Given the enormous resources at its disposal, Governor Okowa's eight years administration could have done far better in Delta State in terms of infrastructural and human capital development.
Ifeanyi Okowa will cease to be the governor of Delta State from the midnight of 29 May, having completed his two terms (2015 -2023). A new sheriff will take over the leadership of the state for the next four years.
Mr Okowa, a University of Ibadan-trained medical doctor, was elected as the governor of the oil-rich state on 11 April, 2015 on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), defeating his main challenger in the election - Great Ogboru - by a wide margin. Before the election, he had served four years in the Senate representing the Delta North District.
Of the three governors the state has had since 1999, Mr Okowa was the most politically experienced going into the office, having been a local government chairperson, commissioner, secretary to the state government and senator. His two predecessors, James Ibori and Emmanuel Uduaghan did not have such varied political experiences before they became governors.
Mr Okowa won his reelection as expected in 2019 despite the opposition mounted principally by the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Although he failed in his vice presidential bid as the running mate to Atiku Abubakar in the 2023 presidential election, he nevertheless managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat for the PDP in the state's gubernatorial election, thus helping the party to retain a seat it has held since 1999.
For the outgoing governor, who has been holding one elective position or appointment since the country returned to democratic rule in 1999, and his supporters, he has done well for the state. But for the opposition and critics, Mr Okowa's performance in office for eight years is sub-par and nothing to write home about, given the huge resources at his disposal, especially the massive statutory cash receipts from the federation account as one of the top oil-producing states in the country.
His critics said Mr Okowa failed to judiciously use the resources for the infrastructural and human capital development of the state as he promised the citizens in 2015 when he was first sworn in as governor.
While it is hard to holistically assess his tenure in office and of any other political office holder for that matter, since there are no catholic metrics to do that, evaluation of basic parameters such as internally generated revenue (IGR), fiscal sustainability, poverty rate, unemployment rate, ease of doing business and budgetary allocations to key sectors such as education, health and agriculture, security and stability, among others, can give a fair assessment of the overall performance of the office holder.
Mr Okowa's two terms in office revolved around what he termed the SMART agenda which he unfurled at his swearing-in in 2015. His inaugural speech for his second term in 2019 showed no deviation from the SMART agenda, which is an acronym for S-Strategic Wealth Creation Projects and Provision of jobs for all Deltans; M- Meaningful peace building platforms aimed at political and social harmony; A- Agricultural reforms and accelerated industrialisation; R-Relevant Health and Education Policies and T- Transformed Environment through urban renewal.
Essentially, the core components of the SMART agenda of Mr Okowa can be distilled within the context of the aforementioned basic metrics that are used for a general review of his administration, which will soon be history in the annals of the state created on 27 August 1991 by the military administration of Ibrahim Babangida.
The Review:
Ease of doing business
The Ease of Doing Business (EODB), a borrowed innovation from western institutions, is a yearly appraisal conducted by the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) coordinated by the Office of the Vice President.
In the Nigerian domesticated version of the innovation, six indicators are usually used to determine the EODB namely; a secure and stable environment, transparency and accessibility of information, regulatory environment, skills and labour and economic opportunity.
By experts' account, the EODB is a substantial measure of how improved or friendly a business environment is, which allows for investment inflow, expansion of micro, small and medium enterprises, and industrial growth and development, among others. In a layman's language, the positive the EODB, the friendlier the business environment. The reverse is the case for a negative EODB.
Despite the Okowa administration setting up the Delta State Investment Development Agency to drive and marshal the ease of doing business in the state, reports from PEBEC, Budgit (a civic hub) show clearly the state has one of the most unfriendly business climates in the country.
For example, in February this year, Delta State ranked 35th out of the 36 states and the FCT, evaluated by PEBEC. In 2022, the state was also among the lowest, sharing the unfortunate fate with Zamfara, which was 37th on the table. Edo and Taraba were also in the same category.
Unemployment rate
The rate of employment is always high in a productive economy. Conversely, the rate of unemployment is high where productivity is low. One of the key elements that can facilitate high productivity is when the ease of doing business in an environment is positive, which, invariably, will also bring about more employment opportunities.
One contextual inference from the consistent abysmal performance of Delta State on the EODB table under the watch of Mr Okowa is that the strategic wealth creation projects and provision of jobs for all Deltans, which is the first on the list of his SMART agenda, is almost a complete farce . This is because wealth creation and job provision are almost impossible in a state where the ease of doing business is hellish, nasty and brutish.
