The various reports of the profligacy of some states in the country accentuate a crucial defect in our system of governance: the absence of autonomous entities that can hold leaders accountable. In several recent reports, the leadership of Lagos, Ogun, and Abia states was called out for the untenable expenses listed in their respective budgets. In the case of Lagos where the call-out was initiated by the governorship candidate of the Action Democratic Congress, Funsho Doherty, we were treated to egregious instances of frivolous spending.
Not only did the various instances of the spending feature reprehensible sums, but the expense also had little or no regenerative value. Abia State was no different. Both the sum the state was accused of expending on consumables (N927m) and the one the state officials countered with (N223m), comparatively exceeded what was reportedly spent on public school facilities within the same period (N25m).
Almost all the angst-inducing items the reports highlighted were about the only thing we the humans of this corner of the world are good at: consumption. From Algeria to Zimbabwe, Africa is full of crackpot embezzlers whose chief preoccupation—aside from their renowned stock in trade of nepotism, tribalism, and religious politics—is state capture. When they get the power, they never use it judiciously well enough to leave their nations better off. What we always get is the same story of people who eat other people into the ground.
Whether we are dealing with resources freely given to us by nature or ones that have been processed into capital, we are not a society with the ethos of production in our genes. All we ever do—and to think we are not even elegant at it—is to consume. We hardly—if ever at all—produce. Why are we so fated? Well, anyone who has ever studied human societies will easily answer that both production and consumption take different levels of mental strength. While the culture of productivity takes some sophistication, a deep burrowing into the life of the mind, the habit of consumption is merely primal.
While the respective states of Lagos, Osun, and Abia are presently in the spotlight, everyone knows that the story is similar in the remaining 33 states (and the FCT) that compose the federation. Regardless of the party platform, our leaders hardly ever differ. When it comes to public resources, they can all be counted on to act like savages that stumbled upon a pot of gold.
All the while I read the various reports, the question I badly wanted answered bordered on the means to accountability. Ok, now that we know that our ever-wasteful leaders are doubling down on their habit of wastefulness even amidst their silly noises of national bankruptcy, where do we go from here? How do we get them to be accountable, and how can these various instances of profligacy be curtailed? Because if nothing will come out of the revelations, what is the point of giving us the information? Not every form of knowledge is power.
Well, given what we know about this country, we can all begin to take it for granted that all the various allegations of overspending will fly for a few days, a government aide on this-and-that will make some media appearances to deny and/or justify the expenses, and then wait for us to be distracted by another sensation and move on like nothing even happened. In fact, and as so often happens, any more revelations of similar financial abuse after a major cycle of outrage has been exhausted will attract nary a whimper. People would have expended themselves so much on the sensation of the initial reporting that the subsequent ones would hardly stimulate them. There is even a possibility that the public’s resignation to unflinching reality will gradually morph into their justification of what they had previously considered abominable.
By now, we can also take it for granted that we will not hear from the anti-corruption agencies, either the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission or the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission, on this. Even the Department of State Services that meddles in every issue—to the point that their official could be summoned to harass a poor tailor in the market—will not poke their nose into this one. There will be no independent verification of facts, nor will there likely be any reform in budgeting processes. In short, none of the agencies that have—or has imposed on itself—the task of curbing the corruption in our system will pursue this. Other than the usual talk, there will also be no concerted efforts to rethink and redirect resources away from the usual fat cats to more worthwhile projects of development such as the infrastructure of education, healthcare, housing, urban facilities etc.
Oh, and do not expect as much as a cry from any of our one million “opposition” parties. On this one, they will simply bury their heads in the sand until the scandal disappears. In previous articles, I have serially highlighted why political opposition is dead in Nigeria for now. They are incapacitated, yes, but they are also not substantively different from one another either. In fact, as the example of the All Progressives Congress has consistently proven since May 29, 2015, political “opposition” in Nigeria is just a slate of pretentious rogues biding their time until they get their turn at the fleshpot. While I cannot but acknowledge that Doherty’s calling out Lagos stems from the civic role that opposition parties should actively play in government, his efforts seem more like an individual initiative than a collective stand by his party.
House of Assembly members in these states are also not likely to do much that can culminate in reflection, public engagement, accountability, and vigilance. For the most part, the legislature at both the state and federal levels comprise mostly lickspittles who only stand up to executive might when a favourable sharing formula is threatened. Our democracy is so underdeveloped that the legislature exists as mostly just another bureaucracy to ratify executive decisions. Their original purpose of checking the excesses of the other arms of the government has long been abjured, turning them into a tribe of bureaucrats who mindlessly assent to policies to get them over with and get paid.
At this crucial time when virtually every public official who manages to lay his hand on a microphone will not conclude their uninspiring speeches with a rant about how Nigeria has been bankrupted by the previous administration(s), there is still no political mechanism to reform our habits of public expenditure. Ours is a rentier state; public administration is nothing more than a prebendal system of rewarding vassals and foot soldiers that will not allow the system to self-correct.
Even worse is that the profligacy is concurrent with the government asking people to sacrifice and endure the pain of their policies indefinitely. Since the supposedly new administration took off on May 29, they have saturated the atmosphere with the noise of how the APC ruined Nigeria and how the APC has now been saddled with the unenviable task of cleaning the mess the APC made. How often did we not hear of a similar chant during the Muhammadu Buhari administration when the preceding government was also accused of bankrupting the nation? It is a recurring pattern, a musty but trusty weapon of political warfare.
We are going to repeatedly hear all the nonsense under the present administration until—God help us—our ears bleed. In another four or eight years, depending on the direction the political wind wave blows, another round of politicians—including the ones whose state budgets are presently being challenged—will still subject us to another round of the torture of listening to how Nigeria is broke because it was bankrupted under the present administration etc.
