Cost Of Governance: Playing Ostrich With The Economy

 By Adekunle Adekoya

Earlier in the week, two renowned economists, one a businessman and the other a traditional ruler used the occasion of a book launch by the Oxford Global Think Tank Leadership Conference in Abuja to speak truth to power. They are HRH Muhammad Sanusi II, Emir of Kano and former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and Mr. Atedo N.A. Peterside, founder of IBTC, which later fused with Stanbic Bank to become Stanbic-IBTC Bank. 

*Tinubu

What came up at the event, which the media focused on, were the reforms of the present administration and the cost of governance.

For Sanusi, the issue was the size and cost of governance. He pointedly asked: “We’ve got to be honest, why do we need 48 ministers? Why do we need dozens of vehicles when we’re moving around in convoys or travelling all over the country?”

Sanusi would not be the first to ask this question. Many before him had asked it, averring that the president had appointed just too many ministers. Not just that, there is a whole battery of special advisers and special assistants that populate the Presidency, in the office of the president and the vice-president. As you may know, the salaries and perks of office of special advisers are equivalent to that of ministers. To that extent, we may not know just exactly how many are drawing the salaries and perks of a minister.

Cost of governance is a challenge recognised by previous administrations. In fact, former president,  Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, often derisively said to be clueless, set up a panel headed by a former Head of the Civil Service, Mr Steve Oronsaye. Report of the panel’s work is popularly known as the Oronsaye Report. It was submitted in 2012, and in 2014, Jonathan released a white paper on it. The Buhari administration after re-examining the white paper also released a second white paper in August 2022, but did not implement the report. 

According to BudgIT, an economy watchdog, in 2012, Nigeria had 541 MDAs — Ministries, Departments and Agencies. This year of our Lord, we now have a whopping 1,316 MDAs! Between 2012 and 2025, we managed to create no less than 775 new MDAs and we are still counting. That means an average of 60 new MDAs were created every year between 2012 and 2025. At a time government is borrowing money from anywhere it can get a lender in the world, has it not occurred to anybody in government that the money we are looking for elsewhere is right at home, just that we are wasting it?

Our National Assembly is not helping matters in this regard. The NASS has probably created more commissions and agencies than all the military governments put together. Presently there are  bills before the two houses of the National Assembly fo the creation of one commission or the other. These commissions will be staffed, accommodated, equipped and salaries of their staff will also have to paid. They will use electricity, procure official cars, while their political and administrative heads will find reasons to travel abroad and they will not fly economy.

After creation of the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission, OMPADEC, which later became Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, we have generated reasons to create HYPPADEC, which is a development commission for areas in which hydro-electric dams are sited. The ravages of insurgency caused the North-East zone to demand special attention from the Federal Government, and in no time, we had the North-East Development Commission. In response, other regions joined the train, such that we now have development commissions for the South-West, South-East, and the other regions.

Imagine the cost of official cars for each of the political and administrative heads of each of the 1,316 MDAs alone. They all mostly drive big SUVS. In each of the MDAs will also be found corps of directors, deputy directors, assistant directors and other personnel fixtures, for whom are procured official cars of various grades. Many of these MDAs also own and maintain guest houses in major cities of the country.

What is more worrisome is the way and manner public funds are being spent. It is an open secret that state governors, when travelling, mostly do not fly commercial airlines. They fly in chartered private jets. Same for ministers. In addition, governors and ministers move about in long convoys. There was a molue gist about a minister, a few months ago, who was alleged to have spent N1.8 million to fuel his convoy, driving from Abuja to one of the South-East capitals! Imagine that huge sum, on just petrol! The drivers and retinue of aides in the vehicles in the convoy will need food and accommodation, all paid for from the national exchequer. Why don’t we just print money and burn it, since we were going to waste it anyway?

Long story short, the painful reforms born by me and my fellow compatriots will amount to a betrayal of the peoples of Nigeria if the politicians continue along this path of deliberate, intentional, monumental waste. Let the Oronsaye report be implemented without further delay, while jetting around in chartered jets should stop. Also, those long convoys should be made to vanish!

*Adekoya is a commentator on public issues