After a period of prevarication occasioned by a motley air of confusion, the Muhammadu Buhari administration ordered an immediate release of N713.7 billion intervention fund to relieve workers across the nation of the pangs of hunger brought about by backlog of unpaid salaries. Part of the total package is a soft loan of over N250 billion proposed for states by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
As the curtain drew on June 2015, over 18 states were owing more than N115 billion. The list of heavily indebted states included oil-producing states of Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Ondo which used to have excess fund at their disposal.
The crisis actually took its roots in the arbitrary increase in wages entered into in 2011 by the federal government with labour without consulting with the states. Although the development jolted many states in the nation, they still could manage with the unexpected burden. Many of them even had reasonable excess fund, after discharging sundry financial responsibilities, including salaries, for deployment to developmental projects. Trouble, however, erupted in June 2013 when state governments experienced a sharp drop of 40 per cent in federal allocation, even as salary burden remained progressively high at 45 per cent in some states of the federation.
But it would, however, appear that the national financial gloom is most biting in Rauf Aregbesola’s Osun State than anywhere else. Why this is so will, in the meantime, be left to analysts to ponder. One thing is clear though; the governor has remained somewhat permanently in public eye in the over four years of his being in the saddle, most probably because of his penchant to dabble into the hitherto uncharted but easily controversial terrain of governance, even with his bold sartorial uniqueness.
Added to this is the widespread opinion that the governor remains a potent albatross of the opposition in Osun and beyond. National financial malaise, therefore, appears to offer his traducers a platform to attempt pulling the rug off his feet. Otherwise what could have accounted for the isolation of Aregbesola’s Osun as a theatre of protests over what is essentially a national challenge? Civil servants in the state have taken on the Aregbesola administration, joined by a cacophony of street fighters accused of link to opposition in the state.
Aregbesola put the salary brouhaha in his domain succinctly to members of the House of Assembly during its inauguration recently when he said he met a wage bill of N1.4 billion when he took over in 2010. The wage bill shot up to N3.6 billion in 2012 following wage increase of 2011. The development did not pose much problem at that period in 2011 because the state still managed to have a N2 billion margin available to execute many of its projects.
However, a sharp decline of 40 per cent in federal allocation in 2013 rocked the state government violently. The gory picture is such that, when taken together, an increase in salary of 45 per cent and a 40 per cent drop in allocation would leave a shortfall of five per cent. To tackle the situation, the Aregbesola administration resorted to taking loans to pay salaries, and by October 2014, total burden on salaries came up to a whopping N25 billion. Between October 2014 and June 2015, the state had incurred a further N34.6 billion in unpaid salaries. Altogether therefore, indebtedness in salary stood at N59.6 billion by June this year. As monthly salary burden in Osun stands at N3.6 billion, allocation per month from federal till crashed further dangerously from an insufficient N2.6 billion as at June 2013 to N466 million.
Slashing dividends of democracy accruable to the people in terms of provision of social services in the name of austerity measure as suggested by some is not the way to go. These tinny drops of social services for the benefit of the people remain the only available connection between poor Nigerian voters and the various governments. For instance, if we take Osun as an example, since it appears to be the readiest whipping boy of the opposition on this matter, it would be pointless faulting a number of the state’s eye-popping welfarist projects such as free school meals, school uniforms and merger of schools. Neither would it make any sense to disregard potent force of goodwill inherent in provision of basic needs of senior citizens and the invalid. The planned rebuilding of the abandoned aerodrome in Osogbo is also not a bad idea on account of its economic value in agriculture, employment generation and revenue yielding among others.
Granted that the Aregbesola administration might have bitten too much in a gulp, owning largely to the governor’s impatience with underdevelopment, the parlous state of affairs in the state when he assumed office might have fired a rage for modernisation.
Perhaps, no one has captured the stark realities of the situation as succinctly as Governor Nasir el Rufai of Kaduna State. At the seventh Wole Soyinka Centre Media Lecture Series, the governor drew the attention of a bemused nation to the fact that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) only remits 42 per cent of what it should to the federal government. He pointed out that a questionable N8.99 billion was spent on subsidy between January 2012 and June 2013.
Gory tale of ineptitude would also appear more exemplified in 2014 when the country produced 2.2 million barrels of crude oil per day and imported her daily consumption of 43.5 million litres of refined petroleum. In 2014, about N971 billion was budgeted for subsidy, while more than twice the amount was eventually paid. Trillions of naira was paid out as oil subsidy in 2011 when only N254 billion was appropriated.
• Lawal wrote in from Lagos.