THE IMPARTIAL OBSERVER
Time to unbundle Nigeria’s governance morass
HANK ESO
Sunday,
22 January 2012
Within government
proper, civil servants have mastered how to circumvent full discussion of any
policy that warrants the Federal Executive Council’s approval, by unilaterally
seeking anticipatory approval from the President.
Such acts bypass the FEC granting of the authority
to incur expenses; obfuscate illegalities and obviate any checks and balances.
This week, several Nigerian national dailies
carried headline pieces wherein Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told Farouk
Lawan’s House of Representatives ad-Hoc Committee on Subsidy Management that the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was never authorized and never
had the mandate of the Ministry of Finance to deduct subsidy cash before
remitting funds to the Federation Account.
This revelation speaks to the urgent need for more transparency in
governance and, particularly, of the need to unbundle the insidious bureaucracy
that hobbles inter-governmental relations. If we really intend to graduate
Nigeria from low-income to a middle-ncome nation, such unbundling has become
imperative. So far, two pieces of enabling legislation that ought to have made a
difference have not: the
Petroleum Industry Bill
(PIB)
is still languishing in the National Assembly, and the Freedom of Information
Act
was finally passed on 24 May,
2011
after
six years of waiting.
What
were even more revelatory as it was perplexing were Okonjo-Iweala’s assertions
about the origin, oversight, and the indeterminate approving authority of the
fuel subsidy withholdings. Her exact words:
“This has been a practice that was kicked
in rather than any authorization. We have actually been looking into this issue
to find out who gave the authorization. We have not been able to come up with an
answer. It was a practice that was developed. I’m afraid I can’t go further than
this except my colleagues will add something, I can’t give you that answer.”
Shucks!
Governance in Nigeria and especially inter-agency agency
relations are interminably paradox-ridden and often bedeviled by egregious acts
and lack of accountability by public officials.
Often, checks and balances are presumed to be in place, but hardly does
anyone ask hardheaded questions anymore. Soon enough, presumption gives room to
precepts and presumptive fraud becomes real and hardcore malfeasance.
It is on this premise that the Nigerian saying, “government
business is nobody’s business’’ finds its currency. Similarly, as is now the
case with the authorization of fuel subsidy, ownership of policy -- or mistakes
relating to policy -- is rare. That
some opaqueness is commonplace in the officialdom is hardly ever surprising.
It is in this context that one can begin to comprehend the present
post-subsidy crisis recriminations. For
their part and as if to reaffirm a dubious distinction, Nigerian leaders have
yet again done what they do naturally – apply
ad hoc measures and band aid to a
critical national question that demanded compelling,
intrusive and unequivocal solutions.
The abrupt and ruptured end to the fuel subsidy and the
related week-long anti-fuel subsidy demonstrations via an executive fiat that
did not spell out the details of the understanding
between the government and the labor unions, marked the arrival at a
critical juncture of yet another unfinished national business.
We can expect absurd inquiries and investigations into the oil subsidy
saga, and reports, which ironically like many previous public inquiry reports,
will end up on several desks and shelves gathering dust.
Unwittingly, the federal government’s unilateral action, lack
of good faith, and the labor unions’ inexplicable acquiescence merely added to
the prevailing level of cynicism and distrust. The only way this crisis should
have ended correctly, justifiably, and productively was through a mutually
acceptable outcome reached through collaborative negotiations. That was not to
be. Ironically, policies resulting from knee-jerk reactions are neither
productive nor sustainable.
It is no longer in question that the government used its
might and a touch of subterfuge to quell the demonstration. The act of using
soldiers to stop the constitutionally guaranteed act of peaceful assembly and
freedom of expression should give us pause. But the blame is twofold. Labor, for
its part, acted naively by calling for a
“cooling off” and “restoration
break,” when they had momentum and, indeed, had not received firm assurances
from the government. Naturally, they lost out and opened themselves up to
allegations of having been paid off.
Whatever be the case, Nigeria’s long term interest has not
been served by the arcane and labyrinthine ways government conducts public and
governance business. If there is one thing that is not in debate, it is that the
Jonathan administration has handled the fuel subsidy issues badly. In the wake
of such bungling, evidence of perfidious and egregious acts in managing our
petroleum resources emerged. The only surprise is the hefty scale of the
thievery.
But this piece, as the title suggests, is about unbundling
our national governance morass. As things stand, Nigerians know that the
government has unilaterally pegged petrol price at N97. What does this mean?
Has the withdrawn subsidy been partially restored along with the
arbitrary and unilateral N97 per liter price? Are we still importing oil to
offset the laggardly domestic production? If so, who is presently authorized to
import refined oil and how much?
The most critical question however, is this:
Who in the name God speaks the truth to Nigerians about the nations true
oil and fiscal policy? Who do we
believe and who has knowledge of the full picture? As the Finance Minister told
the lawmakers, “We have actually been
looking into this issue to find out who gave the authorization.” This
contention speaks volumes about the level of opaqueness and insidiousness of
policymaking, implementation, and monitoring in Nigeria.
