Newscenter Media News On Thursday, July 19, 2024, the House of Representatives (HoR) resolved to support the Federal Government with N648 million for six months by cutting down their salaries by 50% to support food sufficiency across the country and to address the high cost of food. This gesture, as laudable as it seems at first glance, is grossly insignificant. Billions of naira have been allocated to the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs in the past five years for onward disbursement to the poorest of the poor across the country to alleviate their plight, yet this intervention has made no impact on their lives. They are still poor. This N648 million the HoR is giving to the Federal Government will not leave a scratch in the tough skin of the suffering the Nigerian masses are going through. This ill-advised gesture is an insult to the collective sensibilities and intelligence of Nigerians.
What the HoR need to do to show its sympathy for the plight of ordinary Nigerians and to empathise with the suffering of the poorest of the poor is to revisit the 2024 budget and review the line items whose costs its members inflated. One infamous example is the allocation of N82.5 billion to construct 427 boreholes, amounting to N193 million per unit. This amount is outrageously inflated. One wonders if the National Assembly (NASS) intends to dig oil wells across the country instead of boreholes. In his exposure of the mind-bending padding of the 2024 budget, Senator Abdul Ningi raised serious concerns about the sum of N3.7 trillion that was padded onto the budget. These overinflated figures are still in the budget. After the senator brought this to the public’s attention, furious, the leadership of the Senate handed him a three-month suspension. But, after a close door arrangement, he was settled, recalled to the Senate and is no longer talking about budget padding.
The overinflation of the budget by N3.7 trillion is what the HoR need to revisit. This budget is largely funded by debt. A nation that spends debt on consumption cannot claim to have utilized it judiciously or progressed by its apt application. Usually, nations take loans to fund production and infrastructure. But when such loans are used to finance inflated projects in the budget, most of it will end up in the pockets of a few individuals. That will further plunge Nigeria into crisis. When loans are used to finance and execute projects, they create jobs and contribute to the growth of the economy. The money will trickle down to people’s pockets and they will spend it in local markets and pay for local service. Citizens will feel the impact of this spending.
But that is not often the case in Nigeria. Every year, lawmakers drag constituency projects and so-called zonal interventions into the budget and then overinflate their costs. That done, these legislators pass their projects through to Federal Government agencies and parastatals behind whom they hide and pilfer money appropriated for the inflated projects. These agencies perennially serve as conduit pipes through which lawmakers syphon money from overinflated projects which, in most cases, agencies do not execute. These agencies and conniving lawmakers (who are mostly members of committees that oversee these agencies) fleece the nation of billions of naira yearly.
The NASS is responsible for inflating the costs of line items in the 2024 budget. It is therefore incumbent upon federal legislators to bring down the cost of projects in the budget to their real costs. This is the sacrifice they must make to free up money that the Federal Government can use to fund programmes that will alleviate the suffering of the teeming masses. Beyond that, they should ensure that the projects captured in the 2024 budget are well-executed to the highest quality possible and promptly.
Mr President ought to constitute a Project Monitoring Unit that would be responsible to the Presidency. The unit should ensure strict compliance and execution of projects captured in our annual budgets. When there are infractions, this unit should have the power to refer the offenders to the EFCC and the ICPC. This antigraft agency should then arrest and prosecute corrupt individuals and those who want to shortchange Nigerians.
This is the best way the NASS can save money for Nigeria. Cutting their salaries by half for six months will not make any impact. It will only reduce the plight of Nigerians to a caricature of despondency. What will N648 million do to the lives of more than a hundred million multidimensionally poor people in Nigeria? Very little. What would Mr President hope to achieve with the paltry N648 million the HoR grudgingly offered him? This offer is a disingenuous attempt at window dressing to cover the rot behind the grave issue of severe poverty eating away at the souls of the majority of Nigerians. This token will not solve anything. It is merely a cosmetic measure. The HoR should face the real issues. It should revisit the N3.7 trillion padded into the budget. Members of the lower chamber of the NASS should jettison the idea of offering half of their six months’ salary to ‘help’ the government. Instead, they should work with the Senate to revisit the budget in the interest of Nigeria.
Loans not invested in production or infrastructure end up in the pockets of some people who spend it on ostentatious imported goods. This drives up demand for these goods, piles pressure on our foreign exchange, causes the naira to continue its downward spiral, and keeps our economy perpetually in the doldrums. The masses bear the brunt of this squander mania. Those who plunder these funds and grow fat with free (stolen) money do not import capital goods that would help our economy. They bring in luxury items. The sacrifice the HoR must make is to bring down the super-inflated cost of items in the budget not cut 50% of their salaries for six months. Nigerians can excuse their bogus salaries. They have done so for more than 24 years.
Since the Supreme Court has affirmed Local Government (LG) autonomy, Nigerians should patiently push for the complete implementation instead of engaging in a nationwide protest. If President Tinubu dared to take the bull by the horns, a thing previous administrations failed to do, Nigerians should queue behind him. It is unfair to pass judgement on a president who is only a little over a year in office. This is not sufficient time to clean the rut of eight years of economic mismanagement and maladministration he inherited. Besides, the major candidates in the last presidential elections all promised to remove petroleum subsidies if they won at the polls. Neither of them would have acted differently if they were at the helm of the nation’s affairs today. We all would have had to grapple with the effects of subsidy removal regardless.
