By Sulaiman Salawudeen
While governance cost considers how much it takes in monetary terms to achieve a desired public end, an end which largely involves leadership and project delivery, quality of governance measures concrete/observable consequences of financial commitments on various programmes and policies of government on the citizenry. Depending on focus and fidelity of actors on the political plane, as shown by/in the two worlds into which nations have been broadly politically/economically stratified, cost should be prime predictor of quality. That is cost may have to be high for quality to be high, and vice versa. However, cost as a measure of quality in governance may/do not always have to move in same direction. In fact, systems where standards of socio-infrastructural facilities are kept magically high, and where unflagging bureaucratic transparency/accountability have legitimated performances at tiers of administration, have equally promoted achievements of high governance quality at the lowest imaginable cost. In any case, against abject impracticality of free of cost governance anywhere, the price attached to each public/official responsibility seems to differ too markedly between regions where leadership foci are torn in-between altruism and egocentricism.
I admit, in my country, cost has not always determined quality. Factually here, cost and quality have obviously been uni-directionally inversely related – contracts awarded for one project at a price that would conveniently offset the bill for a minimum of ten! From N4.66 trillion in 2012, Nigeria’s budget has by 2022 ballooned to N17.126trillion, while external debt exploded to N17.15trillion from N6.54trillion it was in 2012. The country’s total public debt stock – both domestic and external – closed at N44.06 trillion for same year 2022, and to service the debts, FG has, in the past 10 years alone, officially disbursed whopping N15.22trillion, according to a release by the Debt Management Office (DMO). If borrowings were permitted and approved mainly on the fact of their necessity to improve an entity’s infrastructural accomplishments, where is the justification for Nigeria’s position 132 out of 137 countries ranked on infrastructure basis in 2018 Global Competitive Index? From the centre to the regions, Nigerians have harvested low quality governance at the extremest highest costs. Here, the purpose of governance seems to rubbish/reverse Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarian expression: “…the greatest good to the greatest number”. The rot would however seem located mainly in ‘padding’ – a sneaky practice in which contractors, via collusion with public officials/political office holders, quote insanely exaggerated figures for contracts, the balance – around 5000 or more per cent of actual cost – of which will then be shared between/among parties at some point, and this is aside ‘permissible’ pilfering of adjusting contractual terms mid execution, through upward variation of bills attached to agreed quotes, in consequence of whatever magnitude of fluctuation in market prices! Padding has however rubbished capital, much as it has recurrent, expenditure, and reversing this has been one of the many vociferous, but fruitless, campaigns of Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC). But, the error, as adverted earlier, is often facilitated by professionally compromised career officials functioning permanently as willing accessories abetting treasury atrophy rather than honourable guards detached in the poise to smoothen observed creased performances of fleeting actors!
The decay of inflated input cost and depressed output value has however consumed the centre, much as it has the constituents. As we write, most communities all over the states of the beleaguered federation are in decades-long friendship with ‘darkness’ – physical and in other forms. This is despite humongous federal allocations, occasional receipts from other sources, alongside all manner of unvetted borrowings! In spite tantalising benefits accruing as oil producer, Ondo, even under Rotimi Akeredolu, seems to have only compounded a logjam in monthly entitlements of workers, masterminded by Olusegun Mimiko. In the twilight of Kayode Fayemi leadership, Ekiti became entirely physically unconnectible, as some major roads and all link bridges collapsed! Osun workers have resorted to vigils in the effort to make government redeem entitlements due them as outcome of half-salary debacle unleashed by Rauf Aregbesola. In spite of Ogun’s wealth, some roads across places in the state have been in roaring shapes of disrepair! Although, in Oyo state, late Abiola Ajimobi had won renown for impugning workers concerns alongside those of retirees, the post-Ajimobi phase appears especially sorry for the state. For entire eight years of Ajimobi’s administration, Oyo state borrowed and owed N90b to lenders, and Ajimobi’s commitments to infrastructural renewal in the state seemed second to none in recent history. Today, just about four years of Seyi Makinde’s stewardship, Oyo’s debt rose from N90 billion to N250 billion in a state where the most to point to in terms of infrastructure are yet the ones undertaken by the erstwhile administration. Few road repairs here and there, circular road project that has barely taken off, expansion of the interchange at Iwo Road which remains barely 20 per cent completed and “Light Up Oyo State” project which returned darkness to initial spots just two weeks after launch, assessors must have grave tasks to justify Oyo’s magnificent debt profile against GSM’s puny infrastructural accomplishments! Is Makinde displaying just innocent prodigality or familiar deliberate thievery?
Never mind current global recession fueling inflation everywhere, Nigeria’s political leadership has always been in love with high figures, a trait exhibited as prime strategy of con-manship in governance. Of course, the trouble with us has always been not how to make money, but how to spend it! Amidst reports of record-breaking heists by public officials, federal government continues to claim it is broke and cannot therefore meet basic obligations, including salary increases as being pleaded by labour associations – excluding the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). But, salaries and allowances of political office occupiers have remained a secret affair owing mostly to their indefensibly bloated sizes. Today, in fairness to conscience, despite gargantuan outlay, delivery of leadership services to Nigerians has been anything but effective, and unhidden moral deficit of the political leadership compromises whatever little accomplishments are being recorded. It is time the country’s leadership engaged the reverse gear upon corruption to institute whole-scale humanistic governance system which locates the masses and allocates them prime welfare in a country wherein all they (the masses) are being served seem lessons of hate and rejection, and endemic decays which have displaced them from every of life’s comfort zones! As though the lies were not enough, the country’s apex bank, while trying to change some of the country’s currency, recently announced it spent over N1 trillion between 2017 and 2022 to maintain old currencies and print 500 million pieces of new notes, notes which millions have found either entirely impossible to access or could procure only at charges that aim at their very jugulars!
Without a doubt, ‘working’ mentality in the developed world and ‘frozen’ mindset in ones which have shamefacedly spurned obvious gestures to the promptings of progress are two opposing worlds in the estimation of value of cost as against quality in public administration engagements. As barrel, not just pot, bellies and fat necks compete for attention at executive council meetings and grandiose international conferences, national association of marabouts and traditionalists may have to prepare immolations to appease the gods to soften hardened hearts of the presumptive maladjusts across these undeveloped enclaves of humanity. What, perhaps, the harvest of lampoons and censorious speeches have failed to achieve, the spirits may have a way to effectuate! Ethical revolutionary practice by the political class may really have to be conditioned extra-terrestrially if the masses must be loosened from an asphyxiating imprisonment. The mayhem across the country which has consumed lives and property is well earned and justifiable consequence of the whole confusion brought upon the entity by a clueless band of jobbers holding the reins. Not many individuals can absorb/overcome the shock and consequent hunger attendant upon lean earnings trapped in banks! The wealth of the few in positions cannot, never ginger such collective purchasing power critical to spurring the buoyancy of a large market potentially available in a land of over 200 million! This is the worry of traditional microeconomics. It is why wealth must spread!
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