In any case, one of the core responsibilities of a responsive government is to provide an enabling environment for business enterprises (micro, small and medium) led by the private sector to thrive for job and wealth creation purposes. Since an enabling business environment is tied to the ease of doing business, there is no gainsaying that Delta State remains a hostile environment for businesses and wealth creators to excel, impacting employment creation.
Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in the second quarter of 2020 showed that the South-south region had the highest unemployment rate in Nigeria. Of the six states in the region, Delta had the third-highest unemployment rate, coming after Akwa Ibom and Rivers respectively. As of then, the unemployment rate in the state stood at 40.3 per cent, while the underemployment rate was 20.1 per cent. Over 1,005,848 residents of the state who were of employment age (15-64) have no jobs whatsoever. Officially, the population of the state is 5,636,100.
Interestingly, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Delta states receive the highest statutory allocations from the federation account but yet have abysmal records in terms of employment generation for their teeming populations.
In spite of the job creation efforts of the Okowa government coordinated by the Office of the Chief Job Creation Officer, and jobs (an account of the state says the Okowa administration created over 100,000 jobs) reportedly created through various programmes such as the Graduate Employment Enhancement Programme (GEEP), Skills Training and Entrepreneurship Programme (STEP) and YAGEP, unemployment in the state remains active like a raging inferno. Officially, youth unemployment in the state is 64 per cent.
Debt profile
One of the major accusations levelled against Governor Okowa by the opposition in the just concluded general elections was that it accumulated huge debts in the last eight years.
Based on its 'State of the States' report for 2022, Budgit ranked Delta State as the 10th most indebted state in the country, coming after Bayelsa, which occupies the 9th position despite the state's huge receipts from FAAC, VAT and 13 per cent derivation, among other sources of revenue to the state within the years under review
At the inception of his administration in 2015, Mr Okowa, in a letter he wrote to the state House of Assembly soliciting approval for a loan request of N10 billion, indicated, according to a publication by Business Day, that he inherited N92.62 billion debt from the administration of Emmanuel Uduaghan. Eight years later, Mr Okowa is leaving behind a total domestic debt of N304.25 billion for his successor. The debt could be higher.
The latest figure, N304.25 billion, released by the Debt Management Office (DMO), indicates that Delta State has the second highest debt in the country, coming behind Lagos State with N807.21 billion. Ogun State took the third position. That was the state of the state's debt as of the last quarter of 2022, based on DMO's report.
But, there is still more to the official debt from the DMO's office. Four months to the end of Mr Okowa's tenure, the State's House of Assembly, under the speaker-ship of Sheriff Oborevwori, now the governor-elect, approved the outgoing governor's N100 billion loan request. The N100 billion is part of the N150 billion earlier approved Consolidated Syndicated Loan to be facilitated by Zenith Bank. Adding the newly approved N100 billion to the officially existing N304.25 billion debt brings the state's total debt to N404.25 billion.
An immediate implication of the massive debt profile of the state is that a large chunk of its revenue, which should have been used to facilitate developmental programmes, will be used for debt servicing to its creditors in order not to default. The opportunity cost of such a massive loan repayment scheme will be decadent infrastructure and atrophied human capital development.
Ironically though, despite the burgeoning debt portfolio of the state, the overall results of the Delta State's debt sustainability analysis show that the debt status of the state is currently sustainable and in the long term, which, therefore, makes the state one of the financially solvent states because of its debt-to-revenue ratio, the increase in its IGR, as well as the high inflow of revenue from the oil sector, which contributes over 70 per cent of the state's earnings, in addition to the commitment of the Okowa administration to always service its loan.
Fiscal sustainability index
This is another metric to determine the financial solvency or robustness of a state or private institution.
By fiscal sustainability, it means the ability of the government to sustain its current spending, tax and other policies over a long period without threatening government solvency or defaulting on some of its liabilities or promised expenditures. In other words, a fiscally sustainable state has a robust revenue profile and manageable recurrent expenditure obligations.
In its 2018 edition of the 'State of the States', Budgit, adjudged Delta State as one of the seven states that were fiscally sustainable. The other six states in this category were Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, Lagos, Edo and Ondo, respectively. Contrary to its outstanding performance in 2018, however, the state was ranked 31st out of 36 states in 2021, down from 23rd in the 2020 ranking, demonstrating poor performance on the sustainability index.
The reason for the poor performance could be attributed to the massive borrowings within the period and possibly the decline in the revenue flow of the country caused by the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 that stalled many economic activities locally and globally.
