On expensive politicking

There is one central government that is headed by an elected president who has a constitutional responsibility of appointing at least a minister from each state of the federation. At present, there are about 52 ministers. There is also a large army of presidential advisers and assistants who themselves have personal assistants. There are hundreds of parastatals which have hundreds of party men who are board members and constitute a heavy charge on the mean resources of the parastatals.

There is an elected National Assembly made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives with a large army of personal staff paid by the government. They also are entitled to funds for opening and running constituency offices. There is no federal arrangement anywhere in the world that is this top-heavy to the detriment of the federating units.

There are 36 state governments headed by governors who are independent of the centre and cannot be effectively checked by state Houses of Assembly. Experience since 1999 has shown that they can be laws unto themselves if they so decide.

There are 774 local government councils with executive chairmen who are also laws unto themselves. They appoint non-elected councilors to their “cabinets”. This means that the emoluments of an elected councilor who has the equivalent of a school certificate are higher than those of a professor in the university or a judge of the state high court. Yet, both entitlements come from the federation account.

Looking back to May 29, 1999 when we started this walk on the democracy highway, it is obvious that the cost of sustaining the different political arms of each of the tiers is becoming unbearable. Our expenditure profile shows that we spend about 95 per cent of our resources on recurrent expenditure. This means that we have very little left for funding development.

There is no doubt, therefore, that the present arrangement is not healthy for us. The way out of this problem is restructuring the political arrangement to make it more manageable and less demanding on our resources. We should retain a three-tier arrangement — the central government, the regional government and the state government.

The present local government structure should be an affair of the regional government and be funded by it. The central government will continue to be headed by an elected president so that we may all continue to have a sense of ownership of the head of the Nigerian state.

The law making body should be the present senate of 109 members. There should be a nominated Upper House of Elders, one from each state of the federation and Abuja. The number will thus be 37. This would be like the arrangement in the First Republic.  The powers of the centre should be reduced and only those powers that would mould the federating units should be retained exclusively by the centre, like defence, external affairs, citizenship and currency.

There should be six regional governments on the lines that have emerged as zones- North-West, North-East, North-Central, South-West, South-East and South-South. These, and not the 36 states, should be the federating units.

Someone has to start the talking because the real issues are being evaded or avoided. What America is today is the result of profound socio-political engineering that took blood, tears and sacrifices.

Ademola Orunbon,

Ogun State.

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