Evidence of Nigerians’ habit of over-indulging their governments is that 70 per cent of annual budgets go to servicing Big Government, paying for the lavish lifestyles of idle public servants, with 30 per cent for infrastructure or physical assets that can attract future revenues.
That is why Nigerian civil servants reduce their age when signing up for government jobs. Some politicians also serve as governors, then senators and, finally, ministers and are addressed as GSM. And when they have exhausted all these resumes, they accept membership of the board of government corporations or commissions.
Some of these Nigerians are civilians, while others were military officers, who have learnt the tricks from the civilian politicians. One military officer who was governor, senator and minister was also Senate President.
That wily and cowardly military president alluded to this officer as one of those who didn’t want the military to hand over to Bashorun MKO Abiola who convincingly won the June 12, 1993 presidential election.
Besides reflating the economy, budgets in Nigeria do not really impact the lives of citizens. They are devices or ruses to put money into the pockets of public officials. Among the perks of senior public officials are official cars (or SUVs) with chauffeurs, paid for by the government, and furnished official living quarters.
And there is a retinue of house guards, house helps, cooks and washermen to minister to the needs of oga, madam, the children, the guests and anyone else who comes by the house. You can see that Nigeria works only for those who work in government and, perhaps, their friends. The finances of Nigerian governments are a leaking pipe.
Some wild guesses, which the Association of Senior Civil Servants disagree with, put the number of Nigerian civil servants at 1.2 million. ASCS puts it at 473,700 as of the end of 2021 and disagrees that N1.8 trillion is spent annually on civil servants.
Well, ASCS should be right. Those who conjured the N1.8 trillion understated the figure by thinking only of the emoluments. They didn’t factor in the cost of travels, unnecessary training, expenditures on housing, vehicles and other wasteful spending.
Even if public servants are 1.2 million, they are still below one per cent of the population of Nigeria. Just think about the fact that for the 469 members of the National Assembly and their staff, a sum of N134 billion is allocated in the 2022 budget and they still complain that obe yi o to (the allocation is too little).
There are rumours that a Nigerian senator earns roughly N353,000,000 or $2,183,298 annually for doing nearly nothing besides being a rubber stamp to the whims and caprices of the president. Yet the NASS was planning life pensions for its principal officers.
Anyway, the point is that those who run governments in Nigeria do almost nothing for the citizens, who pay taxes. Think of public service that is not provided by the citizens but which money has been voted for.
At the rate that private universities, almost 78, are licensed, the 95 government-owned universities (43 owned by state governments and 52 owned by Federal Government), will soon be outnumbered. Soon, public universities will be extinct due to incessant strikes by the Academic Staff Union of Universities with whom the Federal Government never honours its agreement.
Whilst still talking about public universities that are getting replaced by private universities the word is out that there are almost more private secondary and primary schools than public schools in Nigeria. You see them in their one-building premises with their uniforms with gross and outlandish colours.
Whereas there is a slew of security agencies in Nigeria—the military, police, Nigeria Security and Civil Service Corps and state-owned security agencies, like Lagos Neighbourhood Security Corps—Nigerians still employ maiguards, corporate guards or community vigilantes.
Sometimes private estates erect high fences and gates to keep criminals away. And when they apprehend and hand the bad guys to the police they must fund the Investigating Police Officer. Without private arrangements, citizens’ lives and properties will not be safe. Yet Nigeria’s Constitution grandly pronounces that security is the number one job of government.
Before electricity supply was partially privatised, Nigerians had been using electricity generating sets as the de facto source of electricity, and used the municipal electricity company’s supply as standby.
Even after privatisation the electricity generating and distributing companies are still used as standby. Nigerians tolerate the nuisance of paying estimated bills to the discos and concentrate on running their generators.
The palaver over the government-owned telecommunications company, NITEL, was solved, first, with the use of some kind of paging system, Thuraya, then cellular phones, before President Olusegun Obasanjo introduced the global services of mobile telephone companies to fully privatise telecoms business in Nigeria.
You won’t lose your bet if you say Nigerians do not want to return to the days of landline telephones that almost never made connections, or when they did, reception was unsure and marked with long silences and crackling sounds.
As a student in America in those days, trying to reach dad for school fees and upkeep funds was sheer agony. Getting through to Lagos, Nigeria, was only going to be achieved after a session of fasting and prayer to the gods of Nigeria’s telephone system.
It was a huge contrast to the relative ease you encountered in reaching just about anyone anywhere in America in those days, even with the use of the rudimentary dial telephone landlines, as you let your fingers do the walking.
You would be justifiably alarmed at the statement credited to a callous former Minister of Communications who said telephone sets are not for everybody. What will he be thinking now that even his gateman and driver only need N100 to acquire a GSM sim-card in Nigeria of today?
The inadequacies and unpardonable failure of Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited to produce petroleum products has led the so-called “illegal refineries” to attempt to refine petroleum even if it is in the crudest and inefficient manner.
Despite the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), who had been Minister of Petroleum Resource in a previous Obasanjo government, occupying the same portfolio in his own government, there have been no assurances that petroleum products will always be available.
The government is even contemplating an unconscionable increase in the price of petrol used in automobiles and generators in order to further make the lives of most, if not all, Nigerians more difficult and unbearable.
You can see that the adulterated petrol that NNPC is merely apologising for has attracted no penalties. Those overpaid NNPC big shots will only get a slap on the wrist and that will be that. They think that their apology is sufficient atonement for their lapses.
It just goes to prove that while Nigerian government officials take all the money they claim that they need, they never quite perform the tasks they promised. There is always going to be an unforeseen snafu somewhere, somehow, somewhat.
Two things in the constitution that work in favour of public servants: The ouster clauses in Section 6(6) that says you cannot compel government to provide for the welfare of the people, and Section 308 that says you cannot arrest, prosecute, try or imprison a sitting Nigerian president, governor, and their deputies.
