Daily Independent (Lagos)
8 July 2009
editorial
Lagos — Last week's report of the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) made a lot of wide ranging recommendations for stringent cuts in the emoluments of public office holders. Obviously this is a belated response to the global economic crisis. It is implied here that the longsuffering Nigerian public should be grateful for small mercies for the RMAFC's patriotic intervention. Frankly, it deserves no gratitude.
The RMAFC has been a willing collaborator and a participant observer in the delusions of grandeur propelling the modus operandi of Nigeria's political elite. It cannot divorce itself from the operating groundnorm that has made the Nigerian political elite the most lopsidedly remunerated in the world. As is evident from the breakdown in public infrastructure, the worsening security situation, and the deterioration in citizens' living standards, there is hardly anything to justify this profligate lifestyle of the ruling class in one of the planet's poorest and most dysfunctional countries.
Indeed a cost/benefit analysis of the paradigm would be ludicrously tilted in favour of massive costs and virtually no benefit to talk about. For example, in the last two years 109 senators have, by some estimates, received a mind-boggling N56 billion in salaries and allowances. In the same period they have managed to pass just 15 bills. Absurdly, this works out at (please don't laugh) N4 billion per bill! Not to be outdone in the indolence sweepstakes, less than 26 per cent of members of the Federal House of Representatives have sponsored at least one bill since their inauguration on the 5th of June, 2007. These members enjoy emoluments which will make their counterparts anywhere else green with envy. Each member of the House of Representatives, in line with the current remuneration package prepared by the RMAFC, takes home N1,985,212.50 and an astonishing N29,280,684,22 as allowances annually.
These allowances include appurtenances of office unheard of in more serious climes. There are allowances for accommodation, vehicle loan, furniture, ward robe, vehicle maintenance, entertainment, recess, constituency, personal assistants and so forth. The less said about the remuneration of the house leadership the better.. To go into this area in detail might tempt, for example, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to want to take up Nigerian nationality and seek an entrÈe into the House. The litmus test of patriotism will of course come when the assembly will be asked to pass the inadequate RMAFC-proposed downward review. The public waits to see whether self-serving considerations will as usual override the nation's interest.
To say the Commission's recommendations are grossly inadequate is to grotesquely understate the case. Fr example, the over-worked Speaker of the Federal House will now have to do with six cars instead of seven. This, as we all know, represents a great sacrifice for the advancement of the fatherland. Nigerians are also reported to be shedding bucketfuls of tears for the hard-pressed Senate President who will also have to make do with six cars, down from eight. Other 'sacrifices' include cuts in the senators' constituency allowance from 250% to 125%. That of the reps goes down from 150% to 75%. Accommodation/furniture allowances for local governments are to be 'cut' by over 50%.
From the RMAFC's proposal we can now fully understand why after ten years of return to civil rule there has been no worthwhile dividend of democracy. A whopping N1.3 trillion is expended on roughly about 19,000 political jobbers, with the local governments, most of which are immersed in parasitic activities rather than grassroots empowerment, cornering a whooping 53%. A country which indulges itself in this sort of reward structure in favour of the indolent can hardly move forward in a decisive development-enhancing manner. When other sectors ask for massive increases in wages, the political class can hardly raise any objection. They have set a negative example.
It has, of course, not always been like this. For there was a period when the country was much saner. For instance, in the early 1960s a professor at the University of Ibadan earned more than a Federal Minister. Since then it has been a downward spiral into a lopsided and utterly reprehensible system of reward allocation, with predictably disastrous results. The food for thought here should be why the countries making giant strides do not have this ludicrous sort of reward system. Pray, how many cars are allocated to the speaker of the Lok Sabha (India's House of Representatives)? What are the parliamentary allowances allocated to law makers in the rapidly developing BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China? How about South Africa, Malaysia, Thailand, Ghana, Singapore and so forth?
There is nothing to applaud in the RMAFC's recommendations. It is far too little, too late. What is needed today is not headline-grabbing tokenism but a drastic and holist reduction in the cost of the the machinery of government. The rot has so percolated downwards that the simple matter of electoral contests has not surprisingly degenerated into "do or die" war fare. It can hardly be otherwise with what is at stake. The return on an investment in public office is obscenely stupendous. What we are seeing here is a polity that has learnt nothing and forgotten everything! No appreciable forward movement will come from this distortion. Cry, the beloved country!
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I cry for my country. This is a serious rip off from those who steal our money with tricks. I cry for our country bcos of corrupt leaders who continue to indirectly and directly kill people in our hospitals, impoverish nigerians by giving them low standard education. Nigerians should declare a day of national mourning, that day every nigerian should put on black cloths or tie a black band on the head or arm. Let us mourn for the future of nigerian children. Since we cannot take up arms less we be seen as rebels, we should mourn for our… [Read Full Text]