Daily Independent (Lagos)
Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
8 July 2009
analysis
Abuja — Early last week, the Bayelsa State Commissioner for Information, Orientation and Strategy, Mr. Asara Asara, told reporters in his office that the state government spent over N456 million on the recently cancelled two-day "working visit' of President Umar Musa Yar'Adua to Bayelsa. According to him, the initial budget for the visit was N1.2 billion, but when the Due Process and e-Governance Bureau reviewed it, it found reasons to abridge it to N456 million. And the State Governor, Mr. Timipere Sylva, who was eager to have the President in the state, promptly approved the sum.
Now, according to reports, the President was coming to Bayelsa solely to commission some projects completed by the Sylva regime and perform the foundation laying ceremony for the Bayelsa International Cargo Airport in Zarama-Epie, Yenogoa Local Council Area. Nothing more, nothing less, dear readers! Yet, some fellows thought that this simple activity provided sufficient reason for Bayelsa State to fritter away N1.2 billion just like that! If this does not amount to obscene profligacy and prodigality, somebody should tell me the right words to describe the outrageous decision. Okay, the money was eventually reduced to N456 million. Indeed, to the fat cats in the corridors of power, this may be just some "little change,' which may even be insufficient to host one night of riotous carousals for a couple of public officers with university girls and state prostitutes, but pardon me for insisting that N456 million is, indeed, a big sum - excessive for such a simple activity. And I fail to see how the mere act of the President flying into Yenogoa to commission some projects and lay the foundation for an airport should gulp such a huge sum. Indeed, such a sum can easily give hundreds of boreholes to deprived communities and make the people there happy drinkers of safe water in a region where virtually every stream has been horribly contaminated in the course of oil exploitations.
Why do our public officers find it so easy and natural to callously squander public funds without any restraint while masses of deprived people in their domains yearn each day for essential amenities that may never be provided? Sadly, every insignificant event provides an excellent opportunity for wallowing in profligacy and self-enrichment. At the end of the day, it may turn out that only a small fraction of the budgeted sum was spent on the event, while the larger part disappeared into private pockets.
But let's return to Yar'Adua's botched visit. Apart from the Central Working Committee headed by the Bayelsa Deputy Governor, Mr. Peremobowei Ebebi, there were also more than 16 sub-committees, all put in place to ensure a successful presidential "owambe.' Six masters of ceremony were hired to feature at the event. No doubt, all these committees, sub-committees or sub-sub-committees have their huge budgets, to give the impression that a really big event is taking place and justify the squandermania. There is also the publicity committee headed by the Information Commissioner himself, whose job may just be to organize media coverage for the programme, hire the six MCs and place adverts in the media welcoming the President - a job just one man can successfully execute within two days. In fact, what some of the committees and sub-committees might undertake with elaborate fanfare, to justify the huge funds allocated to them, could be perfectly carried out by just one person with only a telephone.
The commissioner said that since the trip had been cancelled, unspent funds would be returned, as the various officers and committee heads render accounts. It also means that those who had overshot their budgets would also seek reimbursement. The trip, according to my brother, Doifie Ola, the Governor's Chief Press Secretary, was cancelled so the governor could attend to some "pressing state matters.' But the story out there is that Yar'Adua was scared stiff by some benumbing security reports, and had to cancel the outrageously expensive trip. There is also the joke that if Yar'Adua was kidnapped in Yenogoa, the ransom would not be anything less than N500 billion.
It is high time we spurned all these wasteful activities that contribute nothing to the lives of the citizenry, like useless presidential visits to "commission projects' and carry out "foundation-laying ceremonies.' Such side attractions only provide momentary excitement, and nothing else. President Yar'Adua should sit back in Abuja and face the mounting national problems staring him in the face. Indeed, governance should be a more serious business than some public office holders are showing it is.
An Ever Unserious House?
Recently, it was reported that the Honourable Members of the House of Representatives deemed it appropriate to adjourn plenary to have lunch with President Yar'Adua's Special Adviser on National Assembly Matters, Mr. Abba Aji. The motion for this dishonourable act was moved by the House Leader, Tunde Akogun. Before they rushed out to have the lunch, only one out of the seven items listed on the Order Paper for the day had been treated. And, on this particular day, the House had commenced its sitting scandalously too late, about 3.00p.m. Yet, they had the effrontery to look Nigerians in the face and abandon such an important national assignment committed to their care, to go and do "longer throat'.
We must be worried by the quality of minds that periodically show up at our National and State Assemblies to make laws for us. Readers of this column know that in several articles published here, I have been unable to contain my sorrow and deep pain over the quality of lawmakers we end up with each time, and how such a misfortune continues to sabotage our best expectations for progress and development, since all it does is to extend generous incentives to the Executive to celebrate its insufferable ineptitude and directionlessness with indecent fanfare. As our decadent politics continues to inflict the nation with grossly light-minded fellows as lawmakers - individuals who neither have any acquaintance with sound ideas nor the capacity to appreciate the gravity of the assignment they are supposed to be performing - what the nation gets in return can only be retrogression and unchecked decay. What has remained sadly true is that for most of the lawmakers who have diminished our legislative chambers with their uninspiring presence these past few years, their real reason for showing up in Abuja has been to scramble over dirty naira notes like wanton street boys over balls of akara suddenly falling off the tray of a careless hawker. Indeed, these were mostly down-and-out fellows dusted off from here and there, easily excited by such little things as a sumptuous lunch with presidential aides, and they would emerge each time from such feasts feeling so high that they would forget their very important brief in Abuja. So sad.
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