So that governors may sleep soundly

RECENTLY, President Muhammadu Buhari expressed concern about the complaints and agitations by workers in various states over their unpaid salaries and wages. The president was particularly worried because his administration had made a number of interventions to ameliorate the situation. Speaking during a meeting with members of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum led by their chairman, Governor Abdul’Aziz Yari, of Zamfara State at the State House, Abuja, the president wondered: “How can anyone go to bed and sleep soundly when workers have not been paid their salaries for months? I actually wonder how the workers feed their families, pay their rents and even pay school fees for their children.’’

To all intents and purposes, President Buhari’s concern about the plight of Nigerian workers is genuine. As he recognises, thousands of workers in the country are actually living  in misery. They can hardly feed their children, are owing rent, and have not taken their families out on a vacation for a long time. As some of the workers have themselves said, they have become refugees in their own land. They have cried, hoped and prayed that their salaries will get paid, seemingly to no avail. Nigeria being a federation, at least in name, President Buhari must have realised that he has no power to compel the governors to pay their workers, and that his government could only address the pressing issue through moral suasion. Indeed, it would seem as if the president, if he could, would have preferred to pay the workers himself. Happily, however, even if officially, the 36 state governors are worried about the situation. According to the NGF chairman, “We are concerned with the situation in our states, and we are trying our best to manage the resources.”

But concern is not, and cannot, be enough. Any state that wants to be taken seriously must have integrity. It must honour its word. Therefore, unless and until the governors have stopped needing the workers’ labour, they must pay them their salaries. In our view, one way to do this is to bring down the cost of governance. While the governors cannot be charged with failure to express concern about the plight of workers, we think that they can be charged with lack of prudence. In these austere times, many of the governors still carry on like they did in former times, maintaining their provocatively long convoys and retinues of aides and hangers-on in the corridors of power. In such circumstances, it would be difficult for any worker to believe that his or her governor is losing sleep over unpaid salaries. Yet anyone sleeping soundly while workers remain unpaid is unfit for office. The governors must do their best to eliminate waste in the system. They must, at the very minimum, embrace e-governance.

Also Read:  On workers’ salaries/wages

Again, this is the time to increase internally generated revenue, not by overtaxing the already overburdened and long-suffering populace, but by looking into, and exploiting, every untapped revenue source. The frequent meaningless trips to China and other countries must stop. It is not in the interest of the foreign businessmen to help Nigeria to develop its economy; their interest lies in the quick money they can make from Nigeria. It would therefore be appropriate to tap into the hitherto unexplored sources of revenue. This is the time to demonstrate the creative vision that separates statesmen and women from mere adventurers  and comedians in the corridors of power.

The foregoing notwithstanding, striving to pay workers while leaving the restructuring question unattended to would amount to attending to dandruff while leprosy thrives. If workers were paid decent and regular salaries in the First Republic, this was substantially because the country operated the right system. Each region harnessed its God-given resources and lived within its means. The federal and state governments must recognise that modern states are run on the basis of taxation, which would mean employing only the number of workers that you can pay. Sadly, in spite of his concern about the plight of workers, President Buhari has continued to give the impression that the present vexatious centralist system is sustainable. It is not, and the earlier he realises this fact and begins to work in the direction of a truly federal system, the better for everyone.

Indeed, Governor Yari’s claim that the various interventions by the Federal Government, including bailouts, were judiciously utilised by the governors, and that they inherited backlogs of unpaid salaries and huge debts portfolios, would amount to mere window dressing. If Nigerian leaders desire to sleep soundly, they must do the needful and the time is now.