By Tolu Ogunlesi
This week, I promised to focus on Nigeria’s state governments, the
second most powerful nodes of political power in Nigeria’s federal
system, after the hugely powerful centre. It is a testament to the clout
of Nigeria’s governors that, since 1999, only one of the five men who
have held presidential and vice-presidential power has never been a
governor. Governors are also more likely, than any other section of the
political class, to end up as federal ministers and senators.
The power of Nigeria’s state governors comes mainly from the oil
wealth that gets shared to them monthly, from the Federal Government.
There’s a complicated formula that guides this sharing. 52.68 per cent
of everything that goes into the Federation Account – oil earnings up to
the benchmark price, less the 13 per cent derivation that goes to oil
producing states; Customs revenues less the cost of collection; and
Company Income and Value Added Taxes less the cost of collection – goes
to the Federal Government, leaving the states and local governments to
share the remaining. It is this Federation Account allocation that state
commissioners of finance travel monthly to Abuja to collect. Oil
producing states, as I mentioned earlier, also get to share a derivation
fund that is 13 per cent of oil revenues based on the benchmark price
fixed annually by the Ministry of Finance. To augment Abuja’s monthly
allocation, the states depend on internally generated revenues – mainly
taxes, including PAYE, and land use charges.
In 2013, the states that got the biggest chunks of Abuja oil money
were, in this order: Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Delta, Bayelsa, Lagos, Kano,
Katsina, Oyo, Kaduna, and Borno. Wide gaps exist between the states, so
that Akwa Ibom in 2013 received almost three times as much as Borno,
tenth on the list. States like Ekiti and Ebonyi, belonging to the bottom
of the list, receive only a fraction of what the richer states get.
Take June 2013 for example: That month, while Akwa Ibom collected N30bn,
Rivers, N25bn, and Lagos N16bn, Ekiti got N6.9bn, while Ebonyi got
N6.4bn.
First, it is important to note that, because of the meagerness of
their internally generated revenues, most of Nigeria’s states are almost
wholly dependent on the monthly cheques from Abuja. Cut that supply
and, as I said last week, they would be comatose entities, unable to pay
workers’ salaries, or build roads and schools and hospitals. Of the
handful of independent states, Lagos lies at the top – at least
two-thirds of its budget are funded from internally generated revenues,
and it is the state most likely to survive the steep drop in Abuja
allocations that will define 2015.
Now, what do state governments do with the money they receive, from
Abuja and from internally generated revenues? For many states, most of
it is used to pay salaries. Public service jobs, researcher Olly Owen
recently pointed out to me, “are in effect social security in Nigeria,
the only direct cash transfer citizens get.” I very much agree. The
civil service is the closest thing we have to a social security system.
It is the largest safety net in the country, allowing millions of people
to earn a living that is not in any way tied to productivity.
At the beginning of this year, Osun State publicly lamented the state
of its finances. In a statement, the government noted that its share of
Abuja’s oil wealth has gone down from N4.6bn, to N1.1bn. The state’s
monthly wage bill: N3.6bn. Osun is not alone. Governor Gabriel Suswam of
Benue State says that the state civil service – an estimated 29,000
people – consumes N3.1bn monthly in salaries and wages. Now, it doesn’t
even get that much in monthly allocations, and is now one of several
states owing salaries. With all these states struggling to even pay
salaries, there is no chance of having any money to invest in
infrastructure.
Even wealthy states like Akwa Ibom are feeling the pinch. In 2014,
the state put out a budget of N498.4bn. At the end of the year, it
didn’t even receive up to half of that; it ended up spending only
N221.4bn, according to Governor Godswill Akpabio.
It’s only going to get worse. As the oil price slump continues, state
governments will have to ask themselves tough questions about their
spending patterns, and revenue generation ambitions. One thing is not in
doubt: That the personal appetites of governors for state funds will
have to be reined in. Governors will need to, in these times of
austerity, trim their patronage machines.
There’s a Bible verse that for Nigerians justifies the view that
public officials are allowed to reasonably partake of the abundance of
public office. “You know that those who work in the temple get their
food from the temple and that those who serve at the altar get their
share of its offerings, don’t you?”, the Apostle Paul says in 1st
Corinthians 9:13. It’s the same point that Mr. Diepreye Alamieyesigha
was making, when he said, in an interview while he was still Governor of
Bayelsa State (I got the quote from the book, A Paradise of Maggots, by
academic and journalist Wale Adebanwi), that “there is no person in
this world that works in the exalted position of a governor or president
that would say he is a perfect human being, that depends solely on his
salary! Nobody is a saint. My salary is N74,000.” The problem, many
would say, was that he went overboard in his erasure of the line between
private and public money. He paid a steep price for it, a price that
not even his recent rehabilitation by President Goodluck Jonathan will
be able to compensate him for. James Ibori was just as unlucky; unlucky
because there are many other governors who were as corrupt as they were
but got away with their antics.
Now, in these days of austerity, governors will need to realise that
eating from the altar should not at any time cross over into eating the
altar. One place to start cutting down on the appetites for state funds
is the security votes, the special allocations that governors and the
president get, to fund the maintenance of peace and security in their
jurisdictions, and for which they do not have to seek appropriation or
make account.
The sums vary from state to state, usually running into hundreds of
millions of naira every month, and are almost always a state secret.
When Rochas Okorocha became Governor of Imo State in 2011, he announced
that he was slashing his security vote from N6.5bn per annum, to N2.5bn,
to enable him fund the state’s free education programme. Now, I have no
idea if that was simply one of those promises politicians make, but
have no intentions of keeping, or if indeed he has kept it.
There is at least one NGO that is campaigning for the abolition of
security votes across Nigeria, citing the propensity of governors for
looting it. Knowing Nigeria, security votes will be with us for some
time to come. But state governors will have to start realising that when
un-curtailed appetites meet diminishing resources, disaster is certain
to happen. Citizens and the civil society also ought to realise that
state governors deserve to be placed under the harsh light of determined
public scrutiny, to the same extent to which we are learning to put the
almighty Federal Government. Our state governors are getting away with
delivering too little value compared to the size of the resources
entrusted to their care.
- This Piece was written by Tolu Ogunlesi/Punch. Follow this writer on Twitter: @toluogunlesi
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