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Nigeria: The Limits of 'Capacity Building'
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Daily Trust (Abuja)
EDITORIAL
20 June 2008
Posted to the web 20 June 2008
Abuja
One of the most bizarre yet very revealing stories about why politics and administration in our country hardly yield 'development dividends' to the real people of Nigeria, came forth from Benue State recently.
According to the story, having sent the wives of the 28 male members of the Benue State House of Assembly on various courses to 'build their capacities' to enable them to cope, presumably with the sheer rigours of being legislators' wives and to support their husbands in the great legislative challenges facing them, the leadership of the House was left in a quandary about what to do about the case of the husband of the only female member of the House.
Since steps had rightfully been taken to build the capacities of the female spouses of the male members, fairness and justice demand that the male spouse of the only female member also has to be taken care of. After all, what is good for a flock of Benue geese should also be good enough for its solitary gander. The husband of Honourable Mrs. Hembadoon Amena, the only female member of the House, need not worry. According to the Speaker of the BSHA, Mr. Terseer Tsumba, the leadership of the House will soon approve for him to attend a workshop where his own capacity will also be built so he can "effectively support his wife in all spheres of life".
The story from Benue is hardly an isolated one. Rather, it has become the norm in our country that the governing class, sometimes in collaboration with their business counterparts in the private sector, conspire to take care of themselves without regard for the well being of the vast majority of the population. All manners of contractors and consultants approach highly placed political office holders and top echelons of the bureaucracy and sell to them ideas about all manners of training or capacity building workshops, seminars, symposia and conferences for all manners of persons, often at huge public expense. Attendance at some of these phony gatherings are sometimes made mandatory for some categories of public officers.
It is clear that seminars and workshops have become a clever device for the elite to get their undue share of the national cake. It is an instrument which the ministers, permanent secretaries, directors, senior bureaucrats, contractors, consultants and the entire elite clan have found to fleece the public till without eyebrows being raised. We know this to be so because most of the public officers who attend them are never enthusiastic in acquiring knowledge or getting their capacities built up, to use the language of the times. They go for them because of the allowances and other benefits they stand to get for participation. The whole thing is a huge scam and the victim is the entire Nigerian society because money that would have been put to better use is sunk into practically worthless exercises.
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It is sad that in spite of the severe poverty in our land, prudent or frugal use of available resources hardly figures in the calculation in the expenditure of public funds. If you ask the leadership of the Benue State House of Assembly now why scarce public funds should be used in such a manner, the defense they may put up is that the money so spent has been budgeted for as if reasonableness is no longer a mark of the exercise of budgeting. Already Speaker Tsumba listed the capacity training workshops as one of the BSHA's "achievements" for the one year of its existence! Surely, the dream of Nigeria joining the league of the 20 most industrialized nations on earth by the year 2020 would be a mirage if our leaders at various levels of governance do not learn to judiciously use the wealth of the country to create more wealth but spend it on clearly frivolous projects.
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