N340 MILLION POINTERS’ BUDGET IS A BRAVE POINTER TO OUR COWARDLY ADMINISTRATIVE STRUCTURE
Mr. President sir,
Like many Nigerians, I read with utter disgust, the comment of the Executive Director of Projects, Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Dr. Cairo Ojougboh on Monday, 20th of July, 2020. You must be aware that his stunning remark is an extract of the interview he granted a news outlet on the sidelines of the on-going probe of his employer-agency by the lower house of the National Assembly. Without meaning any harm, Dr. Ojougboh had said; “There are 185 local governments in the Niger Delta region and we have the list of contracts in all the local governments.
Normally, when the forensic auditors arrive, people chase them out of the place. So, indigenes are appointed as pointers who will stay in the local government. All those jobs that are abandoned, they will go and show them where the site is.”
Sir, a whooping three hundred and forty million naira, likely derived from the centralized sale of the depleting crude oil reserves in the Niger Delta region, was budgeted for by a federal government agency to by-pass both the respective State and local governments of the 185 entities in addressing their infrastructural gaps.
Honestly, the political class, which is currently represented by your waste-hating self and your team of highly educated and brainy political office holders, must refute this malady. More expedient is the need for Nigerians to collectively denounce our current governance model that has been wrongly presented as the most suitable, home-grown and world-class administrative framework, to the millions of Nigerian school children waiting to receive the baton of leadership of our dear country as future leaders.
Mr. President, I presume you know that my foul-cry is not born out of doubt for the judicious or actual use of the said “pointing allowances” – the fact-finding of which the House of Representatives is currently and commendably handling.
Rather, I feel mentally debased that in the year 2020, your leadership gives impetus to our national drivers to hide behind their fingers in chanting that this quasi-federalism we’ve thoughtlessly applied to solve our myriads of problems in Nigeria is the best. The spent and evidently ineffective administrative system clung to by my country since my birth almost forty years ago is unacceptably exhibited as the ideal administrative architecture for over 200 million people, of about 400 tribes, across 36 States & 1 Federal Capital Territory and 774 Local Government Area Councils, who inhabit the thousands of heterogeneous communities that constitute the core of Nigeria. Sir, or am I the only Nigerian to openly complain of the unending and involuntary rumble of his bowel, owing to Dr. Ojougboh’s let-out that a Federal Government agency has the gut to budget hundreds of millions of naira for would-be “pointers”? In your septuagenarian’s wisdom sir, please correct my inference that NDDC’s “pointing budget” or its similitude would not be found in other Federal Government agencies? Please reprove my submission that expensive overheads incurred by federal MDAs for Monitoring & Supervision of thousands of on-going, abandoned and completed projects in local domains are not fuels for subtle and modern enslavement strategies to brainwash locals that they are being carried along in the developmental agenda of the people, for the people and by the people?
My dear President, would I be unpatriotic to suggest that the late former Ethiopian Emperor, Thomas Selassie’s warning that “throughout history, it has been the inactions of those who should have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better and the silence of the voice of justice, when it matters most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph” provokes national soberness and deep reflections over our administrative structure at this critical moment of our history? Mr. President, is it fair to Nigerians, 70% or more of whom reside in the rural areas and hinterlands, to claim to create a bright future for them by budgeting N340 million naira to simply “point” at projects, when most states cannot adequately fund the fight against the open-ended COVID-19 pandemic? Even if corruption doesn’t cause the released “pointing” funds to vanish, should conscientious and knowledgeable Nigerians continue supporting an administrative structure that perpetuates such illogical, silly and retrogressive budgetary tendencies?
President Buhari sir, shall we continue to pamper the Federal Ministries of Health, Works & Infrastructure, Education, Water Resources and other Federal Departments & Agencies to set aside funds for straightforward identification and “pointing” of various Federal projects in numerous localities across the 774 LGAs in Nigeria? Should such frivolous and legal provisions linger in the justification of the 53% of our national revenue that is allotted to the Federal tier of government? In its stead, can the administrative-cum-financial powers to salvage our today and tomorrow be devolved to the other two federating units (States and Local governments) that are obviously closer to our homes and require neither difficult-to-identify contractors nor frivolous identification funds for infrastructural projects? Can we fashion stiff institutional measures to check the over-anticipated excesses and executive abuses by states, being bandied as alibis for your aloofness towards deploying political will to commence the process of devolution of powers to States and LGAs by the Federal government you lead?
Before your assumption of democratic power in 2015, intelligent, dispassionate and patriotic conversations relentlessly made a case for Nigeria to jettison this weak and inefficient unitary system that puts billions of naira in the hands of far-from-reach Federal agencies whose operational frameworks can never permit a realistic needs-assessment or implementation at the local levels. That explains why I’m deeply embarrassed and worried that the N340 million in question is more than the budgetary provision to ensure the delivery of qualitative and functional primary health care services by about 586 primary healthcare facilities in a State with about 4.6 million population. It’s absurd that save for Lagos, with her comparative advantage as a major Port-harbouring and consequent private sector-hosting city, other 35 states are spineless pocket money-collecting agents, some of whom brandish annual budgets that do not outweigh the combined budgetary size of two federal MDAs. The capacity to generate funds by the State and LGAs has been clandestinely and constitutionally mortgaged to an over-sized federal actor, who for decades, derives more pleasure in being seen to be doing something for 200 million people than allow the two closest units of government to truly solve our problems, even under your watch.
Kindly note, Mr. President, that even if we exterminate corruption at all levels of government, it is ridiculous enough that a mono-product Nigeria struggling to fund a paltry Federal budget of about US$28.26 billion dollars for the health, education, infrastructure, water resources, police, armed forces, NDDC and all aspects of her national destiny in year 2020 of an alarmingly growing population of 200 million people, is still a very poor nation. In this national misery, it is unfortunate that the political hegemony is not done with its mastery of the art of shielding and deceiving the lot of its followership gang, who are blindly religious and truth-hating. That NDDC and their likes need to be urgently prevented from perpetuating such bestial funds-allocating habits for “pointers’ programmes” by our resolve for a change in the present administrative structure is discernible. Pakistan’s 220 million population with a 2020 budget profile of US$45.5 billion points to the fact that we had better averted more needless “pointing”, than wait for chronic poverty and hunger, prodded by a cowardly administrative structure, to amputate all our fingers. In your lone moments, Mr. President, do give this non-partisan cry of urgency, a profound thought, before your democratically and constitutionally assured exit in the year 2023.
Ademujimi is a medical practitioner and Head of Business Development & Marketing, Ondo State Contributory Health Commission, Akure, ademujimi@yahoo.co.uk
