Nigeria: The relative cost of our democracy is unsustainable

This is too dear

I have written many times about the exorbitant and probably prohibitively unsustainable cost of the democratic experiment in Nigeria and there are many reasons to be concerned for how much we pay our lawmakers on average. [Nigeria: Our Exorbitant Government]

The graph below published by the Economist is more than just an eye-opener but it is also revelatory about how political office is a parasitic drain on the national resources since politicians cannot be considered part of the economic engine of a country.

What makes this graph worthy of the most righteous indignation begging for public insurrection is not so much about what the politicians earn, but the gap in earning capacity between the citizen and the representative lawmaker.

The comparisons

Australian lawmakers earn the most at $201,200 followed by Nigeria at $189,500 and then Italy with $182,000 and the United States at $174,000 all compared to the people they represent, we find that Australian and American lawmakers earn less than 4 times the average economic activity of their countries divided by their populations (GDP per capita), Italians just about double that and Nigerian lawmakers earn 116 times that.

The World Bank, the IMF, the CIA and the University of Pennsylvania all put the GDP per capita of Nigeria at between $2,661 ranking 137^th in the world out of 180 countries, $2,720 ranking 143/187, $2,800 ranking 148/194 and $1,716 ranking 152/185 respectively.

By comparison Australia is in the top 10 thrice, Italy in the top 30 twice and then the top 35 and the United States of America 4 times in the top 10, it goes without saying that Nigeria has no business paying its legislators in what is purportedly a representative democracy these atrocious amounts of cash that bilk and milk the country without contributing anything to its economic growth.

The consequences of expensive democracies

Worse still, it creates a competition for political office where the rewards far outweigh the commensurate perspiration leading to many situations where power-grabs by every means possible warps every notion of free and fair elections, talk less of representative democracy – it is utterly bad for Nigeria apart from the fact that it is unsustainable.

Looking at the chart again, you also wonder why Sub-Saharan African nations that hog the bottom third of GDP per capita tables are the ones that take the lead by far in the discrepancies between elected and elector besides the fact that only Ghana has consistently rewarded its electorate with the will of its people, Kenya did not in the penultimate election which has the current leadership indicted for crimes against humanity and Nigeria is a travesty in everything but name.

Nigeria is awash with oil money in the wrong hands which is used in acquisitive, ostentatious, hedonistic and wanton display of power, wealth, influence and mischief, it exacerbates a pressure cooker of ethno-religious and regional tensions, none of which the leadership have had the wherewithal to grapple with or understand that the consequences as it holds together with threadbare allegiances of snouts in trough might well be dire for the 2015 election year.

Enough is just enough

In my humble opinion, this democracy is neither representative nor working if the people we choose to represent us are so far removed from the reality of the citizenry that they literally live in a parallel universe, there ought to be no reason for Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana to be democratic outliers compared to the economic activity within their regions in comparison to their people, it calls for reform and this must be urgent, radical, far-reaching and deeply examining of the culture of corruption and influence-peddling we have allowed to become the raison d'être of political life.

This is the one time when the chorus from the village to the city and from the homes to the marketplaces of the country should ring loud – Enough is just enough.

Other reading

Nigeria: Our politically immature systems

Nigeria: Percentage Allowance Legislators

Nigeria: INEC Voter Registration Review IV

There is much to be done

With two days left for the voters’ registration it is becoming evident that everyone who needs to register might not get that opportunity.

The past weekend offered the opportunity for many to turn up and register but the process was fraught with many reports of printing problems as a result of exhausted ink cartridges.

The sadder aspect of this was that INEC in most cases did not have stocks of spare ink cartridges that the registered voters had to wait for days to collect their registration cards. Some more resourceful Nigerians paid for ink cartridges themselves.

The power issues do not seem to have dominated the news wires anymore because the same resourceful Nigerians have provided power through generators or extension cables to help keep the process moving.

