants or Special Advisers. Some of these appointees have ridiculous designations that you wonder what exactly are their portfolios or what services they are to render to the government, and the people who elected the Governor. Many of such appointees have no offices but loiter around the corridors of power only to collect salaries at the end of the month and share other perquisites of office. They constitute unnecessary encumbrance on our lean resources. That accounts for one of the reasons for failure of governance in respect of provision of necessary infrastructure or meeting other expectations of the people. The people over whom they are appointed too do not see anything wrong with this nuisance that they are turning governance into.
They celebrate and thank the rudderless Governor for giving appointments to their sons and daughters who are only constituting themselves to parasites on the economy of the State. They write long letters of appreciation to the Governor, celebrating indolence, incompetence and stupidity. At Jumat services on Friday or Sunday service in churches, you hear pastors and other church leaders deifying a wastrel in government by according him undue respects and fulsome praise. The outcome, as we all know, is wanton dissipation of government resources to patronize party loyalists and hangers-on who contribute nothing to the economy.
The consequence is absence of good roads, dilapidated structures in government schools, absence of good hospitals and lack of drugs in the few ones, a great promotion to the japa culture with doctors and nurses leaving the country in droves since their country of birth is unable to pay them befitting salaries and provide for necessary tools with which to work, perennial strike actions by lecturers in the higher institutions with many of them leaving the country for greener pastures. A directionless government will definitely lose all human skills it has created with costly expenditure to foreign countries that can pay better for those skills. If only the government has a good statistical appreciation of how much it takes to train a doctor or nurse, it will definitely not allow such a highly valued skilled worker to leave the country to offer his services elsewhere.
We can make a rough calculation of how much it costs to train a doctor by looking at how much our students pay in foreign countries to be so trained. We can at least look at how much it takes to train a doctor in a private university like Afe Babalola University in Ado-Ekiti, Adeleke University in Ede, Bowen University in Iwo or Crescent University in Abeokuta. That is just taking cognizance of the cost of university education. That cannot be the only cost to consider as no university graduate gets to that level without passing through the primary or secondary schools. Thus, we must consider the cost of training them in the primary and secondary schools as well. That is when we can have a good appreciation of how much it has cost to produce a doctor, nurse, lawyer, engineer or the lecturer that we so much despise but being treasured by other countries.
Those countries spend nothing to train our graduates but they are the beneficiaries of our investments once they are ripe to be exploited. We have lost so much as governments prioritize political patronage over and above making adequate provisions for remunerations of trained and skilled workers.
A comparison recently of how much an average Councilor takes home with what is paid to our nurses shows that we are nothing but a nation of confused and disorientated people. How can you chase away those that will treat you when you are sick or those that will construct your cities or build your justice sector or train your children to make them educated? Interestingly, when our leaders fall sick, they run abroad into the hands of the same doctors they chased away from home in favour of political hangers-on and loafers. They pay lots of money to be treated abroad which treatment they could have obtained at the least cost had they been wise to retain their experts at home. Some of them die abroad before they have the opportunity of being saved. Such will be brought back in coffins to be buried in Nigeria. They do not like to be buried abroad. They must be buried home.
That is the irony of their jaundiced and misplaced patriotism. They consider Nigeria a befitting cemetery and that is why they believe it is not worth the effort developing a cemetery. Interestingly, when they prefer to buried and exquisite cemeteries like Ikoyi Vaults. They do not want to be buried in Atan Cemetery as they do not want their body parts to be scavenged by the same people they have rendered poor and conscienceless.
These people are characters only for comic shows and not governance in any society. It is high time our leaders realized that a round ped deserves to be in a round hole. While I do not have any problem with appointing party members and loyalists to political offices, they must be shown to have the required competence to man the offices they are being appointed into.
They must be shown to be passionate about service and do not see governance as an open sesame to riches. For those who want to be stinkingly rich without work but political scavenging, there is no space for them in governance in a society that is willing to develop. There is no room for lazy characters who only want to be government in order to chop.
For all I care, those ones can become contractors to whom contracts can be awarded. Still, they can only get contracts that they have the ability to perform. Awarding serious contracts to someone who has no knowledge of how such are to be accomplished can spell disaster. It must not be an opportunity to just make money for the boys otherwise such contracts are only awarded but never carried out.
There are contracts that have been accomplished on the pages of government books but are non-existent on site allocated for their construction. There are lots of equipment supplied to government offices but that never work for one day. There are boreholes constructed that have never produced a single cup of water after commissioning. Such are just acquired for the optics and to deceive the people. It is a product of misgovernance and poor leadership. We must make leaders realize that governance is serious business. It is not a business for the lazy ones or incompetent elements in our society.
It is not a matter of patronage for the purpose of popularity contest. Yes, agreed that politics is a matter of popularity but governance should not be confused with politics as to reduce the essence of leadership to making hangers-on happy at the detriment of the people who gave us the baton of leadership to hold on their behalf.