Salaries Payment Incapacitation: Myths and Realities, By Venatius A. Ikem

The myth about the inability of state governments to pay salaries is being taken too far. The truth is that it is absolutely impossible for any state to be incapable of paying legitimate salaries of its genuine workforce, despite the drop in FAAC allocation.

During the weekend celebrations of Democracy Day, we all saw states jostling to showcase real and imaginary projects with which they have performed “miracles” in their respective dormains and for which we must all be thankful, while insisting that they do not have enough to pay salaries. Even in projects that lie only in the realm of fantasy, the truth is that monies would have been appropriated and taken out of the government coffers.

Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against the execution of projects by any administration at all. But I believe that the first charge of any responsible administration is the salaries of those who offer the services that, in this case, will include the collection of revenues and management of same. This myth is however being sustained by the unanimity of purpose of the governors despite party affiliation, when it comes to the conspiracy to take as much as they can from the centre.

I find myself constantly prevaricating between support for more share of federally collected revenue to the states and sustaining the status quo, when I take into consideration the attitude of most of our governors in the management of the resources of their states. Like I said somewhere, most people do not seem to concern themselves with what happens in their states and so do not bother. The truth is that having killed the local government system by hijacking their allocation via State/Local Government joint allocation committees, the state remains the only hope of any form of reasonable service provision, business enablement and, in fact, life sustainance that most people can relate to.

But unfortunately, there is neither transparency, accountability nor even democracy being practiced in most states. The level of impunity both in dealing with resources and critics is quite disturbing. Since the advent of The Fourth Republic, clearly there has been more efforts at democracy at the centre than there has been in the states, particularly when we are talking of the separation of powers. This was taken to its peak when State Houses of Assembly voted against a proposal to make them self-accounting as independent arms of government! If PMB is again captured by the governors as they did GEJ, we can be sure that they will forever mortgage this country and bury her forever! The signs through this claim of inability to pay salaries look very ominous to me.

The blackmail is to create the impression that the federal government is the problem. The federal government must take steps to address the issues of the misappropriation of public funds daily assaulting our sensibilities from the various states by monitoring the application of those resources. Most of the stolen sovereign wealth for which there is a global outreach to repatriate is money stolen by governors.

As we speak, if urgent steps are not taken to address fundamental questions arising from this claim of insolvency, the PMB administration may soon be bogged down by the compelling need to continue to bail the states out without any basis. It is on record that some of the bailout funds recently disbursed have been diverted into projects other than the payment of salaries, yet in some instances the backlog of salaries remain unpaid! The reason is simple to my mind: there is no benefit in paying workers’ salaries. There is a lot to gain on the contrary by paying “contractors”, who in most instances are fronts for the governors. ‎Benue state seems interesting in this instance.

While the governor recently awarded 48 roads contracts, the civil servants are still being owned five or more months salaries! And the governor’s explanation is that he is doing “verification”! But it is on record that a good proportion of the bailout fund has already been used to finance various projects! It is not unlikely that after the “verification” exercise, the governor will not join the queue to ask for bailout funds to pay workers’ salaries afresh! This situation is by no means unique to Benue State. And I think the president has not paid much attention to the reports of the misapplication of those funds and if he does not, this will embolden the governors ahead.

As oil revenues seem to rebound, albeit on the back of our misfortune, one hopes that if there is enough to share once again, the much touted diversification of the economy will not be abandoned as governors will continue to mount pressure for the sharing of the national cake to sustain their appetites.

Is it not strange that a governor who gets “bailout”‎ funds has as many as 300-400 political aides in his employ and runs a convoy of almost 100 cars, plus something close for a co-governor who happens to be his brother, apart from the deputy governor, as in the case of CRS?

Furthermore, the vexed issue of what quantum of resources can be taken as “security” vote by a governor must be addressed, otherwise PMB is merely wasting our time and his energy and making more money available only for the governors to steal. ‎

The National Assembly must as part of the change agenda consider what the overriding public interest is in the concept of immunity for serving governors. I am yet to know of anywhere else in the modern world where such a strange contrivance exists to deprive a people from unquestioned brigandage by her leaders while being protected supposedly by their Constitution! The idea that after office they can then be put on trial is most patronising. The results we have seen since the past 17 years clearly show the ineffectiveness of such expectations.

If we are serious about fighting against corruption, these are some of the critical infrastructure that by constitutional protection guarantee the sustainance of the vice forever and which must be removed as a way of moving forward. This is what is making state governance so attractive that very soon a former Senate president or vice president will retire to go and run for the office of governor of his state! Almost every speaker and deputy speaker so far has been in the race successfully or otherwise, despite the established protocol that puts one above the other!

As oil revenues seem to rebound, albeit on the back of our misfortune, one hopes that if there is enough to share once again, the much touted diversification of the economy will not be abandoned as governors will continue to mount pressure for the sharing of the national cake to sustain their appetites. The critical challenge to check them lies in removing bottlenecks to prosecution and the establishment of a robust process for checking their excesses by building institutions ‎that can hold them to account.