If you ‘el-Rufai’ me, I will ‘Dogara’ you

THE headline above is an intertextual creation from its pidginised ancestral grandfather, “If you Tarka me, I go Daboh you.” The original expression was one of the several contributions from the political class in the 70’s to corpus of lexico-political items and expressions, including famous expressions such as “a man of timber and calibre,” “handshake across the Niger,” “accord concodiale [used to describe NPN/NPP alliance],” which were all credited to the first Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Chief Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe, after whom a popular street was named on Victoria Island, Lagos.

If you ‘el-Rufai’ me, I will ‘Dogara’ you is coming against the background of a public debate on corruption by two prominent elected officials, just like its ancestry- “If you Tarka me, I go Daboh you.” As Minister of Communications during the Yakubu Gowon era, Joseph Tarka, just like the government of President Muhammadu Buhari has done, called on Nigerians with useful information on acts of corruption by any public official to volunteer same as a patriotic duty. Godwin Dadoh, a mercurial politician from Benue State, where Tarka also hailed from, accused Tarka of corruption and the probe of that accusation led to Tarka’s resignation. He was later elected a senator.

In the instant matter, the venue was Kaduna State and the event, the state’s investment summit. Governor Nasir el-Rufai fired the first salvo when he pointed corruption finger at the National Assembly members over the cloudiness surrounding their alleged humongous budget. There have been long-recurring public murmurs against the finances of the National Assembly. So, el-Rufai presented his argument as though he were echoing public discontent against the legislators and role-playing a Senior Advocate of the Masses (SAM).

“The call to #OpenNASS is not a personal one. It is one which the leadership of the National Assembly owes to all Nigerians. It is, therefore, disingenuous for the Speaker to use state government budgets as the excuse for the opacity of the NASS budget,” el Rufai said.

In reaction, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, who doubles as the natural deputy or vice chairman of the National Assembly, stood in defence of the legislature and in the process challenged el-Rufai to also make public his security votes and account for local government allocations in his state, before he could come to the arena for integrity/transparency contest.

Like the contest between Mowbray and Bolingbroke in the court of Shakespeare’s King Richard, el-Rufai took up Dogara’s gauntlet and published his salary, revealing that he netted N470, 521 as February, 2017 salary. As for his security votes, the governor gave the budget items in what he called Kaduna State Security Votes, foreclosing his having personal security votes as most of his colleagues do.

On the council funds, he referred the public and Dogara to the state website for details of disbursements to the councils. “The local government budgets provide details of the recurrent and capital spending of every single LG in a transparent manner. The proposed 2017 LG budgets, currently before the state Assembly, are also already online on the same website, and on www.kdsg.gov.ng. Approved state budgets 2016-2017 can be found on http://openkaduna.com.ng/Budget/approved-budget…”

Apparently not wanting el-Rufai to get any political capital against him, Speaker Dogara also went public with his payslip. Instead of el Rufai’s one month, Dogara released six months salaries. What the Speaker released showed he earned far less than the governor, even though what the Kaduna governor demanded was not Dogara’s salary but the entire budget of the National Assembly showing details.

Many Nigerians have been enamoured of the two actors about the information made public in the transparency diatribe. One of the anti-corruption groups in the country, Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL), has, on the basis of what the actors have released, called on other public officers to disclose their takings from public purse on monthly basis. On the social media, the bitter clamour of the two eager tongues has caught an inferno with the hash tag Post Your Payslip Naija #PYPN.

Is there a nexus between what the two public officers have released for public consumption and the depth of corruption in the system and at various arms of government? Critical Nigerians may want to ask: if what has been made public is what these officers only get and there are no other perks from other hidden and loaded sources, will the competition for power and offices be this fierce?

While it is true that the salaries of public officers are fixed by the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Committee (RMFAC), does the committee or any other agency fix the allowances and other benefits which are fat enough to pay years of salaries of these officers?

One of such perks is the almighty security votes of those in the executive arm of government. A lot of myth has been woven around security votes. It is not accounted for; only governors determine how much a security vote is; peculiar security challenges determine the range of security votes; and so on and so forth.  Some governors have latched on to the non-regulation of how much they can take from into state purses as security votes to take as much as N500 million in the name of security votes. A particular governor in the southern part of the country spent about N5 billion as security votes within nine months. When details of disbursement of the first tranche excess deduction from Paris Club funds were called for by Abuja, the excesses had to be hidden under some funny items of expenditure.

The way the executive has handled the security votes has elicited calls for security votes to be suspended if it cannot be regulated. The money, it is argued, is often deployed to feed the greed of the governors rather than use it substantially for the security of life and property through the provision of infrastructure for the security operatives.

It is strange that el-Rufai claims he does not have security votes apart from the collective state security votes where his colleagues smile to the banks with millions using security as a big cover to fleece the citizens. If his claim is true, the Kaduna governor will probably be the only governor who has conquered greed in that regard.

In the same vein, is there any governor who is not guilty of pilfering council funds and consequently stifling of any development, forcing households in their domains to become mini-local governments by providing for their own water, road and other municipal services? If el-Rufai’s claim in this regard is also true, then it means that he, unlike his colleagues, has been able to live above board in terms of honesty in governance.

It is not only through security votes and council funds that governors steal public funds. The major means of stealing public funds is to inflate contracts, using cronies as contractors. A kilometre of road, for instance, has gone from N50 million it was five years ago to about N1 billionand above far beyond UNDP’s recommendation, despite the topography of the location of the road projects not being swampy terrains.

The legislative arm is not spared in the corruption game. They have been pilloried as legislooters, legislathieves among other coinages. They are seen as being also a major part of gangrene responsible for the cancerous growth in the body politic. The system has turned most legislators into contractors under guise of pursuing constituency projects, most of which are never executed despite money being appropriated for them.

Up till today, the total takings of National Assembly members are subject of conjecture. They collect salaries, allowances of all kinds, both monthly and quarterly for doing arguably nothing for the country in return as services. A good number of them, who are not guilty of truancy, go to the hallowed chambers to sleep or engage in chit chat, with only very few doing what is commendable. Many have called for the lawmakers to work part-time and only earn sitting allowances as a result of

The altercation may be seen to be good for governance in the country in some respect, but the corruption malaise is deeper than what has been made public by the two officers representing the biggest money gulping arms in the country. What they have ‘disclosed’ in their statements can be taken as mere tokenistic hypocrisy? Nigerians deserve to know more. Are members of the political class willing to divulge more?