Restructure to reduce cost of governance in Nigeria

There is a raging debate about how best Nigeria can reduce considerably the cost of governance. Opinions have been offered by the immediate past governor of Imo State, now a serving senator, Rochas Okorocha, and Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State on what to do with the National Assembly. The Federal Government weighed in last Wednesday when it issued a circular with immediate effect on travel restrictions for heads of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies.

Okorocha fired the first salvo when he called for the reduction in the number of senators from three to one per state and House of Representatives members to three per each state. He said this while contributing to the debate on the Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper preceding the 2020 budget during plenary. While contributing to the debate, Fayemi rather advocated the scrapping of the Senate in order to save cost and reduce financial burden on the government. He also called for the adoption of the Stephen Oronsaye report which recommended the merging of the Federal Government’s agencies that perform similar functions in order to save the country’s resources and ensure effectiveness. He said this as a panellist during the 25th edition of the Nigerian Economic Summit with the theme, ‘Nigeria 2050: Shifting gears’ in Abuja.

Okorocha seems to have borrowed his ideas of pruning the number of members of federal lawmakers from Italy which recently initiated moves to reduce the number of members of her parliament. According to this newspaper’s editorial of Friday, October 18, 2019, “Financial encumbrances have compelled Italy to downsize its parliament. The initiative by Five Star – the main party in the coalition government – will see the country saving a whopping €1 billion or £897 million in 10 years, amid its sluggish economic growth of 0.1 per cent in the second quarter of this year. Under the arrangement, the lower legislative house will be pruned from 630 to 400 members, while the senators’ current strength of 315 will be down to 200… But the new order will not come into effect until after the next election in 2023, by which time it would have been ratified by a referendum.”

Fayemi’s “scrap the Senate statement” is also a borrowed idea. How? Senegal did it in 2012 and more recently in 2017, Mauritania similarly did so. The PUNCH editorial under reference said “In Africa, Senegal braved it when, in 2012, it scrapped its entire Senate, which had 100 seats, just as the position of vice-president that had not been occupied also became a victim of sweeping political reforms.”

In Mauritania, President Mohammed Abdulaziz in August 2017 instigated a referendum which abolished the country’s Senate. He had described it as “useless and too costly.”  Aside from these two aforementioned positions of either reducing the number of federal parliamentarians or abolishing the Senate, there is a third suggestion which has over the years called for part-time legislature. Under this arrangement, legislators are to receive only sitting allowances.

I had previously written on this subject matter and between last week and today, I have granted several media interviews to restate my position on how best to reduce the cost of governance. Among the various media houses that have interviewed me in the last one week on the issue include Blueprint newspaper, TV 360, Arise TV News, Nigeria Television Authority, Love 104.5 FM and Nigeria Info 95.1 FM.

In an opinion article published on the back page of ThisDay of Sunday, April 22, 2012, I summarised the crux of the 800-page Steve Oronsaye report as follows: The “Oronsaye committee proffered four ways to immediately tackle the high cost of governance. These include: ‘Reduction in the number and size of the governing boards of parastatals; Linking the budgetary system to deliverables and output; Implementation or vacation of some decisions taken on past reports; and Removal of all professional bodies/councils from the national budget.”’ The committee established that at present, there are 541 government parastatals, commissions and agencies (statutory and non-statutory). 263 of which are statutory agencies which it recommends should be reduced to 161. To achieve this, the committee proposed the abolition of 38 agencies, merger of 52 and reversion of 14 to departments in ministries. The rationale being that there were “duplications and overlaps in the mandates of many parastatals and agencies…without regard to existing laws and, in some cases, outright replicating extant laws.”

I concluded that article as follows: “Additional ways the President should explore to condense the cost of governance are by halving the presidential fleet of aircrafts and cars; reduce the number of presidential and legislative aides and auction the white elephants among the over 11,886 Federal Government projects that dot Nigeria’s landscape. It is also advisable for government to quit sponsorship of pilgrimages. During the forthcoming constitution amendment, the President should sponsor a bill to seek amendment to Section 147(3) of the 1999 Constitution which makes it mandatory for the President to appoint at least one minister from each state. Nigeria does not need more than 20 cabinet ministers unlike the current fad where an unwieldy 42 ministers are appointed by the President.  He should also look at reducing the number of Nigerian foreign missions while the National Assembly must exercise utmost circumspection in creating additional agencies or commissions.  Above all, the President must strengthen all anti-corruption agencies inclusive of the police and the Code of Conduct Bureau. It is an unassailable fact that corruption plays a big role in Nigeria’s soaring cost of governance as the unfolding pension scam has revealed.” What has become of the Oronsaye panel report? Consigned to the dustbin!

As I have repeatedly said, we know the solutions to our national malaise and challenges but our leaders have failed to tackle them headlong in order to protect their class interest. Why does the President and governors appoint hordes of aides when they can do with just a few? Will a President who sincerely believes and wants to practise what he preaches appoint a 43-member cabinet, himself inclusive when the constitution advises him to appoint one per state?

The treachery of the President comes to the fore when he restricts the travelling and estacodes of his ministers and bureaucrats while exponentially increasing his own travel cost and time. The PUNCH editorial of Tuesday, October 22, 2019, has this to say about President Buhari’s penchant for foreign travels “The President and his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, received an allocation of N1.3 billion in this year’s N8.9 trillion budget, mainly for their international trips. Domestic trips constitute a low percentage of this allocation. Buhari has proposed a N3.3 billion budget to take care of his and his deputy’s trips in the 2020 Appropriation Bill before the National Assembly. The government Buhari leads is piling up taxes and charges on the people without considering how to cut down the huge cost of governance.” Spot on!

The penchant for wasteful spending is more prominent at the sub-national levels particularly among the governors. They hire charter flights locally when they could have flown commercial passenger airlines. They also embark on frivolous and fruitless foreign trips under the guise of seeking foreign investors. Instead of all our political leaders at all levels as well as judges to observe their annual vacations in the country, they prefer going overseas for their rest and recuperation. Yet, we sloganeer by saying “Change begins with me!’

Why do we still earmark millions of naira for entertainment and refreshments in our annual budget? Why sponsor people on Holy Pilgrimages to Mecca and Jerusalem from the state purse? If indeed we are serious about wanting to reduce the cost of governance, we need to commence restructuring of the country immediately in line with suggestions from the Oronsaye committee report of 2012 as well as by blocking revenue leakages and fighting corruption to a standstill.