How To End Governors’ Profligacy

By Bayo Oluwasanmi

Arguably, many Nigerians see state govern­ments as bankrupt. Given their financial conditions, many state governments are currently facing dire financial straits that have resulted in non-payment of workers’ salaries.

The bad news is that there is a zero chance that solutions are near. The problems are one hundred per cent caused by the governors, not by the reces­sion, not by dwindling oil revenues, and not by dwindling allocations, from Abuja.. There is pov­erty, hunger, anger, disease, killings, kidnappings, abductions and insecurity all across the states.

President Buhari and Nigerian some governors 

Former Governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu recently spoke the minds of a majority of Ni­gerians about the prodigality and profligacy of state governors. He attributed the inability of state gov­ernors to pay workers’ salaries to what he described as propensity to squander public funds on personal luxury.

Speaking to State House correspondents in May while leading a delegation of investors in the power sector to a meeting with Vice President Yemi Osin­bajo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, he said some governors claim as much as N35 million as trav­eling allowance on one trip. According to Kalu: 

“These governors don’t have enough funds to work for their people because if you check, the money drawn as security votes, they should stop that...Un­less they stop drawing security votes, they will not have enough funds to work with and most of them are living in absolute luxury. So, it is impossible to continue living in this manner.

“Most of the governors are even living in Abuja now. They don’t live in their states. Honestly, if you look at the books very well, for a trip they make, they will take a traveling allowance of N35 million. What are you going to do with that? So, how are we going to progress? Let them sit down and do the job they are elected for.”

The governors of these insolvent states would want Nigerians to believe that their states are broke. In a state broadcast, Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State said: “I want to thank you for your pa­tience, endurance so far in the face of this strike and our financial challenges … What I don’t have I can’t give. Ekiti State is broke.” His Ondo State counter­part, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko addressing protesting workers over the non-payment of salaries for months, said: “So, we can no longer pay salaries, even when they are due…. buckle up for a financial crash, as the state is broke”.