IGR
The internally generated revenue (IGR) of a state offers a window on how financially buoyant (or otherwise!) a state is without dependence on statutory receipts from the federal purse.
In Nigeria, most governors don't bother to expand the IGRs of their states because of their over-dependence on statutory cash inflows from the federation account. Because of this, most states are yet to actualise a quarter of their full potential. Many of them will go under if allocations from the federal purse stop forthwith.
Per Delta State, it is pertinent to say that Mr Okowa increased the IGR of the state under his watch, but commentators believe he could have done much more, given the state's economic potential.
As of the time he came to power in 2015, the state's IGR was around N40 billion annually. Due to the reforms he initiated, which included expanding the tax net of the state, plugging financial loopholes, arresting capital flight and the aggressive drive of the Delta Board of Internal Revenue (DBIR) to generate more revenue for the state, Mr Okowa reported through his then commissioner for finance - David Edevbie - in 2018 that his administration was able to rake in N51.9 billion annually for the fiscal year 2017. In 2016, the state generated N45 billion, while in 2018, it was N51.6 billion.
The Cable newspaper, relying on data from the NBS, reported in October 2022 that Delta State generated N80.2 billion for the fiscal year 2021, thereby making it one of the states that did spectacularly well in the IGR drive for the year. Lagos came first, followed by the FCT, Rivers and Ogun, respectively. For the fiscal year 2020, the NBS stated that Delta State generated N59.732 billion, making it the fourth top performer among the 36 states of the federation and the FCT.
Poverty rate
Interestingly, despite the high rate of unemployment in the state, it has one of the lowest poverty rates in the country based on a 2019 survey by the NBS released in 2020.
In that survey tagged "Nigeria Poverty and Inequality Survey Report 2019, released on 5 May 2020, NBS ranked Delta State second after Lagos among the states with low poverty rates. While Lagos had a 4.50 per cent poverty headcount, Delta had 6.02 per cent. As of 2010 , the state was ranked as the 12th poorest state in the country under the watch of then-governor Emmanuel Uduaghan.
The survey was conducted 10 years after the previous one, and the statistics bureau, with support from the World Bank, said it used consumption expenditure in tracking poverty rather than the income expenditure approach . Mr Okowa expectedly attributed the declaration by the NBS to the "Prosperity for all Deltans', agenda pursued by his administration.
In a curious twist, however, another survey by the NBS, which was carried out between 2021 and 2022, titled National Multidimensional Poverty Index Report, did not include Delta State among the states - Ondo, Lagos, Abia, Edo and Anambra - with the lowest poverty rates. Delta State's neighbour, Bayelsa, was among the poorest in the report, just like the previous survey cited above. Sokoto, Gombe, Kebbi, Jigawa and Plateau were also among the top poorest states in 2022
The report, released in November 2022, according to the statistician-general of the federation and CEO of the NBS, Semiu Adeniran, was the first time the bureau conducted a standard multidimensional poverty survey in Nigeria.
For clarity, while the first report by NBS that classified Delta as the second least poor state in Nigeria was about monetary poverty measured in terms of the population living below the national poverty line, the second report, Multidimensional Poverty Index, is much more encompassing as it took into consideration both monetary poverty measures and non-monetary poverty measures of poverty, which include access to healthcare, education, quality food, e.t.c
GDP
Although the Gross Domestic Product of a country or any of its subnationals does not tell precisely how productive or buoyant the economy is, it nevertheless gives an insight into the size of the economy (market) and its potential for greatness (or otherwise), other things being equal.
As of 2021, Delta State has the fifth highest GDP out of the 36 states of the federation, according to a publication of Budgit titled 'State of States 2022. Based on the report, which put the GDP rate at US15.3 billion, the state had the third largest GDP in the South-south region, coming after Rivers and Akwa Ibom, respectively.
The state government, through Kingsley Emu, the chief economic adviser to Governor Okowa, while reacting to a report of the NBS from which Budgit relied on for its extensive report, claimed that the economy of the state grew by 51 per cent in six years, with its GDP rising to N4.471 trillion in 2019 from N2.961 trillion in 2015 when the outgoing administration came into power.