A probable extension looms

The queues are however getting longer and though the process of registration is easier and faster, it is unlikely that those who have left it so late would gain a reprieve without an extension of the voters’ registration exercise.

To this end, the legislative houses have tentatively agreed to an extension having met with the INEC Chairman who said he needs another week and NGN 6.6 billion extra to do this.

One is taken aback that INEC could have exhausted their budget without contingencies that they have to return cap-in-hand to seek more funding.

The figures bandied around indicate that less than 50% of the expected populace that fall within voting age are registered; it would in the long run lead to questions about the credibility of the elections whilst allowing for opportunities to rig the elections.

Fingered errors

At the meeting of the legislators we learnt that the original registration of the president at his hometown did not include his fingerprints and that he had to do it again.

Amelioration processes for entering fingerprints for those registered without then in the first place seem to have problems, you can check of all your fingerprints have been captured on your card by checking is the 5 small squares on either side of your photograph on your voter’s card are black or hollow squares. They need to be dark for your registration to be valid.

The Chairman also volunteered after having stated on BBC Africa Have Your Say; that amputees and those with special needs would be catered for that there really was no provision for them, which is sad.

Another issue that has raised concern is that of Muslim women in religious garb that includes the covering of the face. Some are advocating their right to be registered which is inalienable but how do you recognise the face of someone behind a veil? There is a need for common-sense and reasonableness in terms of religious adherence and the understanding ones civics responsibilities which invite some compromise.

Security issues were prevalent, some machine were stolen and found in the strangest of places, Youth Corps members were attacked by agree crowds and some INEC personnel have lost their lives, which is unfortunate.

Security issues were prevalent, some machine were stolen and found in the strangest of places, Youth Corps members were attacked by agree crowds and some INEC personnel have lost their lives, which is unfortunate.

Reconstituting an extension

However, the most critical matter has to be the one of the extension of the voters’ registration exercise beyond Saturday the 29^th of January 2011. Some had irresponsibly announced on Twitter that it had been extended for 4 weeks when that was not the case.

There are serious constitutional provisions for the extension, INEC was running this exercise on a very tight schedule, and the registration as far as the Electoral Act 2010 is concerned expects that the exercise be completed no later than 60 days before the election that utilises the register putting the last possible date at the 2^nd of February 2011.

The legislature would either have had to shorten that duration between registration and elections or reschedule the election timetable after which INEC can announce the extension.

Government 101 and Project Management

The issue of the closed schools also came up since in most cases school premises were not in use and professional teachers were not engaged in the registration process. There are reasons why the schools have remained closed but for the Senate to order the Minister of Education to open to the schools rather than advise her of the need to smacked of an overreach of the Separation of Powers.

The infancy of our democratic process is so evident with poor appreciation of the rule of law, the egress of the lack of understanding of the Separation of Powers and feeling that grandstanding equals due process.

If this INEC Voter Registration process fails it would clearly be a case of atrocious Project Management on an appalling scale, there probably is a way to redeem this exercise but it requires that Nigerians who have not registered turn out in droves to register showing there is much to be done, that they will not be disenfranchised and forcing the necessary extension to capture the majority of the voting population to act for choosing the government they want and deserve.

References with developing stories

Nigerian #INECRegistration BiDaily – Published AM & PM with an average of 150 contributions

Reps amend Electoral Act to allow more time for registration | 234Next.com

Voter Registration: INEC Has No Right To Extend Time

Voter registration: Jega wants N6.6bn for extension | Tribune Nigeria

» Voters’ Registration: Lagos suspends restriction of movement on sanitation day - Vanguard (Nigeria)

If #INECRegistration should stop no longer than 60 days before elections, it cannot be extended beyond 02/02/2011 http://j.mp/fBcPUi Page 3

#INECRegistration Has No Right To Extend Time http://bit.ly/eB4D5M Constitutional issue could include changing election timetable.

Nigeria: Is the Senate bribing the military?

