Governors and their thousands of aides

HOW many aides or special assistants does a state governor need? The answer depends on whom you ask. The existing record of 200,000 was set by Nyesom Wike, the current Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), back in November 2022 when he was governor of Rivers State. The number had been 100,000 until Mr Wike, acting on a whim, decided to double it. He had a double justification for what many saw as an indefensible outrage: “implementation of the policy of stomach architecture” and “putting money in the hands of the people”.

Lucky Aiyedatiwa, the Ondo State governor, appears to have been studying that template closely. Last month, he approved the appointment of one commissioner, three special advisers and 1,000 political aides as part of efforts to “strengthen governance and improve service delivery across the state.” Confirming the appointment on X, the Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Ebenezer Adeniyan, broke down the appointments as follows: 90 Senior Special Assistants and 910 Special Assistants.

Governor Aiyedatiwa is not a trailblazer. On the contrary, he is following a path already well-trodden by generations of Nigerian governors, including David Umahi who, as governor of Ebonyi State, appointed about 4,000 aides within its first six months in 2019, a number he would later augment with 513 Technical Advisers. In Cross River State, Ben Ayade’s political appointees had reached 1,906 by November 2016. The number included special advisers, special assistants, personal assistants and board/agency appointments. In Kogi State, Usman Ododo appointed 1,192 new aides in August 2024; while in Taraba State, Governor Agbu Kefas appointed 1,075 senior assistants and constituency assistants.

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The foregoing list is anything but exhaustive. According to a 2016 survey by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the typical governor in each of the country’s 36 states is served by an average of 100 aides (all of whom are personally appointed by the governor), each of whom takes home at least N500,000 monthly. This is, to say the least, troubling.

What accounts for these evidently bogus appointments? If Aiyedatiwa is to be believed, the appointments are necessitated by the genuine desire to put money directly in the hands of the people. But even at 200,000 assistants, you do not come close to doing that. The other justification that the appointees are needed to strengthen governance and improve service delivery across the state is similarly implausible, as it is not exactly clear how the fact of a governor handpicking family members and associates enhances service delivery.

The ugly truth is that individual governors have found in these appointments a channel for dispensing state funds without having to go through the necessary legislative channels. The appointments are another example of the atmosphere of impunity and fiscal recklessness that reigns at the state level in Nigeria, where governors operate and are treated like gods more or less. In other words, governors continue to make these appointments because they know they can get away with it. Another explanation for the appointments is that they have become a method for mobilising an army of foot soldiers in preparation for electoral contests. If that is the case, state governors are basically using state resources to recruit ordinary civilians for their own political objectives. It is impossible to overstate how morally disgusting this is.

In Nigeria, what happens in the political arena does not necessarily stay there, which is why Nigerians are starting to see this ugly pattern manifest across civil society. Rare is the student union leader without his or her own army of assistants. The same thing applies to vice chancellors of universities. State governors like to complain about the moral anarchy that prevails at the federal level. Maybe they should look in the mirror.