Governors and the public good [I]

you are only surprised at how easily he could be cowed into abandoning the whole idea after all the neat and bankable calculations had been made. While Governor Akpabio is not the only one, none before him has displayed, and certainly none after him following his own about turn will show, such superlative greed and […]

you are only surprised at how easily he could be cowed into abandoning the whole idea after all the neat and bankable calculations had been made.
While Governor Akpabio is not the only one, none before him has displayed, and certainly none after him following his own about turn will show, such superlative greed and so much gratuitous, predatory acquisitiveness.
On Tuesday, June 3, the governor issued a statement tagged ‘The Siege of Truth,’ in which he tried to explain that all he had done was to put a ceiling to the medical treatment aspect of the package. He said he didn’t mean to take the 200 million Naira cash to foot the bill; and, therefore, he proposed the removal of that amendment, as he called it. Otherwise, the governor seemed of the opinion that he deserved the package minus the medical bill. But all that only sounded like the thud of slamming shut the gate of the stable after all the horses had galloped out at top speed.
In fact, what the Akwa Ibom governor has done has only confirmed what people already know about their governors, though they have proved quite unable to do anything to them or about what they are doing. As a general rule, the nation’s governors are seen as a special kleptomaniac class of public officers. Many of them dip their fingers in the treasury because of the sense of false security given to them by the constitutional immunity clause, though that is not the only thing that can keep them out of prison. As my elder once said, at the end of the day, some of them will never know life behind bars, because they can successfully plead insanity in any court of law. No one of sound mind can seek to justify what these people are claiming for themselves.
Yet, they are not satisfied with the bundle of filthy lucre they already uninterruptedly enjoy, courtesy of a system thoroughly abused and compromised by them. And if nobody objects to what they take in while office, why, nobody should frown at what they decide to give themselves a parting gift, a platinum handshake to themselves—about a billion Naira as Akpabio’s package will have totalled. They forget—in fact they may never have been aware—that state governorship is not a permanent and pensionable appointment in the public service.
But if, indeed, severance pay is to be received after service is rendered, precious few, if any, should receive it, because true selfless service has been a stranger to what Nigerian politicians have been doing. And without service, the lame justification becomes even lamer.
They have a completely wrong idea of what leadership is or what the public service is about. Though by itself, the possession of experience in the public service is not a sufficient condition that can guarantee good governance, it should nevertheless be required qualification as a necessary condition. Because most of them don’t know how the public service functions, and because they prosecute their campaigns as a war, they end up regarding the entire state machinery as booty and spoils of war; but even after they have taken possession of it, they continue their warfare.
All governors are at war with imaginary enemies in their state—those who will seek to succeed them or those who can expose them; they shun other politicians who have bright ideas or who can challenge Their Majesty; they destroy the fabric of state politics by ensuring that the people’s assembly is composed of yes-men, who cannot oppose His Excellency and for the same reason cannot legislate well for the state; the governors have constituted themselves into an anti-people bloc that protects only the interests of governors; and this way, they hold the country’s future hostage to their own fancy and daydreams, and they imagine its leadership has become their birthright. And if they have any two preoccupations, they are to install their successors, and they themselves succeed the president. Shikenan!
And by their post-election demeanour and actions many of them seem to entertain the idea that only the election stood between them and their being absolute monarchs. And after it, they become absolute monarchs, and they think they own the treasury; and even if they don’t, we see them spending out of it without limit, without restraint and without accountability: and they can give to, or withhold from, whoever they fancy. They probably even think they own the people. Yes, they are the new feudal lords over the fief of the state; and the people cannot but only be democratic serfs. They are democrats only during campaigns; in office, they become monarchists, and even when they are out of office, they resist reverting to ‘nonencrats.’
Nigerians are a most wonderful, unpredictable lot. They break the law with relish; and if they do that you will think they will crush lawlessness when they see it in others. People who think nothing of the law will think even less of lawlessness; and because they don’t respect or obey even the law of the land, you will assume that they won’t tolerate the lawlessness of the political class. But here they are accepting, as a fact of life, the fact of electing thieving tyrants or allowing them to rig themselves into, or back to, power, and then sheepishly watching on as they destroy everything.
They take one year to prove their incompetence, four years to prove the nation’s indifference, and eight years to dig this unbridgeable gap between their greed and the public good, between their rule and public purpose, and between where the state wants to go and where they are determined to take it. For their own today, they have killed the tomorrow of everyone. The primary school is still without roof, the health centre without drugs; and the rains may come, but fertiliser will not. There is nothing to show after all Federal allocations have vanished.
But even though there are few who look like exceptions to the rule, in reality they are not. They have only done what they are supposed to do; and it is only because almost everyone else is not doing what he is supposed to be doing that their own stands out as a great achievement. Perhaps the country will be better if there are no governors at all. Nigerian governors today are a political epidemic that is not only incurable; it is permanently, chronically untreatable.
And on top of all this—and the more you take, the more you want to take—they fix this outrageous severance pay that they get legitimated for them by their complaint state assemblies. What they really take home is a dishonorarium, which doesn’t exist in English language, but which, for their sake, ought to have been invented.
It really doesn’t make much of a sense to allow any group of people, much less greedy politicians, to fix their pay packages; and it makes even less sense to allow them determine their gratuities. The former should be fixed by a committee of responsible Nigerians of unimpeachable integrity, and, except for adjustment for inflation, be made eternally unalterable and the latter—the so-called severance pay—should be abolished.
Our politicians shouldn’t be entitled to any gratuity or what they call severance pay, because giving them violates the philosophy behind compensation for work done. Isn’t it enough for them that no permanent public officer ever enjoys gratuity or pension after a mere four years of service?
And the severance pay, if it must be paid, should, for instance, be tied to attendance for legislators, to their participation in the actual lawmaking deliberations,  to how many years they served in the legislature, to legislators’ payment to a contributory fund similar to the parliamentary superannuation scheme in force elsewhere; and its quantum should be fixed by other than the beneficiaries and it must be in realistic consonance with the rest of the economy: and it should be payable only once, and it will only be accessible at the time the politicians leaves politics for good and has attained the nation’s retirement age.
The whole question of compensation—pay packages and severance pay—for the entire political class, from the president down to political appointees in the states, and not just state governors, must be critically looked into again. First, it must be made realistic and aligned with what obtains with regard to pay structure in the rest of the economy. Second, there should be closer coordination and monitoring of the salaries, wages and allowances in the civil service, the political arena and the private sector. Third, such a review can only be successfully undertaken if it begins with the premise that this entire problem started with the way the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission mishandled the issue of salaries and allowances for political appointees.