We must never lose sight of the fact that corruption is behind the hardship in the land. Resources meant to develop rural areas, develop their infrastructure, and provide security logistics to ameliorate the suffering of people at the grassroots, have long been stolen. This money ends up in the pockets of a few individuals. This is the major reason we are feeling the bite of the current hardship. So long as our leaders continue to partake in the industrial-scale plunder of our resources, this hardship will continue regardless of who holds court in Aso Rock Villa. We must therefore know that the current daily astronomical rise in food prices is in part caused by the inability of farmers to access their farms, let alone cultivate them. This denial of access to farms is caused by the pervasive insecurity nationwide, especially in rural areas.
LG autonomy is a panacea for insecurity and poverty in rural areas and a cure for the hardship in the land. When LGs take full control of their funds, and economic activities pick up at the local level, rural areas will be safe, farmers will return to their farms, and LGs will have the funds to provide fertilizers, tractors, and other agricultural inputs to farmers. The bumper harvests that would result will drive down food prices nationwide. Financial autonomy will allow LGs to provide good medical healthcare to people at the grassroots. Further to that, it will boost the economy of rural areas and reduce the current hardship in the nation.
Nobody should push people into the street to engage in a demonstration that might deteriorate into violent disturbances that would plunge the nation into anarchy. No government would want its people to suffer. Granted, the present administration may not have done what is necessary to stem the tide of this hardship brought by its sudden removal of petroleum subsidies. Still, the executive should not bear the sole responsibility for the current economic hardship. The NASS should revisit the 2024 Appropriation Act even though it is already law. We cannot take and live with every garbage couched in the cloak of law. If there is the need for amendment, the NASS should be humble enough to admit its mistake, and courageous enough to revise and amend the Act. No one would blame it for doing the right thing. That is the patriotic thing members of the HoR should do.
The current economic terrain is not friendly to business people. The Central Bank should reduce the high interest rates which has pushed several people out of business. It should be reduced to a sustainable level. Doing so will attract foreign and domestic investment into our economy. Another thing the government must do to attract more foreign investors is the improvement of the ease of doing business in Nigeria. The government must find out why many multinational companies left the country and provide an enduring solution to this problem. In addition to that, economic policies must be well thought out and debated before they are implemented. Our numerous policy somersaults do not present ourselves as a haven for business. In this day and age, most governments across the globe are not engaged in business. They provide an enabling environment for businesses to flourish and, in the process, create jobs for its citizens. The right policy is very crucial for youth empowerment/employment.
If people would protest against the Federal Government, what about the governors? What have they done with the money they receive from the savings made from the removal of petroleum subsidies? Nigerians should hold their state governors to account because states are responsible for most of the development that should touch people’s lives. It is unfair, therefore, to heap all the blame for the current economic crisis on the president and ignore state governors’ role in it.
President Tinubu is doing his best to ameliorate the situation. He has ensured that LGs have financial autonomy and recently approved an improved minimum wage for Nigerian workers. We should support him to do more. We should rise and be watchdogs of the implementation of LG autonomy. It is when these kinds of policies are implemented to the latter that we will feel the impact of good governance. That is what is lacking in Nigeria.
Going to the streets and protesting in the current fragile climate can throw the nation into turmoil whose end no one can predict. The protestors should reconsider their stance and give a little more time to this administration believing that something will be done to ease the suffering of Nigerians.
Another area the Federal Government should improve to reduce insecurity is prioritising and intensifying the war against insurgents, bandits, crude oil thieves, organised crime etc. People no longer feel safe in Nigeria. Kidnapping for ransom has increased and nobody knows who would be next. Investing in modern weapons and equipment as well as intelligence gathering would help us win the war against elements that are hell-bent on pulling the nation asunder.
The government must increase budgetary allocation to key sectors to lay the foundation for our future prosperity and technological advancement. These sectors include education, agriculture, health, mining, science, technology, and innovation.
One area that few have cast their searchlights on is the large scale, organised crime in the oil sector. This has cost Nigeria trillions of naira over the years and contributed to crippling the economy and the current hardship people are grappling. Crude oil theft has gone beyond crime. It is now a national security issue that must be brought to zero. The people of Nigeria deserve a breather. They deserve to survive. NNPC, unfortunately, has for long been in the centre of Nigeria’s problems. It is a corrupt, opaque organization that does more harm than good. Although it was recently reorganized into a corporation, more must be urgently done to ensure that it becomes more transparent and more efficient. As it is the goose that lay the golden egg, Nigeria depends on it. Its many failures serve to keep our economy down and plunge the nation into hardship and want.
Finally, justice must not only be done; it must be seen to be done. Mazi Nnamdi Kanu should be released unconditionally. Victims of police brutality and abuse all over the country should be released. The End SARS protesters, the Obigbo kidnap victims, the many IPOB and Yoruba Nation protesters who are still in custody, should be released.
In the preceding paragraphs, some of the issues the organizations of the forthcoming nationwide protest have put forward as the reasons behind their protest have been dissected and suggestions made to address their concerns. If the Federal Government implements some of these suggestions ahead of time, perhaps the protest would die a natural death. Nigeria can and will succeed.
Pharm Ike Chinedu Klinsmann
Ohamadike-Dunukofia
Nigeria Union Sweden