President-elect Muhammadu Buhari has a huge burden on his shoulders. Nearly every sector throughout the country is threatened and in predicament. The 16 years’ reign of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been a matter of one step forward two steps backward.
In particular, the six-year period in office of President Goodluck Jonathan has been a huge disaster. It is obvious, from all indications, that Jonathan ran a truly clueless and visionless government.
The economy is in comatose. Foreign reserves have been recklessly depleted by the spendthrift Jonathan administration. To worsen things, inflation and unemployment are at an all-time high, corruption has become the order of the day in the corridors of power.
When the president of a country affirms on national television that “stealing is not corruption”, you don’t need to be a prophet to know that such a country is in trouble. The truth is that Nigeria is actually in trouble.
This, of course, is why I don’t envy Buhari. The Nigeria that Jonathan is leaving behind for Buhari is in a complete mess, and we should make no mistake about it.
One of the very daunting tasks that Buhari and his team would have to tackle, in earnest, is that of unpaid salaries across the country as this could become a clog in the wheel of democracy.
In the past 16 years, the norm in budgetary planning, formulation and execution has been for recurrent expenditure to be excessively higher than capital outlay. This is not, in any way, peculiar to the federal government as nearly all the state governments operate a similar unproductive budgetary planning.
The consequence of this is the poor state of social and physical infrastructure across the country. Almost all federal roads are in terrible conditions.
The inept PDP led government, after 16 years in power, could not fix the refineries as we shamelessly continue to import refined petroleum products from neighboring countries. This is what happens when a nation fails to prioritise its developmental needs.
No nation in the world, not even the almighty United States of America, touted as the number one economy, could develop through the kind of budgetary system we have been operating in the past 16 years.
High wage bills, as well as escalating cost of governance, remains a major threat to the survival of democracy in the country. Presently, aside the various federal government agencies and parastatals owed various degrees of salaries and emoluments, about 26 state governments owe workers’ salaries in arrears of months.
Osun has been singled out for media attack on this issue. I am piqued about this since the state is not the only one in this dire financial strait.
Governor Rauf Aregbesola was the first person to call national attention to it in 2013 when he alleged that the federal government had declared a war on the state as allocation dropped to 40 per cent. It will be difficult to query his record as a worker-friendly administrator.
In some states, in order to ensure workers go home with something, salaries are paid in bits, and my lawyer friend told me this is a breach of contract.
Expectedly, in most states, workers are threatening to go on strike to press home their demands for prompt payment of their wages. Things are not looking up at all. At the time of writing this, April allocation has not been disbursed.
With the decline in revenue accruing to the Federation Account through the sale of crude oil, some states may not be able to pay salaries, not to talk of paying arrears of pension and gratuity owed pensioners.
The amount that stands to the credit of each state monthly is not enough to pay workers’ wages, and this means all other recurring expenditures will suffer. A few of them that try to embark on capital spending do so through loans from banks and bonds earlier negotiated, which must be serviced regularly at huge cost.
With this stark reality, it has become highly imperative for the incoming Buhari administration to take a holistic view of the issue to save our fledgling democracy from imminent collapse.
Bureaucracy is meant to help drive the pace of development in a democracy. In any nation where bureaucracy has become the problem rather than the solution, democracy would certainly become endangered.
This is where Buhari and his team need to take decisive steps to save the country from a chronic and nagging problem. As a stop-gap measure, the Buhari administration should bail out the state owing excessive workers’ wages by offsetting such and giving them enough to pay pension and gratuity.
We have done it before.
Unpaid salaries have always plagued civil administration in Nigeria. Military takeover had always been the quick fix, but with its recurring nature, it’s obvious we have not found the solution.
Yes, the government is the biggest employer of labour; we cannot continue to bring idle hands into government without a commensurate analysis of what is needed. This is to avert labour disputes. A sound employment policy would still address the problem of unemployment.
Equally, the idea of the federal government entering into wage negotiations on behalf of the state governments should be discarded.
Since the revenue base of each state differs, it would be inappropriate for both the federal government and the labour unions to force state governments to pay worker’s wages being paid by the federal government. Each state government ought to employ and pay according to its capacity.
Equally important is that labour unions must desist from the incessant act of demanding for an arbitrary wage increase. While the work force deserves better pay packages, the government has responsibilities to the larger society through the provision of social amenities and infrastructure.
In the same vein, governments across the land need to cut all avenues that open the door for waste. We take taxation too lightly in this country. No nation attains greatness without adequate contribution of citizens in the form of taxes.
We must start emphasising our tax systems to make governments and citizens more fiscally responsible.
Democracy is about bringing development to a greater number of the people. It is about human and capital development. It ceases to be democracy when just a few individuals or groups corner the commonwealth while the rest of the society languishes in abject poverty.
Now that change has come, it is, indeed, the right time to get things done in the right way in order to get the right result. God bless Nigeria.
• Raji is Special Adviser, Information and Strategy, Lagos State