Being text of presentation by former FCT Minister, Malam Nasir el-Rufai, at the biennial conference of the Nigerian Guild of Editors in Benin, Edo State, recently
So assuming that they manage to pass another seven bills before the end of this year, it would cost the Nigerian citizen an average of about ten billion naira to pass a single bill! This implies that to pass the 2011 budget (which allocated N150 billion to NASS), we paid 10 billion naira.
An even more interesting statistic is the cost of maintaining every legislator every year. It works out to princely N320 million per legislator per annum. At this rate, every four year stint at NASS works out at N1.28 billion per legislator.
There is nothing unusual about providing funds for legislators to hire personal staff, experts and aides to assist their work. There is nothing wrong with provision of funds to run their offices in Abuja and their constituencies. What is wrong, and criminal even, is if such funds are unreasonably high, and not subject to any accountability or audit.
These “allowances” not sanctioned by the RMAFC go straight into each member’s account, without any need to account or be subject to audit. As things stand today, each legislator is a government agency without the constraints of a HR, Legal, Accounting and Administration departments and rules, and not subject to either internal and external audit. This is no way to lead by example!
The Judiciary seems equally determined not to be outdone. In this year’s budget, apart from the nearly 20 billion naira allocated to the Federal Ministry of Justice, the National Judicial Council will receive 95 billion naira. If we compute that the Supreme Court has 22 Judges; Court of Appeal 67; Federal High Court 58; FCT High Court 38 and the National Industrial Court 13, an average of 30 high court judges per state gives a total of about 1,300 puisne judges nationwide. Following the same statistical analysis, the upkeep of these judges along with their support staff every year comes to a about N73 million per annum per judge.
Another interesting observation is the fact that government says the problem of power shortage will be a priority, yet the Ministry of Power only got 91 billion naira as total appropriation, while the security sector (Military, Police, Internal Affairs, NSA, Amnesty, Pensions, Police Reform, etc.) got a mind-boggling N1,592 billion naira. This amount is over 35% of the entire budget. In other words, though Nigerians have never felt so insecure, the NSA, Internal Affairs, Police and Defence combined will be spending N4.36 billion per day on our behalf! This does not include the security votes in ministries, and the 36 states. Even local government chairmen now have security votes.
The point of these statistics is to show how expensive governance has become and how little Nigerians get in return. Four years ago in 2007, the entire federal government budget was 2.3 trillion naira; today we are spending 4.485 trillion.? In 2007, statutory transfers amounted to 102 billion naira or 5% of the total budget.? Today, transfers amount to 418 billion or 9% of the total.? This year, the federal government will spend 495 billion naira or 11% of the budget on debt servicing compared to 326 billion naira or 14% it spent four years ago.
More telling is the 1.05 trillion naira or 46% spent on recurrent expenditure in 2007 against the 2.425 trillion or 54% government will spend this year. Just four years ago, capital expenditure accounted for 36% (830 billion naira) of the budget. This year, the amount for capital expenditure is 25% (1.147 trillion naira) of the current year’s budget.
All these come down to the questions: Has the government’s 4.485 trillion naira budget made life any better or even provide any security for Nigerians?? Can we feel the impact of these huge spending? Is the cost of governance justified? If we do not have the courage to ask these questions, we will be doing ourselves a disservice.? I have been asking these questions, and I beseech you to ask the same.
Comparative? Costs of Governance
At the comparative level, very few countries match the high cost of general administration in Nigeria. The United States, the largest economy in the world, with a GDP of some US$ 15 trillion has a federal cabinet not exceeding 20, less than half of that of Nigeria.
The cost of general administration represents less than 10% of the federal budget of the USA. Contrast that with the figures in Nigeria ranging from at best 55% to as much as 75% of the budget, we are now witnessing. The estimated proportion of general administration to GDP adding up federal, state and LG expenditures is over 20% of GDP. A state in the north I visited recently spent 85% of its total revenues on the running cost of the government. How can that state develop?
The rich countries spend an average of 10% of their budgets and/or GDP on the general administration of their countries.
