The Governor of the Central Bank, Mr. Lamido Sanusi's recommendation that in order to reduce the overhead of governance, about half the workforce should be sacked is a welcome idea.
It goes without saying that the cost of governance in Nigeria is so high that over 70 per cent of our revenue goes into servicing recurrent expenditure. With mindless corruption and looting by our leaders taking a large chunk of what is left, very little is available for development.
Looking at government's salary burden alone, we will see that those who draw salaries from the government include political office holders, political appointees, ministers and their retinue of aides, and other so-called public servants.
Political office holders have their aides, which include special advisers on different issues, senior special advisers, principal advisers, etc. Again, there are different categories of assistants, including special assistants and principal assistants.
Apart from paying them unusually fat salaries, with no equal in other parts of the world, the government also provides them with houses, nay mansions, official cars, and all sorts of allowances under various nomenclatures.
Added to these are political appointees like the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, ministers and ministers of state, board members, accountant-general, auditor-general, chairmen and directors of government agencies, parastatals, and other organs of government. All these positions are duplicated at the state and local government levels.
The Obasanjo regime saw the wisdom in reducing overhead cost of governance and therefore decided to monetise some benefits enjoyed by politicians and civil servants. With public servants and political office holders still enjoying already monetised benefits, one wonders if the monetisation policy has been scrapped. Or are they enjoying on two fronts?
Why will a mansion be built for the vice-president at a staggering cost? It's even said that the man wanted more for the project. What a country!
The Federal Government not only funds, but also pays salaries and allowances of all employees of institutions, agencies, hospitals, universities and companies it owns. These include all federal universities under the Ministry of Education, teaching hospitals, specialist hospitals and federal medical centres under the Ministry of Health. This is true for all other ministries. This makes the civil service a major avenue for government expenditure.
Does the country get commensurate returns by way of professionalism from the civil service? A visit to federal or any state secretariat if you have any business to transact there will adequately answer that question. Government business is treated with profound lackadaisical attitude. People get to their workplace when it pleases them and leave when they like. Some don't come at all. Others spend the whole day doing unofficial business. At the end of the month, they get their salaries from Abuja. No monitoring system in place.
It is pertinent to say that the parastatals under each ministry are too many. For instance, what is the point in having many universities that are not well-funded but employees salaries are paid? Universities have become places where research works are not done, teaching is inadequate and the system only produces half-baked graduates. It is no surprise that Nigerians send their children to schools in Europe, US, Canada, South Africa, Ghana and even the Republic of Benin! Are we surprised that no Nigerian university made the first 100 in the world?
In the health ministry, there is no reason why a state should have four federal hospitals performing almost the same functions. A typical example is Lagos State. Some of these hospitals should be merged and come under one big well-funded umbrella so that they will be bigger and function better and be at par with the best in the world. There is no point having 100 federal hospitals in Nigeria and none of them is as good as the best centre in the world or good enough to stop Nigerians from seeking medical treatment in India.
Again, why must Nigeria have at least one minister from each state of the federation? What exactly do they do? Why must we spend all the money when we can save funds by merging most of the ministries to manageable few? It is the same problem bedeviling the states. Most states now cannot survive without federal allocations. This being the case, why ask for more state-creation instead of merging some or going back to more manageable regional structure?
These are sources of monumental waste and leakages in the system. If we continue the way we are right now, no noticeable infrastructure development or economic growth will take place in Nigeria in the foreseeable future.
We need to cut down on our recurrent expenditure by reducing the size of our bureaucracy and trimming down our bloated and largely ineffective civil service. Most of the parastatals under the government now like PHCN need to be privatised for qualitative service delivery. The government only needs to provide an enabling environment and must also be more serious in the fight against corruption. This is the only path to greatness for any nation.
- Adeyanju wrote from Yaba, Lagos, vide mbadeyanju@yahoo.com
