- It is time to cut the apron string to the centre
President Muhammadu Buhari may be a man of few words, but, when governors visited him to demand the payment of a final tranche of the Paris Club refund; he had some harsh words for them. He told them that governments exist to take care of their people and ensure that they live comfortably, observing that this is not the case in most of the states. The workers deserve their wages, the President said. Many state governments are still owing civil servants’ salaries in spite of bailout funds they have got from the Federal Government.
However, we agree with the governors that, the money, being a refund of over-deduction for external debt service between 1995 and 2002, the Federal Government has no business warehousing it. It should be returned to the owner states. The states had made demand in view of mounting pressures to meet the needs of the people. Public infrastructure require urgent intervention in addition to the workers’ salaries that remain unpaid for upward of eight months in some states. In Kogi, the worst in this respect, some workers and pensioners are owed about 15 months arrears.
It is unfortunate that public finance has become such a burden that governors rely almost entirely on handouts from the centre to meet their obligations to citizens. The feeding bottle federalism that stands the logic of Professor K. C. Wheare who propounded the theory on the head is simply unsustainable for a plural society like Nigeria. It must be urgently revisited if Nigeria is to pull through with the demands of the moment and frightening crisis of expectation. Taxes from the states, the Value Added Tax, receipts from mining are all paid into the federation account, to be shared along the line of a pernicious formula that allocates more than half to the Federal Government.
Consequently, roads, postal services, agriculture, secondary education, primary healthcare, among others, are items over which the government at the centre aggrandises legislative and supervisory power. This is unsustainable and is a cause for rumblings in the land. This must be attended to now. It breeds inefficiency, ineffectiveness, corruption and poverty.
As we have argued many times, we support the advocacy for the Federal Government to shed weight, devolve power to the federating units and realise the need to have state governments retain control over resources in their states. Unless the states see this big picture and collectively insist on it, bailouts, refunds and other forms of handouts will fall short of the requirement of building a new Nigeria.
Twice, the President Buhari government has shared out the refunds due states from the excess payments to the London and Paris clubs, as well as other multilateral agencies, with the first tranche amounting to N522 billion, and the second, N243 billion. Yet, the states are still in bad shape, yelling for more. Yet, it is not an inexhaustible source. The one they are clamouring for, the third tranche is the final. It is a mere N200billion. If the N765 billion already collected could not perform the magic, why would they think their cash flow problem could be straightened with this?
Nigerian leaders at the state and federal levels have failed over the years to rejuvenate the governance structure in such a way that it would deliver dividend to the people. This is the moment for that. The states should begin to find ingenious ways of generating funds to promote growth and development. In Lagos, the only really successful state in this respect, financial engineering ensured survival when the Obasanjo administration seized funds due the state. Since then, the state has proved that critical thinking is required to remain stable at any time. It is difficult to imagine what would happen if the price of crude oil were to slump to $20. It is time to face reality.