China and India have the largest bureaucracies in the world. But their average annual expenditure on general administration is only about 12% of GDP, and that is considered high, but at least the results are showing – these are the fastest growing economies in the world that have lifted hundreds of millions of the people out of poverty in the last decade.
On the other hand, poor countries, which can ill afford to do so, tend to spend a lot more in the running of their countries’ bureaucracies and politics. Of course, this is all relative to their GDP. But the structure of demand shows that in poor countries, the public sector is usually dominant and takes the lion’s share of all budgeted expenditure. As a matter of fact this trend accounts largely for the painfully slow economic growth of low-income countries such as Nigeria .? The annual World Bank economic data have shown that public expenditure in Nigeria as a share of total expenditure, or the GDP, has consistently been among the highest in Africa. Yet, big governments do not necessarily translate to effective service delivery to citizens. On the contrary there is overwhelming evidence that the bigger the government is the higher the probability of wasteful spending and large scale corruption.
Our Collective Responsibility
Since leadership, particularly in a democracy, entails holding of reins of power in trust for the people, it is my conviction that much beholds on the people to determine, within lawful parameters, how they are governed.? We should hold accountable those who hold political offices on our behalf, nonetheless the inadequacies in our electoral system.? They should be our servants rather than being our ‘Lords’ as they currently arrogate to themselves and flagrantly display at all available fora.? Until the people muster the courage to manifestly use the power, which the tenets of democracy vest in them, it is doubtful if the continually rising cost of governance would impact positively on the wellbeing of the populace.
The channels through which the inherent powers in the people could be put into veritable usage for the good of all and in redeeming our drowning polity are well entrenched in the constitution as is without further amendments.? Procedure through which erring President; Vice-President; Governor or Deputy-Governor could be sanctioned, made and unmade is clearly specified in the grundnorm . Same goes for the distinguished and honourable members of the parliament, who, according to the spirits of the constitution are at best on a part-time job but who invariably have turned the law-making venture to an instrument of oppression of the very people they are supposed to dutifully represent and protect. The express provisions of the constitution vest in the electorates in the relevant constituencies to remove any unworthy parliamentarian through the recall process .
The saddening perspective of the Nigerian experience is that the people have not found their voice.? They are polarised on primordial ethno-religious sentiments whereas the monster diminishing their wellbeing thrives on class hegemony. Those that impose the outrageous system of governance wherein the spiraling costs translate into less investment, poor services and abject poverty for the majority of the people are drawn across the 774 local governments.??? This, in my candid opinion, is where the media’s role in educating and mobilizing the people to action appropriately lies.? But do we have a mass media that is neither cowed nor bought over?? That is a question that you, ladies and gentlemen can answer honestly.
Wither the Fourth Estate of the Realm?
Against the courageous background of the Nigerian journalism, it is distressing that today’s Nigeria mass media appear to have abandoned their primary role of balanced reporting and keeping the government in proper check as the fourth estate.? It is depressing that vital news on our dear country are better obtained from foreign media – thanks to satellite and cable TV,? and internet bloggers.
There is an attitude in government that any story however interesting has a shelf life of three weeks. So political office holders, public servants and politicians know that they just need to survive the next 21 days. Reflect carefully about the biggest story of the year – in my view, the unconstitutional, illegal and unjust removal of Lord Justice Ayo Salami. How many editors still remember this most serious, multi-pronged attack on democracy and rule of law in Nigeria’s history? It is more than 3 weeks, and dead, but its consequences may be the death knell of this republic if those intent on getting what they want at all costs do not take a deep breath and step back from the precipice.
This gathering of crème-de-la-creme of our media could best take the advantage of this occasion to rescue the ‘ship of the Nigerian Nation State’ the captains of which appear docile and overwhelmed by challenges of governance. Failure to rise up will make your media irrelevant, while raising the profiles of the Saharareporters of this world, and Aljazeera!
The choice is yours. It is between immediate gratification and sacrifice to build a great nation. The ladies and gentlemen in this room have a leading role to play or fail.
Thank you once again, for inviting me.
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