National Telescope national telescope newspaper
By Abraham Amah
A few weeks after its inauguration, the 10th National Assembly approved a Supplementary Budget of $800m for the federal government for sundry expenses that would help the new government to take off with governance and stabilise its operations. That was a necessary good move given the rough road every Nigerian is passing through in almost every facet of our national life; economy, health, infrastructure and whatever it is that makes life worth living.
When the itemised expenditure headings for the Supplementary Budget was released, the good news which Nigerians had in heightened expectations hoped would lift their spirits turned sour because, as usual, the masses for whom the government supposedly borrowed the money were again shortchanged and left high and dry. Some of the items were not only puzzling but perplexing and disturbingly nauseating. The masses were at the short end of the stick again, as usual.
In the expenditure breakdown, the Federal Government earmarked, and eventually doled out a staggering N70b for, as it called it, “to support the working conditions of NASS members”, which was interpreted to mean retrofitting the offices, wardrobes and homes of only 469 members of the National Assembly in a national population of over 220 million people with more than 39 million people living in multidimensional poverty; the poorest of the poor, in the world’s poverty capital. In the same supplementary budget, the National Judicial Council, NJC got N35b for reasons that were not mentioned, the Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA got N10b for critical projects, and N500b was allocated to the 36 States and the FCT for palliatives and other capital expenditure to cushion the effect of the fuel subsidy removal, a scheme whose implementation remains controversial as many Nigerians are still expecting the palliatives from their State governors who are very silent on what they have received or not.
N19.2b was allocated to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture to ameliorate the massive destruction to farmlands across the country during the severe flooding experienced last year and N185.2b to the Ministry of Works and Housing to alleviate the impact of the severe flooding experienced in the country in 2022 on road infrastructure across the six geopolitical zones. I have carefully left out the billions of naira that had earlier been mapped out for the refurbishing of two presidential buildings, the home of the Vice President, the Aso Rock Clinic and other ill-fitting items that had gulped billions in the main budget.
I have enumerated just how $800m was spent and the percentage that went to the elite club compared with what the masses received, to make sense of how leadership has remained unresponsive to the plight of the people and continues to preach for sacrifice from the people while it continues to live in almost criminal opulence at the detriment of the people they lead. A peep into what goes on in the National Assembly finances, which remains opaque because they are shrouded in secrecy, would make even the devil recoil in shock.
Just recently, Senator Abdul Ningi earned himself a suspension from the Senate for daring to reveal that N3.7t not linked to any projects was padded into the current budget circle. The thread that followed that revelation led to more discoveries as Senator Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe further revealed that some Senators got N500m for constituency projects, unknown to him that some fat cows like Senator Ali Ndume got N1b and N2.5b was earmarked for the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio’s constituency for the purchase of refrigerators, generators and sundry empowerment programmes for women in 10 local government areas.
All this happen in a system where the teaching staff of tertiary institutions that should ordinarily promote research and learning to add to the economic growth of the country have been asking for the implementation of an agreement it entered with the government in 2009 and 2013 for the revitalisation of public education and whose financial outlay is just a paltry N1.3t out of which the federal government has released only N200b. It is routinely said that the father of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew used education to build the people that built Singapore by giving them the best functional education he could give.
But as a people, we would rather do things wrongly and expect excellent results. The leadership by systematically ignoring the funding of education to make it functional and democratic where every Nigerian child is entitled to have world class education, has again shown itself as callous and unresponsive to the demands and aspirations of the people it ought to serve. Rather than make education available and affordable to the average Nigerian, it has consciously created a class system in the education sector where the children of the rich attend high end schools overseas and locally, like the recent revelation that a school in Lagos has pegged its annual secondary school fees at N42m. And because the leadership can afford to send their children to these types of schools, it certainly cares less about what happens to public schools. A society’s worth is measured not by how it treats the strong but how it protects the weak.
At all levels of government, we see the leadership preach the virtues of perseverance, fortitude, forbearance and all of that during hard times and ask the led to make sacrifices with the hope of a better future brought about by the discipline and self denial, without living by the creed they preach. Sadly, these leaders sincerely don’t believe in making sacrifices because they do exactly the opposite the moment they step down from the podium.
Many of the governors live as Lords of the Manor and care less about the welfare of their citizens. Salaries are owed, hospitals are not functional, roads are dilapidated, education is not funded, agriculture is abandoned, and every season there is a borrowing spree from both local and foreign lenders. Yet, the amount of money the State governors collect monthly as security votes even in the face of ever-increasing cases of insecurity in many parts of the country would build a paradise on the moon.
At this period of our fledgling democracy, leadership must be alive to its responsibilities to ensure that through its conscious efforts, Nigeria’s democracy is preserved and sustained for the future. At the rate we are going, it is very clear to every discerning mind that in democracy’s short distance 100m race, we are yet to take off while we are yet to pick up the baton that fell from the hands of the First Republic leaders in the 400m relay.
Our democratic values when juxtaposed with the relationship between the leaders and the led from independence till now, drops precipitously with each passing epoch. In the First Republic, we had leaders who went into government rich and became poor by the time they left office. If we had the authority, we would canonise some of them as saints. The Second Republic leaders were not as saintly as their predecessors but the current class of leadership is very callous, oblivious of the sufferings of the masses, makes no sacrifices and takes their positions for granted.
My honest worry is that we are unknowingly building a political culture of impunity by the way we seem to validate even the wrong actions of our leaders by not asking questions, holding them to account and redirecting them when we see them going wrong. It takes a very long time to build a political culture and when a wrong one is built, it takes a longer time to make a reversal and most times, very costly reversals. Would it surprise anyone that the process of building the political culture of the Latin American hemisphere started out almost the same time with that of Europe, but it keeps grappling with volatility because it was built on wrong foundations while Europe keeps advancing because it was built solid from the start and on good moral foundations.
Nigerians owe themselves the benefit of a strong political culture built, at infancy as we are now, and if we miss that opportunity, our democracy may falter as long as history permits. Leadership is a two-way traffic between the leaders and the led. While the leadership is supposed to provide the route and direction, it is the duty of the led to help the leadership in leading by continuously interrogating its motives and actions.
It is welcome that President Bola Tinubu has begun the process of initiating far-reaching reforms aimed at cutting down on the cost of governance which is at the heart of the matter. His directive for the immediate implementation of the Stephen Oronsaye Report is a courageous bold step and the reduction in the number of people that accompany him, the Vice President, Ministers and others on local and foreign trips is a good step in the right direction. Beyond the soundbites, we want to see these policies fully implemented.
We also want to see members of the National Assembly and the governors do the same thing by cutting down on some huge and unnecessary expenses. If everyone makes the collective sacrifice as the leadership always preaches, society would be decent enough for everyone to live well without the need to engage in the primitive acquisition of wealth at the expense of the people.