Budgetary allocations to critical sectors of the economy under Okowa
Education, health and agriculture are sectors that drive the economy of any nation or state. This implies that government must continuously invest heavily in these sectors to boost human capital development, improve the standard of living, raise per capita income, enable food security, e.t.c
Health
As they say, health is wealth; that's, a healthy nation is a wealthy nation. Put succinctly, a healthy workforce is a productive workforce. No wonder a scholar, G.C Sokoh, in a research publication in 2023 titled 'IGR in Delta State: A tool for infrastructural development', published in the Journal of Policy and Administration (Vol 8, No.1 2023), recommended to the state government under Governor Okowa based on his findings to commit at least 40 per cent of the state's IGR in financing the health sector through improved budgetary allocation.
Mr Sokoh, a lecturer at the Delta State University, Abraka, said his study indicated that the IGR of the state had little impact on the health sector, unlike the education sector that received massive funding from the administration.
Ironically, Mr Okowa, a medical doctor by training, consistently made paltry allocations to the health sector for his years in power, falling abysmally short of the Abuja Declaration of 2001, which recommended at least 15 per cent of annual budgets for the health sector.
A casual sectoral analysis of all the budget allocations made by Governor Okowa to the health sector in the last seven years never made it to 10 per cent, let alone hit the minimum recommended 15 per cent. In fact, the highest allocation to the sector under his watch was nine per cent in 2020, which observers interpreted correctly to be as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. For 2021 and 2022, the allocation was 6 per cent, a far cry from the minimum threshold.
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Education
Without education, a nation is dead. Most developed countries have a huge number of well-educated citizens and thus are ranked high on the human capital development index. Conversely, poor countries have a miserly number of educated nationals which impacts the overall economic productivity of such countries.
Delta State, under the leadership of Governor Okowa, has done tremendously well for the past seven years, consistently meeting the 15-20 per cent recommendation of UNESCO on annual budgetary allocation to the education sector. In 2017, the state allocated 17 per cent of its annual public spending on education while it increased it to 20 per cent in 2019.
The allocations, no doubt, have brought significant gains to the education sector as the government created three other state universities - Dennis Osadebey University, Asaba, University of Delta, Agbor and Delta State University of Science and Technology, Ozoro - to improve access to tertiary education. It also gave a massive facelift to the existing six technical colleges in the state and constructed nine model technical colleges with three (Effurun, Asaba and Obiaruku) already completed and in use,while the remaining six located in Omadino, Irri, Akugbene, Oghareki, Kiagbodo and Orerokpe are in various stages of finishing. In one of its briefings, the state government claimed to have constructed, refurbished and renovated over 5000 schools.
Another positive derivative of the state's massive investment in education across the board is exemplified by the number of out-of-school children in the state. In 2018, according to NBS, the state was ranked 10th out of 36 states with the lowest number of out-of-school children.
However, more could still be done, perhaps by the incoming administration, to improve access to education for kids in hard-to-reach communities, especially those in the riverine parts of the state.
Agriculture
Despite the repeated promises of the Okowa administration in his SMART Agenda to make agriculture and agro-allied business a viable source of revenue and employment generator, as a way to relieve the state's overdependence on financial receipts from the oil and gas sector, all he did was pay lip service to the very vital sector.
For all his years in power as governor, the highest budgetary allocation to agriculture was 1.5 per cent in 2017, a saddening far cry from the Maputo Declaration, which recommended that every government must allocate at least 10 per cent of its annual public spending to agriculture and rural development.
The Declaration came into being in 2003 as a measured response to the harsh reality that agricultural productivity in Africa had stagnated for a while and therefore needed to be reactivated.
Experts have said over the years that heavy investments in agriculture and its value chain will enhance food security, provide jobs for the teeming youths, increase the GDP of a state/country, expand per capita income, increase household wealth, e.t.c. Invariably if sustainably done in the long run, it will help deepen the economic diversification policy and programme of the government in the truest sense of the word.
Conclusion
Given the enormous statutory financial receipts from the federation account that accrued to the Delta State government in the last eight years, in addition to refunds from the federal government, plus what the state generated internally, could have done far better in its deliverables to the citizens of the state in terms of infrastructural and human capital development if there were reasonable resource mobilisation, project prioritisation and reduced debt burden, among others.
It is expected that the incoming administration will consolidate on the gains recorded by Mr Okowa, while also trying to bridge the many gaps identified in the administration, especially in the area of debt accumulation, miserable funding of agriculture and health, poor ease of doing business, poor record of job creation to arrest youth unemployment which is a significant source of youth restiveness in the state.
The citizens of the state really do need to enjoy the many benefits that come with being an oil producing state like the ones enjoyed by the citizens of the Gulf countries.
