There is now a global acceptance that democracy and good governance are essential to the sustainable economic development and political stability of a nation. Unfortunately, these two vital necessities have continued to elude our country since the outset of military intervention in the polity in January 1966, resulting in the near total cessation of development and the promotion of increasing national instability. While some semblance of democracy seems to have returned since 1999, this has not been accompanied by good governance. The key players in the polity, having become conscious of the global resentment of military intervention in national politics, have been content to hide under the veneer of democracy to intensify their predatory governance, confident that any military truncation of their rule will be universally condemned and secured by the proverbial docility and timidity of our people which make a spontaneous revolt most improbable.At this juncture, I should clarify what I mean by good governance. From the extensive literature on the subject, I will paraphrase good governance as the extent to which a government is accepted as legitimate, seen as accountable in its conduct, effective in the management of public resources, responsive to the needs of its citizens, able to formulate appropriate policies and implement them effectively, deliver services, create an enabling policy environment for productive activities and maintain law and order, justice and equity.In the light of the above, it cannot be contested that we have been under bad successive governments since 1966. Why has this been so' I have identified five reasons, which include(i) The self-inflicted, prohibitive cost of governance,(ii) The wide prevalence of corruption in the polity, and the attendant destruction of our value system,(iii) The chained and poisoned mindset of our people, leaders and followers alike,(iv) The pollution of the political and electoral processes, effectively shutting the door against competent and inspired leadership, and(v) Some miscellaneous constitutional issues.Each of the above identified factors is worth a broader elaboration but I will limit myself because of space constraints to an exposition of only the first two, namely the cost of governance and corruption and the attendant destruction of our values.Let us start with the issue of the prohibitive cost of governance. Government, as we know, requires funding for all its development activities. The first duty, therefore, of any government committed to providing good governance is to effectively manage its resources. A government that spends most of its financial resources on consumption will surely lack the means to deliver good governance. Unfortunately, that is the position of our government today.If we examine the 2011 budget of the Federal Government, we shall see that the estimated revenue of the government, based on a benchmark price of $75 per barrel of crude oil was N3.27tn, while the total recurrent budget was N3.34tn. This shows that we plan, as a nation, to spend more on recurrent expenditure than our total anticipated revenue. We will therefore have to borrow, not only to finance capital expenditure, but also to fund part of our recurrent budget. I consider this as irresponsible financial management. This was the main thrust of Abubakar Atikus criticism of the budget, in his letter to President Jonathan on January 2, 2011 in which he described the 2011 budget as a recipe for disaster. Although his criticism then was on the original budget proposal which Jonathan had submitted to the parliament in December 2010, both the finally passed budget and the original proposals feature the same anomaly.Unfortunately, given the pre-elections political climate of the time, Atikus alarm did not get the attention it deserved. It is, however, noteworthy that the Presidents own much acclaimed Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, while appearing before the Senate for confirmation of her appointment on July 6 this year, also described the current budget as tantamount to the government living above its means, concluding that it was not good for development. Wasteful expenditure by the Presidency, which alone consumes close to 1.5 per cent of the national revenue, reflects the profligate disposition of governance.One of the factors leading to bloated recurrent expenditures of the government is its size. There are too many superfluous parasitic staff in the Presidency. Within the cabinet, we have more that 40 ministers overseeing 29 ministries, whereas the entire continental government of the United States has only 15 secretaries, equivalent to our ministers. The bureaucracy within each ministry is also bloated. A visit to any government office will reveal that many people on the staff really have no work to do and most are under-employed. Unnecessary travels, exorbitant estacodes and the lack of effective control over the number of personal staff of top public officials and on the number and use of official vehicles are a significant drain on government resources.When it comes to over-staffing, the parastatals and other extra-ministerial departments are even worse. Many of them perform duplicating functions while several now serve little or no public good. Their drain on the nations resources is far too large compared to their limited useful output.The National Assembly is particularly guilty of selfishly squandering a large chunk of the nations resources. For example, in the Presidents original budget proposal of December 2010, a provision of N111.76bn was made for the lawmakers. By the time they passed the Appropriation Act in March 2011, they had jerked up this provision to N232bn, an increase of 109 per cent. In like manner, a provision of N120bn for them in the amended bill in May 2011 was jerked up to N150bn, simply to be able to fund what is now derisively known by the public as their jumbo allowances, over which they are usually prepared to hold the budget to ransom until the President accedes to their wish.Estimates of how much a lawmaker makes per annum, including these jumbo allowances, range from N240m for a senator (that is, not a principal officer) and N204m for a member of the House of Representatives, as given by Prof Itse Sagay, to N182m and N127m respectively as given by Messrs Meribe and Adeniji. In the discussion that follows, I shall adopt the figures by the latter, who also went further to compare Nigerian legislators earnings with those of legislators of other countries. While a Nigerian senator earns the equivalent of $1.2m per annum, his US counterpart earns only about $181,000; the UK member of parliament, only about $104,000, and an Indian MP about $24,000. For a reference the US President, Mr. Barack Obama, earns only $400,000 per annum, just a third of the bumper package of a Nigerian senator.It is relevant to examine our lawmakers emoluments in the context of the income level of the people who they claim to represent. With the N18,000 national minimum wage for Nigerian workers, then a senators annual pay will come to about 840 times that of the minimum paid Nigerian worker, whereas the corresponding ratio in the US is roughly 11 and in the UK, about 4.5. The result of these jumbo salaries and allowances is that the National Assembly alone gulps about 7 per cent of the nations total revenue.- Excerpts of a lecture delivered by Dr. Okurounmu to mark the annual reunion activities of the Government College, Ibadan Old Boys Association, at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos, recently.
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