Governors and the public good (II)

In fixing these salaries, RMAFC created 21 allowances, totalling more than one trillion naira, amounting in each individual case to 1000% of basic salary, for members of the political class to enjoy themselves, at public expenses. In addition to the more well-known allowances for accommodation, motor vehicle maintenance, furniture, entertainment, utilities and medical care-given in […]

In fixing these salaries, RMAFC created 21 allowances, totalling more than one trillion naira, amounting in each individual case to 1000% of basic salary, for members of the political class to enjoy themselves, at public expenses. In addition to the more well-known allowances for accommodation, motor vehicle maintenance, furniture, entertainment, utilities and medical care-given in lavish and extravagant helpings; there are other allowances for duty tour, newspaper, recess, constituency and even dress allowance. Some of the other allowances are probably illicit: for instance, monitoring and sitting allowances for permanent members of a commission drawing salary cannot be defended or justified by any known regulation in the conduct of government business.
In addition to the payment of motor vehicle loan and motor vehicle maintenance allowance in a system that has long outlawed them, the commission has also provided official vehicles, which were supposed to have been monetised, to certain categories of political office holders.
For instance, there are 8 official vehicles for the Senate President-2 official cars, 2 pilot cars, one protocol car, one security vehicle and one vehicle for the press; 7 official vehicles for the Speaker, and four each for their deputies and for deputy governors; 3 for speakers of state assemblies; 2 to the deputy speaker, to the majority leader and to the chief judge; and one to each principal officer up to the local government level.
In addition to the fleet of vehicles which are given to these officers, hordes of support staff have been created for them. Each legislator has a Special Assistant on Grade Level 14 and a Personal Assistant on 25% of the legislator’s annual basic salary, which is added to the salary of the legislator. Each one of them has a Senior Legislative Aide on Grade Level 10 and two other Legislative Aides I and II respectively on Grade Level 9 and 8, and their salaries are paid to the legislator.
These contrast sharply with the practice before. During the First Republic, the president and the prime minister, had they lived long enough in office to retire, they would have received pensions that were only 35% and 37% of their basic annual salaries; and, moreover, the constitution then was as emphatic that they must not receive the pension if they were re-elected as the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission is emphatic that they must receive it.
Indeed even the government felt uncom-fortable about the extravagance of the allo-wances being dished out by RMAFC. In a letter to Engr. Hamman Tukur, the president said, “Accordingly, in my opinion, it would be practically impossible and unrealistic for us to continue to implement the current provision of the said Act. Indeed, it would amount to insensitivity on our part to continue to implement the Act under the circumstances. Certainly, there is a need for the Commission to review such remunerations downwards to align them with the realities on the ground.”
But RMAFC didn’t see that reality; and the blindness had also afflicted the beneficiaries in the legislature and the governors who would soon dwarf the RMAFC in their own severance saga. Of the eight criteria which the RMAFC claims guides its work, the very first—the so-called changes in the basic fundamentals of the Nigerian economy—is as imprecise as any guideline can get, because, it doesn’t indicate which changes in the economy will elicit what response from the commission.
The next three—external reserves, GDP growth rates and rate of inflation—which are presented as independent guidelines, unless read with the first and expounded, are even more imprecise; the next three—correction of the placement of some categories of office holders, modification of old salaries an allowances, and the need to put together a living wage—are at best, vague; and the last one—ensuring compliance with Sections 84 (3) and 124 (3) of the constitution—is out rightly irrelevant.
These sections provide that “the remune-ration and salaries payable to the holders of the said offices and their conditions of service, other than allowances, shall be altered to their disadvantage after their appointment.” The commission is in no position by itself to effect this; it could only respect this provision by not doing anything about it, so it really couldn’t have been one of the factors it considered, considering that there was really nothing to consider.
It appears that there is a profound misunderstanding of own role by the RMAFC or presumptuousness and overzealousness in the execution of its duties, something that was not seen during the chairmanship of General TY Danjuma, for instance.
But it might have been a case of official folly de grandeur. There are only five entities, which, because of the importance  and sensitive nature of the work they do, are supposed to be in the constitution—the Public Service Commission, the Police Service Commission, the Electoral Commission, the office of a judge of superior court of record and the office of the head of audit. This is in order to protect the salaries and allowances of the chairman and members of these commissions and the other individuals from the arbitrariness of politicians so that they can do their work without fear of favour.
In effect what this means is that the only commission or office that should be in the constitution is the one with whose work no one can interfere, and is not subject to review by any person or authority and whose validity requires no subsequent approval by anyone to take effect. So, RMAFC, the National Population Commission, the Federal Character Commission and others like them have no business being in the constitution and should be thrown out.
But during the Babangida Administration, very many of the existing commissions were put into the constitution, perhaps with the thinking that this would somehow confer special powers or privileges on them. It would not and it did not; and it had in fact only helped in cluttering the Nigerian constitution. It was then that RMAFC fell among them and this might have given the chairman and members of the board powers they didn’t really have. For, to fix is not to alter profoundly; and it cannot be a license to connive with the political class to dash themselves public monies. Nor can it justify what parting gifts governors are giving themselves today.
On the whole, one could say that even military governors were, in a fashion, more democratic than these so-called civilian governors who were supposed to be products of democratic electoral process. For all we know, military governors were at least known to be answerable and beholden to the Supreme Military Council or the Armed Forces Ruling Council as the case might have been; but there is no known power or authority in this country to which these civilian governors defer. And if there is any who does, it is not because he has to. And in addition, military governors at least listen to military elders. But these civilian governors don’t.
This blind and limitless power that they wield, the impunity with which they disregard and break every known rule of accountability and procedure for openness; and the unblinking audacity and untiring regularity with which they convert public property to private ownership, is slowly but surely creating a situation in which Nigerians—those of them who are sensitive and socially aware, politically conscious and, of their civic responsibilities, conscientious—will be forced to have to choose between the practice of democracy and the power of governors; or, more correctly, between democracy and the self-serving arrogation of all this illegitimate power wielded by all elected political executives, including, especially, the president.
For the nation, a new, more realistic salary structure for the public service as well as an integrated comprehensive compensation package for the entire Nigerian economic environment is clearly, urgently needed; and setting the parameters for this should be the sole responsibility of the National Salaries and Wages Commission, to which responsibility for fixing the salaries and allowances for political officeholders should be added. Perhaps the RMAFC should be professionalised and retained solely as a technical committee for mobilising revenue collection and, especially, for revenue allocation.
But before true democracy can take root here and the public good is able to override selfish private interests and people can taste democracy dividends, every political executive in this land must be cut down to size—to the level acceptable to, and prescribed by, law.
And for this reason, this country must arrange to enact a law in future that stipulates that all property beyond one’s known legitimate earnings of a person who has held public office should be regarded as misappropriated public property, until the holder can prove legitimate ownership in a court of law. This is because any flaunted but unpunished ill-gotten wealth will forever remain an irresistible source of attraction for those afflicted by the mania of owning things, which, as far as the nation is concerned, means a majority of those on the political scene today.