Golden parachutes all round

Sometimes, it is just not clear whether the Nigerian legislature has any clue about their purpose and the function they are to serve in Nigerian democracy.

Recently, they approved a bumper state pension [1] for former military Heads of State and their families having previously resisted [2] the granting of that emolument to them some time ago.

Now, there might be probable cause for offering a stipend to those who have ruled the country either by the will of the people or by the sheer force of guns.

Reservations on rewards

However, it is important that having ruled Nigeria there should be standards of review that allow for a scrutiny in posterity of those tenures with some basis for considering if those regimes have served Nigeria well or not. For instance, whilst General Sani Abacha did run the country down as a despot, it would atrocious to reward his descendants with largesse for his maladministration.

At a time when it has been proven [3] that he and his family plundered the country to multiples of billions of dollars stashed away in foreign banks and most notable of which is the case that his son brought to retain stolen billions in Switzerland having pain the Nigerian treasury almost in a billion dollars in restitution, this is certainly the wrong message to send to every Nigerian with or without the means to seize power.

Whilst I am not aiming to create a report card of past military regimes, it goes without saying that the politicisation of the military has not served Nigeria well and such governments have not engendered development, peace or prosperity for the country.

A contradiction in terms

It smacks of incredulity that the chairman of the Senate Committee on Information and Media can aver that this is no invitation for a military takeover of government and it is laughable that he offers that the Senate would resist any would-be coup plotter.

I am left flummoxed by this statement, “We are not sending any wrong message, the message we are sending actually is rather a strong message that assumption of political power by force of arms is anachronistic, undemocratic, out-modelled. It is out of fashion and I think that it is something that will even make anybody attempting it to look stupid and out of place.”

There are truths to the part about the assumption of power but contextually, the looking stupid and out of place calls for a clean mirror in front of that speaker.

Accountability confers legitimacy

There are democracies where the clout of the Senate might carry more than a warning to those who might be inclined to overthrow a representative democracy.

The sovereignty of Nigeria should and must belong to the people, but this only derives from the people not being disenfranchised when they exercise universal suffrage through free and fair elections and from their representatives being truly accountable to the people throughout their terms rather than just at times of electioneering.

It is debatable that Nigeria’s democracy is representative and accountable which infers the Senate may not have the underpinning and force of legitimacy to prevent a military takeover or become the engine for revolution or insurrection that leads to the people to deny prospective military rulers the usurpation of power.

Pensions already exist for legitimate service

Obviously, military personnel who have ended up leading the country have also risen to the top ranks of the military forces in which they have been commissioned and a pension is already accruing to them for that military role, it would be belabouring the point that many also had their hands in the till when they were in charge; there is absolutely no need for the extra pay for adding an unlawful political dimension to their military service.

If anything, this sends the wrong message to our democracy, to our people and to those who might think the military route to power could be a shortcut to ensuring a good retirement package when past ones professionally useful years.

The offer to the families simply fosters that class of louts and miscreants who as spouses and brood have shown little exemplary conduct in their hubris and hedonistic tendencies, projecting megalomania well beyond that which the principals in power ever dared to exercise.

Looks like bribery to me

In what can be seen as an abject waste of parliamentary time and priorities, if as the chairman says, “that the new law did not provide any new special benefits to all the intended beneficiaries, as they were already enjoying pension.”

If the intended beneficiaries already have a pension and there are no new special benefits, why is a law being promulgated to give the same people the same thing?

Maybe the act of the Senate is to deepen the nation’s democracy but that cannot be achieved by paying off the military and bribing a rival politicised structure of the military into ineffectiveness – what deepens democracy is accountability, responsibility, leadership and a modicum of common-sense.

I dare say, with this announcement, all those four qualities appear to be lacking in the Nigerian Senate and that is quite unfortunate.

