Executive compensation refers to the financial payments and non-financial monetary benefits provided to high level management in exchange for their work on behalf of an organisation. The type of employees who are typically paid with executive compensation packages include corporate presidents, chief executive officers, chief financial officers, vice presidents, managing directors, and other senior executives even political leaders such as councillors, local government chairmen, state governors and commissioners, state Houses of Assembly members, National Assembly members, ministers, Vice-President and President. My bone of contention is the executive compensation being paid to political leaders in Nigeria and how it has drained the economy. Honestly speaking, it calls for a roundtable conference. The 36 states in this country calls for re-assessment and evaluation. I want to remind Nigerians that we operated on three regions before and each region controlled her own resources. The creation of political states came on board as a result of free crude oil from a particular region of the country that some other people want to partake and if possible want to seize from them. This eventually led to sharing formula. For God’s sake, where do they share resources in the whole world? These issues led to proliferation of states that are not up to a town in some countries i.e. many states in Nigeria are glorified local governments.
Since every part of the country wants a share of the so-called national cake, a small country “Nigeria” is now proliferated and ethnically divided and the centre can no longer hold. The saying of Chinua Achebe that “you put gagger into the things that banded us together and we are falling apart” becomes the order of the day. The blessings of oil if not careful want to become a curse.
My worries are these: Can’t we see that Nigeria is small compared to the number of states that we have? Sincerely, this country should not have more than six viable states due to our differences. We always compare the incomparable (Nigeria and the USA); often we say America has 50 states, fine, do we bother to find out how they came about the number of states? Does America capitalise on a resource found in a single state? Do we try to find out the size, the population and economic capacity of each state? Nigeria can be compared to California, a state in America, in terms of size. California is divided into 58 counties. The legislature of California is composed of a senate consisting of 40 state senators and an assembly of 80 members, whereas Nigeria has 774 local government areas. The legislature of Nigeria is composed of a senate consisting of 109 senators and an assembly of 360 members. Remember this state in terms of land mass is the size of Nigeria (find out for yourself).
Another important issue is the Gross domestic Product per capita. The GDP per capita for California in 2014 is $59,562 while that of Nigeria in 2014 is $1,092. The minimum wage in California is $10 per hour while the minimum wage in Nigeria per month is N18,000 ($90) which is about N600 per day ($3) and N75 per hour ($0.375 if N200 is equal to $1). So, Nigerians, what are the bases of comparison? It is not a gainsaying that if Nigeria is not restructured in all ramifications, (economically, politically, resource wise) it is only the political class that will continue to thrive irrespective of the fight against corruption.
Furthermore, if we consider multinational companies that are in California such as Adobe Systems, Apple Inc., Chevron Corporation, Facebook, Google, Hyundai Motor America, McAfee, Microsoft, etc, what are the likes of these companies in Nigeria?
For political and resources sharing sake, Nigeria is divided into 36 states with 36 governors including the Federal Capital Abuja. Look at the executive compensation being paid! Can we say the eyes of our leaders are closed or blind to all these? Or they know but because of their selfishness and self-centredness they closed their eyes to the reality. Again Texas is another example. It is the second largest state in America in terms of land mass and with only one governor; and will you believe Texas is one and half the size of Nigeria? Let me reiterate that the size of Osun State is from Asejire to Osogbo, to Okuku and ends at Ijabe. Again, from Asejire to Ife and through Ilesa to Owena back to Ife and from Ife to Okeigbo is not up to Houston which is a town in Texas. We have several states in the north and east that are worse than my Osun example. Then, what are we saying?
Another issue is the idea of borrowing to finance budget. What are we borrowing to finance budget for? To pay executive compensation? Let us look at the past budgets including the just signed one. The recurrent expenditure is more than the capital expenditure. In a layman’s language, recurrent expenditures are salaries and administrative maintenance while capital expenditure is for developmental projects. From the budget, what do we have left for development?
Another important issue to look into is, what is each state doing with one minister? Nigeria is having over 36 ministers. Incredible! What is each state doing with three senators? That is why states can no longer pay salaries of their workers.
If all these excesses are not addressed, they will address themselves one day and the results may not augur well with the unity and co-existence of this country called Nigeria.
Based on all these established facts, for meaningful and drastic change to occur, the following should be implemented and worked upon.
Firstly, Nigeria should revert to not more than six states, each geopolitical zone translating to a state, and each to maintain her resources as obtainable in any true federalism in the world.
Again, the politicking should be devalued. However, Nigerian money (naira) should not be devalued. Make much political office holding part-time. Make use of academics, technocrats and responsible successful businessmen and women and pay them sitting allowances to run the legislative arm of our governance.
Let the government make it known to the whole world the type of economy we are practising. Give it a name and let the whole world know and if we are adapting our own economy, let us know.
Furthermore, in Nigeria, the government should let go of so many things. The government is involved in so many things apart from governance like water, electricity, road, job, to mention a few. This has led to corrupt practices and inefficiency. Many of these should be allowed to be run by private individual developers. For instance, roads in many advanced countries, like the USA that we mostly compare ourselves with, are handled by individual developers and they maintain and collect tolls and pay taxes to the government at respective levels.
In conclusion, the ongoing recovery of stolen money is good. However, a capital punishment should be attached to corruption and corrupt practices to exterminate it completely from our society. From the above, Nigeria is a viable state with abundance of untapped mineral resources in many areas. The cost of administration is unnecessarily outrageous; this calls for reexamination.
PUNCH
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