Nigeria's education and health sectors could be said to have recorded little or no significant achievements in 2012. The sectors are still plagued by myriads of challenges ranging from inadequate funding, labour unrest, capacity issues, brain-drain, policy inconsistency and more. A non-governmental organisation, Exam Ethics International, reported not too long ago that Nigeria loses a whopping N1.5tn annually to education tourism. Of this sum, N160bn is allegedly spent by Nigerian parents on their children and wards' education in neighbouring Ghana while they coughed up N80bn on same in the United Kingdom. Minister of State for Health, Dr. Mohammed Ali Pate, disclosed on June 25, 2012 in Lagos that the country also loses $500m or N81bn yearly to other countries on medical tourism.
More worrisome in 2012 is the rising and unbridled cost of governance. About 70 per cent of the budget was spent on recurrent expenditure leaving less than 30 per cent for capital projects. This made the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria to advocate a reduction of civil servants by as much as 50 per cent. Long before the November outburst of Mallam Lamido Sanusi on the issue, the Steve Oronsaye Presidential Committee on Restructuring and Rationalisation of Federal Agencies, Commissions and Parastatals in its April 16 report had highlighted four major ways of reducing the cost of governance. These include: "Reduction in the number and size of the governing boards of parastatals; linking the budgetary system to deliverables and output; implementation or vacation of some decisions taken on past reports; and removal of all professional bodies/councils from the national budget." The committee established that at present, there are 541 government parastatals, commissions and agencies. 263 of these are statutory agencies which it recommends reduced to 161 due to overlapping functions. To achieve this, the committee proposed the abolition of 38 agencies, merger of 52 and reversion of 14 to departments in ministries. Unfortunately, eight months after the presentation of the report, the White Paper committee headed by the Attorney-General and Minster of Justice, Muhammed Bello Adoke, has yet to present its report to the Federal Executive Council.
What, in my estimation, has been the major albatross of this is insecurity. The country is under siege of terrorists. As lives and properties are being destroyed by Islamic insurgents, Boko Haram, in the north, the south has been overrun by armed robbers and kidnappers. In fact, the African Insurance Organisation at its meeting in Mauritius in October 2012 said Nigeria accounts for a quarter of kidnap for ransom cases reported worldwide in the last one year. The insurance association said Nigeria had been designated as the global capital for kidnap for ransom due to the huge record of kidnap cases reported in the country yearly. In the 2012 Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance, published in October, Nigeria scored low in human rights, political freedom, transparency and accountability. The country was ranked 14th out of the 16 countries in West Africa and 43rd out of the 52 countries listed overall. On corruption, Transparency International in its December 2012 report ranked Nigeria as the 35th most corrupt country in the world. The country shares 139 position with Azerbaijan, Kenya, Nepal and Pakistan among the 178 nations surveyed.
From the foregoing, it is apparent that 2012 had seriously challenged the present administration in diverse ways. The transformation agenda of the President Goodluck Jonathan's government is still largely nebulous and inchoate. For me, without prejudice to what the President could have said yesterday on his January 1 nationwide address, the way forward for the Federal Government in 2013 is for the quick implementation of all the committees reports whose White Papers had been approved as well as a speedy release of the White Papers on the ones in the works. The speedy execution of the Oronsaye report, in particular, is imperative if we are indeed serious about reducing the rising cost of governance.
According to the committee, if its report was adopted and agencies reduced in accordance with its recommendation, the government would be saving over N862bn between 2012 and 2015. The breakdown showed that about N124.8bn would be reduced from agencies proposed for abolition; about N100.6bn from agencies proposed for mergers; about N6.6bn from professional bodies; N489.9bn from universities; N50.9bn from polytechnics; N32.3bn from colleges of education and N616 million from boards of Federal Medical Centres.
Additional ways the President should explore to condense the cost of governance are by halving the Presidential Fleet of aircraft and cars; reduction in the number of presidential and legislative aides and auctioning the white elephant among the over 11,886 Federal Government projects that dot Nigeria's landscape (according to the 2011 report of the Presidential Projects Assessment Committee led by Ibrahim Bunu). It is also advisable for government to quit sponsorship of pilgrimages.
In the course of the ongoing constitution amendment, Jonathan should submit a memorandum or sponsor a bill to seek amendment to Section 147(3) of the 1999 Constitution which makes it mandatory for the President to appoint at least one minister from each state. Nigeria does not need more than 20 cabinet ministers unlike the current fad where an unwieldy 42 ministers are appointed. President Jonathan should also look at reducing the number of Nigeria's foreign missions while the National Assembly must exercise utmost circumspection in creating additional agencies or commissions.
The Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme will need to redouble its effort in 2013 in order to make its impact felt by Nigerians. I am not impressed with the submission of its Chairman, Dr. Christopher Kolade, during his recent budget defence. The humongous amount spent on local travels and over N2bn incurred on office expenses in about four months is unjustifiable. Nigerians want value for money. The Youth Enterprise with Innovation should also be strengthened in order to substantially increase the number of entrepreneurs in the country, thereby reducing unemployment and concomitantly poverty.
Above all, the President must strengthen all anti-corruption agencies inclusive of police and the Code of Conduct Bureau. It is an irrefutable fact that corruption plays a big role in Nigeria's poor governance scorecard. If we intend to make Nigeria a true investment haven, the issue of insecurity must be seriously tackled in 2013. It is intolerable to have citizens and aliens in Nigeria being mowed down in their prime or kidnapped. All the ongoing sectoral reforms should also be concluded in the New Year for better governance impact. It is preposterous that persons on awaiting trial in Nigerian prisons continue to far outnumber those who are convicted. Also, the excruciatingly slow judicial process has stalled the conclusion of many corruption cases that are in court given the erroneous impression that our anti-corruption agencies are inefficient and ineffective.
