The reality on ground is scary: college students and their lecturers currently sit at home observing a nationwide strike. The lecturers say the government has refused to honour an agreement it voluntarily entered into in 2009. The federal government says the lecturers are demanding N92b as money accrued for the payment of outstanding allowances. Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said they can’t afford such money, citing other societal pulls on the government’s lean purse as her reason.
Yet this is a country where a horde of portfolio businessmen stole over two trillion naira from the government under the guise of subsidy payments. We don’t have money to pay lecturers and fund education, but we can afford a legislature that earns the highest in the world even when our GDP per capita is amongst the lowest.
Yes, PDP, the civilian version of IBB-Abacha-Abdulsalami nation-looting military regime has been running Nigeria’s affairs since 1999. Agreed, the PDP is dangerous for any country that seeks growth and development. But any alternative to PDP must understand the real issues. My dislike for PDP isn’t an automatic love for APC. In fact, the disaster that PDP is should scare me to death about an APC which hasn’t been able to define the issues that have kept Nigeria where she presently sits: the bottom of every development index.
I’ll be going straight to the specifics. This, hopefully, will also help the new party come up with a response through which they can be held to account. Anything short of clear and detailed answers won’t do.
Cost of governance: What does the APC think about the cost of governance? What does the party think about their current legislators earning 116 times Nigeria’s GDP per capita in salaries? Ok, I haven’t said their legislators should be paid separately; I just need to know what an APC-controlled legislature thinks about their current earnings.
Why is this important? Nigeria runs a hugely expensive government. Actually, governance should, and must, be operated like a corporation. Employees of corporations should not earn wages and salaries that far outweigh their productivity, alongside the corporation’s profit. The economy our government runs is the economy which has only been able to hand an annual wealth of $1,555 as GDP per capita to each person. It is outrageous to pay those who run such a poor economy an amount that is 116 times more than what the same economy has in stock for every other citizen. There’s even a case of stupidity on the part of the people who allow this to happen. The man who takes 116 times my annual wealth will be going to the same market where I buy things, and still have excess to shop from other markets around the world. How can he even understand what I say if I complain about the insufficiency of my money? By design, we are worlds apart.
So what should APC tell us? We need a clear statement on the kind of legislature they want to run. Unicameral? Bicameral? – at what salary/allowances per annum. How many staff is a legislator supposed to have? How much minimum must each staff be paid based on Nigeria’s realities? In recognition of the challenges of the job, how much annual allowance should be paid to a legislator? These must be spelt out by APC. Actually, figures must be mentioned. We can’t accept further vagueness as party manifesto.
There’s even more. APC governors together with other governors are paid a humongous monthly amount, called security vote, in a country that doesn’t operate state police. More curious is that they aren’t under any obligation to account to the citizens for this money. This money is in billions. All you need to be a billionaire in Nigeria is to do anything (and folks here do even the unthinkable) to become a governor. The billions from security votes alone establish you amongst the league of the ultra-wealthy.
So what is APC’s stand on this? Business as usual?
Now here’s my little expo: Nigeria has about 371,000 policemen protecting 160,000,000 million. This is grossly insufficient for the population. That’s assuming we have all of these people available to protect the citizens on a fair distribution. But that’s not the case. Each state legislator has at least 2 policemen attached to them. The speakers have more. The judges have police security. Ministers and federal legislators have theirs. State executive council members have theirs, traditional rulers, businessmen, five-star pastors and other ‘important citizens’ have theirs. Ultimately, the number of our police is depleted so much so that they aren’t enough to police a mass of our citizens, Yet these men are paid by the federal government.
Chinedu can be reached on Twitter as @Nedunaija
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