Source

[1] » Ex-Heads of State Pension: Senate warns coup plotters::Vanguard (Nigeria)

[2] allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Senators Kick Against Remuneration for Ex-Military Rulers

[3] BBC News | AFRICA | Banks freeze more Abacha millions

Nigeria: Our exorbitant government

The brood of corruption

It can be so easy to be blind-sided with the claims and counter-claims of Nigerian politicians and lose sight of the serious piece of information that underlays the mudslinging.

The former President Olusegun Obasanjo had in a recent interview accused the National Assembly of corruption and offered examples and figures to justify his claim.

However, members of the minority parties did not take this lying down, they accused the ex-president of grandstanding, spreading falsehoods without substantiation and rounded that up with saying he was their grandfather in corruption [1].

Slush funds to each for favours

The conflated interviews and statements of the President Obasanjo and various minority members of the National Assembly give an interesting insight into the workings of our legislature and probably our democracy too.

The president opined that the legislators allotted bogus allowances to themselves and inflated budgets with the view to profiting from the allocations because they chose their preferred contractors and consultants in the execution of the projects.

The legislators accepted that accusation then confirmed that President Obasanjo in the quest for a third term in government bribed legislators with NGN 50 million (c $330,000) each, then challenged the press to seek audited sources of income of the ex-president through his tenure.

Cost of corrupt enterprise

They were all agreed that politicians are corrupt but tried to subscribe to pedantry by asking the ex-president to identify specific legislators who are corrupt, but that is beside the point.

The core issue is that the Senate costs 3% of the national budget, no mention is made of the additional cost of the Representatives, but even if that cost an additional 2%, it beggars belief that such a non-productive sector of country can drain 5% of the budget.

One senator offered that the recurrent expenditure in our democracy always exceeds the capital expenditure, the latter being what really benefits the people.

Each legislator according to the ex-president now costs more than NGN 250 million (c. $1,7 million), I would suppose that means annually.

Telling it as it is

He laments the lack of transparency which cannot be asserted if the National Assembly would not pass the Freedom of Information Bill that has languished in the legislative doldrums for years.

At least, we cannot say that the ex-president does not know what he is talking about when it comes to the cost of the legislative arm of government and he believes they are costing too much for the Federal Government to maintain.

Whilst he compared the cost of the legislature in 1999/2000 to today the article in the Vanguard failed to provide that comparison correctly because the current cost of NGN 250 million per head is the same as the $1.7 million quoted in the article at today’s exchange rate.

Exorbitant is unacceptable

But the most important piece of information in these exchanges is really in the statement made by the Minority Whip, Senator Olorunimbe Mamora and he said, “My sincere view is that the cost of running government is exorbitant in Nigeria.”

Taking the word exorbitant, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary [2] defines this as not coming within the scope of the law or exceeding the customary or appropriate limits in intensity, quality, amount, or size.

The WordWedOnline [3] volunteers: Greatly exceeding bounds of reason or moderation and Answers.com [4] suggests: Exceeding all bounds, as of custom or fairness with excessive, aberrant, flagrant and extreme as synonyms.

This corroborates views [5] I have expressed variously about the outrageously lucrative perks of Nigerian political office, irrevocably damaging the democratic landscape with people going to unmentionable extents [6] to grab office and remain indefinitely incumbent.

Change has to come

It is means on the basis of cost alone, our democracy is unsustainable but one does wonder how change can be made to bring the costs down to reasonable, fair, just and equitable.

In the end, we can only thank the ex-president and the legislators for volunteering information we have never been able to obtain by any other means, we wish they continually taunt each other with abuse, accusation, blame and chicanery, the results might just be their undoing and the hopefully the making of our democracy.

Long live Nigeria and death to the leeches that have bled her to a chronic anaemic state.

Sources

[1] Senators, Reps lambast Obasanjo « Vanguard

[2] Exorbitant - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

[3] exorbitant- WordWeb dictionary definition

[4] exorbitant: Definition, Synonyms from Answers.com

[5] Nigeria: Percentage Allowance Legislators [akin.blog-city.com]

[6] Nigeria: Our politically immature systems [akin.blog-city.com]