As Nigeria marked its 63rd independence anniversary a few days ago, one other thing that came to mind mitigating against the progress of the country is a wilful, if not statutorily-approved, waste of government resources.
It does look as if the Oransaye committee report that recommended streamlining the Federal Government for slimmer, cheaper and more effective governance has merely touched the surface.
The report seemed to have concentrated more on the number and sizes of ministries, departments and agencies, and merely recommended the merger of some and the scrapping of others, without looking at the cost of operations.
Apart from the now discontinued money-guzzling petrol subsidy, the biggest and more fundamental problem is the waste that has been built and sustained into the workings of the governance machinery: a default, institutionalised, veritable and unrepentant drainpipe that continues to burden the system.
The first culprit is Section 147(3) of the 1999 Constitution which includes the wasteful requirement that the President has to “appoint at least one minister from each state (of Nigeria with a Gross Domestic Product of a mere $491.71bn, even if it is the largest in Africa).”
The need to satisfy the appetite of political interests has compelled President Bola Tinubu to come up with the high figure of 48 ministers (of which only 45 were approved, after screening, by the Senate).
The United States, which has the world’s biggest GDP of $23tn in 2021, has 25 ministers, out of which only 10 are of cabinet rank. Perhaps Nigeria wanted to be like its previous coloniser, Britain, which incidentally had an inventory of 30 ministers to run its $3.13tn GDP economy in 2021.
When you consider that Section 157 of the 1999 Constitution also allows the President to appoint special advisers and assistants for himself, his vice president and ministers, you can imagine the number of political appointees who will hang on the government’s coattails for a living.
Also, Section 196(1) of the 1999 Constitution allows usually extravagant governors to provide jobs for the boys through indiscriminate and reckless appointment of advisers and assistants. A governor, who appointed close to 1,000 advisers and assistants close to his exit from office, explained his action was a way to provide employment.
Think about the remuneration, allowances, and other “ajemonu” or perks, that this army of political appointees enjoys at the detriment of the people of Nigeria. It can only be described as a phenomenon of astronomical proportion!
The omnibus touring advance that public servants abuse is an untamable devourer of government funds. So much ill-defined expenditure is thrown into its deep cavern of corruption and waste, and those who should maintain strict internal control measures as guardrails look on with indulgence.
A friend, who recently retired as managing director and chairman of a blue chip manufacturing company, said when he expressed doubts about the remuneration packages of certain categories of government chief executives, his friend told him that the cost of maintaining just the security detail of those CEOs is more than five times their salaries.
This gentleman added that he was shocked to learn that a convoy was going to be driving out of Lagos (as an advance party) to await a permanent secretary who they would be driving throughout his stay in another part of the country.
The worst is that the permanent secretary, who would be travelling by air from Lagos to his destination, already had a driver whose salary is paid by the government, permanently stationed with a car for his destination throughout the year!
Indeed, this permanent secretary (who usually travels with a hefty touring advance) also had a permanent guest house in practically all the state capitals in the nation. While that may sound a bit exaggerated, it tells you the extent to which waste has become far gone and institutionalised in Nigeria.
The gentleman got even more worried when he accidentally stumbled on the fact that a behemoth government-owned enterprise picked up the entire hospital bills of its retired Group Managing Director for six months in the United Kingdom.
He thought to himself that this gentleman would not have stayed more than one week in that hospital if he was going to foot the exorbitant hospital bills by himself. Well, the Yoruba say it is easier to use the legs of a lunatic than that of a sane man for medication.
This past corporate chairman was not done. He recounted what might have been a sense of siege he felt when he visited the home of a retired chief of one of Nigeria’s Armed services and saw what looked like a swarm of other ranks, supposedly guarding the “oga.”
He was so alarmed at the sense of waste and decided to go discuss the matter with an older friend, only to be told by his older friend that he hadn’t seen anything. He should go to the hometown of the already retired General to see what could be described as a garrison stationed there!
Just think of how much money is thrown away, “legitimately,” by a system that is seemingly intent on over-pampering those who claim to be serving, or had served the Nigerian people. One is not arguing that retired public officials should not enjoy their superannuation benefits.
But it shouldn’t be an excessive overload on the system. You may recall some state governors who wrote fat retirement cheques for themselves and also got their state legislators to approve extravagant parting gifts for them.
Something else that bothered this gentleman is the payment of an unconscionable amount as security votes into the personal accounts of chief executives of tertiary institutions. If this is true, you want to ask why is security votes paid to chief executives of tertiary institutions, and into their personal bank accounts.
You wonder what justifies the payment of so-called security votes to any officer of the state, anyway, when votes have been provided for the state’s massive security apparatus that includes the regular police, Armed services, secret police and other ancillary security agencies.
State governors, local government chairmen, and heads of legislative houses are notoriously guilty of paying these wayward allowances to themselves. And they make it look as if it is a birthright, a payment cast in concrete.
Interestingly, the matter of security votes has percolated into the private sector to the extent that chief executives and directors of banks, for instance, receive stupendous amounts to hire personal bodyguards and acquire bulletproof and escort vehicles for themselves and their families.
The more astute of them collect the money and use just a small amount of money to provide minimal security for themselves. Someone suggests that this action of the bank chief executives is a cynical commentary on the unnecessary extra cost of running banks.
Another source of waste is the animal called training, another word for “additional vacation.” Public officers make the government pay for the trips, hotel accommodation, board, trainers and training materials (which they won’t read).
Urgent action must be taken to engage management consultants to interrogate and suggest more cost-efficient internal management and accounting control mechanisms to trim these extreme costs of governance.
If not, spending 96 per cent of government revenue just to service debts will be child’s play. Worse will happen.
