Jonathan’s salary harmonisation request

The timing is wrong coming at a time when a presidential promise to move the national minimum wage to N18,000. The pre-election promise was made to earn the votes of the civil service. Now that he is the de facto President he wants to renegotiate the terms. A leader’s word is his bond, and that […]

The timing is wrong coming at a time when a presidential promise to move the national minimum wage to N18,000. The pre-election promise was made to earn the votes of the civil service. Now that he is the de facto President he wants to renegotiate the terms. A leader’s word is his bond, and that is why leaders do not make promises except they can keep them. It is shameful that rather than seek for ways to help mitigate the level and effect of the grinding poverty in the land of plenty, Mr. President is most concerned with massaging the ego of his kitchen praise singers.

In at least one of the instances, the president’s request amounts to rewarding indolence and inefficiency. This teacher has neglected the winning team, preferring to take the losers on a world tour to spur them to do better – tantamount to turning logic on its head. Only recently, government made promotion in the civil service contingent on excellent performance exhibited via a graded examination. If excellence in performance is to be the new yardstick for promotion, then the performance of the current NSA disqualifies him from this special treatment salary structure.

Without prejudice to General Azazi, the soldier who rose to the peak of his career, events characterising his tenure as NSA does not justify the salary that Mr. President is seeking. The criteria by which the Nigerian Army promotes its generals would remain strange to civilians like me. But under his watch as NSA, Nigeria has slid from a country battling one insurgency in the Niger-Delta to one fighting insurgency on all fronts from miscreants creating insecurity on the plateau to a rag tag army of religious fundamentalists in Borno.

In the face of such daunting level of national insecurity, neither the government nor its security agencies have discharged their professional responsibilities with diligence and an army is as good as its leaders. Under normal circumstances, Nigeria should be happy to recall any of its generals to national service; but this general was already living in opulent retirement at tax-payers expense when he was recalled but has done nothing to remedy the security situation. In that circumstance, a request for parity pay with ministers just does not add up. In the face of the daunting challenges confronting our nation, leaders of security agencies cannot wash their hands clean of the abyss that our nation has been plunged. Their duty is to secure the nation against local and external aggression, but they have failed to do so and rather than guarantee security of the people, they have turned their frustration against them and treated them like an unconscionable army of occupation.

There are more fibs from the NSA than the action needed to cure the nation of the malady of insecurity. Insurgency is compounded by armed robbery, kidnapping, brigandage and militancy which have turned a once promising country into a failed state whose citizens are trooping out in droves in search of safety. Wherever our political leaders go, they are diplomatically tongue-lashed by their hosts, some young enough to be their sons. Our leaders are not spared, even in our own shores.  Days ago, British Prime Minister, David Cameron rushing back to confront a phone-hacking scandal at home could not resist the lure of lecturing us how to run a state. The British left our shores fifty years ago.

Barrack Obama was hardly born at independence, yet he said as much during the president’s visit to the White House in Washington. Rather than cover our heads in shame, President Jonathan had the nerve to publicly declare that his country is not a failed state. In which functional state are barracks evacuated due to fear of bombs? In which functional state are explosions lighting the police headquarters? In which functional state are its citizens abused and insulted on their long queues for visa like Nigeria?

If they have any sense of decency and decorum, Nigerian leaders should stay at home and not even take their shameless Dubai holiday trips and work until they transform their own country into a haven for peace and progress and tourism. Instead of banning national teams and eating his words, President Jonathan should ban himself and his officials from any foreign travels until the guns and the bombs are silent everywhere and people can pursue their legitimate business without fear or favour and without the intimidation of an army of occupation.

It appears that President Jonathan is okay provided he can sleep peacefully in Aso Rock and fly around the globe to shake hands with serious global leaders. He ought to be concerned with the plight of Nigerian workers whose lives are blighted by grinding poverty and whose take-home pay that can no longer take them to the bus-stop. These are nation builders, not his coterie of aides whose impact on national development cannot be positively gauged.

It is a shame that those whose laxity or cluelessness has led to the death of thousands, displaced thousands more and turned citizens into internally displaced refugees are waiting to get jumbo salaries. This president promised to hit the ground running, but it is very clear that the little jump has totally crippled him and that he is demonstrably clueless about how to effectively run the country. If he does not have the courage to fire those who are not living up to their calling, he should at least not reward them at public expense.