Leadership (Abuja)
John Akpan
4 October 2008
opinion
The pith of President Umaru Yar'Adua's Independence Day broadcast was the public disclosure of the success of his antigraft fight to clean up public places. For a good attention, the president chose the National Day to announce that $3.5billion was successfully skimmed off government system – ministries, departments, parastatals, agencies and administrative units of government.
For many, including me, it was a playback of the Gowonic era of boom and vanity. Today, with a sense of bewilderment, we would recall that the real national task during the Gowon regime, was how to spend the heap of dollars which Nigeria made from crude oil sales. It appears, nothing has changed. If anything, it is the fact that Nigeria has made some huge sums of foreign exchange today, more than at any other time in its 94 years, and while the money swirls around a few, millions are faced with hard economic circumstances.
Considering the current national situation, it would appear as if General Gowon was somewhat flippant. He may have had a few hundreds of millions in the national purse then to share among his 12 state governors, and still some more left to throw around Africa and some other places that could catch his fancy. But today, the scheme is bigger, richer and meatier. With billions of naira, pounds and dollars, a president has the pleasurable responsibility to oversee the periodic national cashsharing exercise to Senators, House of Representatives members, ministers and governors. The governors, in turn, will enact their own among state assembly members, commissioners, local council chairmen and councillors.
In all these, so much money would change hands… some into very wrong hands, and sometimes for very wrong reasons. The most troubling upshot of all these is that the real people in whose name government claims to govern are left stranded. What makes Nigeria's case very peculiar (or rather, very zany) is that millions of Nigerians are desperately in need of a few basic things of life, such as graded rural roads and water; forget ultimate luxuries like electricity or modern health facilities.
I draw this inference from a typical example like my community and many similar communities that I know of across Nigeria. Sometimes I imagine what an access road, or one public water point, or a dispensary or a small market can do to turn around the very fundamentals of life in our hamlets and villages from where many of us spring. And yet, members of the National Assembly were spending, or are reportedly gearing up to spend N70 billion between now and December on what is called constituency projects. Same class of projects is also reported to have attracted N20 million to each member of the Oyo state House of Assembly.
As it is, I think each state has its own figures for its assembly members. Now, it has to be said that, perhaps, the idea of budgeting for constituency projects could have been conceived as a means to help buoy up a legislator's standing in his constituency. You can therefore verify from your representative at any level of government how budgetary allocations of the last nine years have helped to transform your community.
In my own case, I wish to invite all those persons who are currently claiming to be representing our community in the Senate of the Federal Republic, the House of Representatives, the state House of Assembly as well as the council chairman and my ward councillor to come home. Let them come and see where the billions and millions they have been asking for, in our name, could have gone to. They should come home to see how they can genuinely use their constituency project funds to help lessen the pains of poverty, deprivation and want, and earn the praise of the poor for eternity.
Nigerian leaders have tended to mystify the idea and practice of development for 48 years when, indeed, it requires no magic other than honest planning and faithful application of the resources so planned for. Inserting extra-budgetary sub-heads into national and state financial estimates, specifically for law makers, looks quite queer. But even if we were to be designing our type of "participatory democratic public spending" can't it be done with some element of finesse?
For instance, a legislator can submit his checklist of constituency projects to the executive for inclusion in the general budget framework. On approval, the list could be given to his constituency project monitoring committee, which he may have set up. Members of such committee can comprise those in need of jobs in his constituency. His constituency office (if there is) can become the projects' coordinating point. I've a firm belief, supported by personal practical experience, that such projects will not only be made deliverable, but will also inspire a feeling of communal ownership. That way, legislators can have sufficient time to concentrate on the task of lawmaking for the good of their people rather than run after contractors, if ever they would hire one in reality.
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