Public show of probity

Shortly after being sworn in as governor of Imo State for the first time in 2011, Owelle Rochas Okorocha made a public show of probity, accountability and transparency, when he announced that he was going to forfeit N4 billion of the N6.5 billion annual security vote his predecessor collected while in office, to give free education to people of the state.

This won him public applause, and the governor became a reference point of how public officers could cut cost of governance and stop wasteful spending. Okorocha subsequently declared free education for Imo State indigenes from primary to university level, and later extended it to non-indigenes resident in the state. Security vote is one way chief executive officers at state and federal levels use to funnel public funds to private use. While it is not clear whether the governor’s security vote has been fully restored, the new trend is “salary cut” by elected chief executives. Some governors started it before President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, bought into it. Buhari earns N14.1 million per annum while Osinbajo’s annual salary is N12.13 million.

This is inclusive some other allowances. If the salary cut is sustained for one year, the president would be forfeiting about N7 million while his deputy would have donated about N6 million, to the nation. A civil servant on grade level 17 earns about N4 million a year. So savings from Buhari and his deputy might assist the country to pay three GL 17 officers in the federal service.

These, by all calculations, are huge savings for the cash-strapped nation. Kaduna State governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, who at a biennial conference of the Nigeria Guild of Editors (NGE) in Edo State some years ago gave thought provoking lecture on how to cut cost of governance, joined the bandwagon.

He has cut his salary and that of his newly appointed commissioners. He has also reduced the number of ministries in Kaduna State from 19 to 13, but he may not have been able to reduce the number of “personal assistants, special assistants and special advisers,” to his commissioners not to talk of their perks of office.

The immediate past governor of Bauchi State, Isa Yuguda, was said to have had over 2, 000 political aides who were paid salaries from the state government coffers. Even the Imo State governor who forfeited N4 billion of his annual security vote for free education of citizens of the state, was also among state governors in that era that had high number of political aides. Although President Buhari is yet to constitute his cabinet, he has already appointed three media aides, two for himself and one for the vice.

The legislature is not outdone with these appointments. Each of the 469 members of the National Assembly has between two and five legislative aides. The principal officers have full complement of cabinet like the executive. Against this backdrop, the consensus is that what Nigeria needs is cut in cost of governance and not cut of salary. The United States of America has 15 cabinet members, almost the same with Britain, and they spend less than 10 per cent of their annual budget on general administration.