This is even worse in a multidisciplinary sector like oil, which is the
lifeline of the nation.
The Nigerian Customs Service also testified to the National
Assembly that NNPC never paid taxes and tariffs on imported goods. This is
reminiscent of why Nigeria Airways went under:
staff, their family members, consultants, and contractors of the airline
were all flying first-class and gratis.
Similarly, government agencies -- including the Presidency -- never
bought tickets with cash, rather they charged them with the so-called warrants,
which were never redeemed.
Today, Nigerians applying for passport abroad are confronted
with inexplicable double billings that only give rise to graft.
In the US, an applicant must pay $65 online to the Nigerian Immigration
Service’s centralized account and an additional supplementary fee of $20 in
money order to the Embassy or Consulate. The latter, which is revenue outside
the budget, is called operational cost and the explanation is that neither the
Immigration Service nor the Foreign Ministry provides consular officers with
funding for such operational activities. This is perplexing since there is only
one federal government and the issuance of passports is statutorily a federal
responsibility.
Overall,
what we have is policy confusion all aimed at creating avenues to rip off the
nation. Within the government, the din of the recriminations is growing, even
among the ministers. The EFCC has
raided the office of the PPRA, but only so at the behest of the Minister of
Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke, who recently set up the Dotun
Sulaiman-led eleven-man special task force on Governance and Control in the NNPC
and other parastatals within the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources. In
truth, however, she ought not to be the one instituting such an investigation
considering how deeply steeped her ministry is in the present morass.
Furthermore, as the oversight body for national oil policies, who says
that the Ministry itself should not be investigated over the oil subsidy
scandal? There is an obvious
attempt here to head off criticisms and an obvious conflict of interest.
For a meaningful overall review, she should have included in the EFCC's
Terms of Reference a review of the role of her ministry and a determination of
any complicity or culpability.
If such evident intergovernmental disconnect are possible, it
is for one reason. Within government proper, civil servants have mastered how to
circumvent full discussion of any policy that warrants the Federal Executive
Council’s (FEC) approval. They do
so by unilaterally seeking single-line anticipatory approval from the President.
Such acts bypass the FEC’s statutory role in granting the authority to
incur expenses (AIEs), obfuscate illegalities, and obviate any checks and
balances. This process explains how several Nigerian parastatals were privatized
without the FEC’s approval.
One critical point seems lost. The long simmering national
outrage over corruption and the government’s insensitivity may have been put in
abeyance but is hardly over. Yes, though the restiveness has been doused, there
are still some smoldering embers that could reignite the tinderbox.
Apropos the conundrum created by the
fuel subsidy withdrawal, it is clear that the policy was not based on lessons
learned. Unquestionably, subsidy
withdrawals are matter-of-factly always contentious. Policymakers should have
known this, drawing lessons from events in Venezuela in the 1990s, in Indonesia
in 2008, and in Bolivia in 2010.
Not properly handled, subsidy withdrawals are contentious and cause for grave
national restiveness.
For now, Nigeria’s governance candle burns from at both ends;
the government seems at the end of its wits considering that public officials
continue to promote and pursue self-serving policies against the backdrop its
reform and transformational agenda -- all in the name of national interest.
Additionally, various challenges and some vexing
national issues unresolved. Most will endure and continue to cause resentment
and angst, insofar as there are no clear remedies and a remarkable shift
toward equitable resource sharing, good governance, and faithful implementation
of purposeful public policies. For
the Nigerian masses and the broad segment of the national population trapped in
the poverty peonage, the band of extreme poverty plays on, without a redeeming
Piper in sight. Inevitably,
Nigeria’s paradox of poverty amidst crass affluence endures and will not end
until the Nigerian people really assert their sovereignty and extricate
themselves from the debilitating tyranny of the ruling minority elite.
They came close to doing so last week before the demonstration waned.
Meanwhile, there are many national questions in the realm of
policymaking and implementation begging for answers.
One topical issue is the recent escape of an alleged Boko Haram bomber.
It is incomprehensible as to why the Nigerian police rather that the State
Security Services (SSS) continue to have jurisdiction over the Boko Haram
terrorist bombings. The recent arrest of the alleged mastermind of the Madalla
bombing, Kabir (Sokoto) Umar, along with a serving air force officer at the
Borno State Governor’s lodge in Abuja, should have placed the jurisdiction of
the case under the SSS and the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI).
Umar’s eventual escape from police custody points to the prevailing level
of lack of effective coordination between various arms of the security agencies.
In fact, the reported plan to search of Umar’s home should have been a combined
joint task, between the police, SSS, and DMI.
It is noteworthy that though government has the
responsibility for maintaining peace and security as well as law and order, it
was egregiously wrong for the government to deploy the military in places like
Lagos State to perform what are civilian police duties. Recriminations between
the Nigerian military and the Lagos State government as to who initiated the
deployment also points to a lacuna in inter-governmental relations.
Needless to say that such extremism in the use of the military bodes ill
for the government, for the population and more so, for the Nigerian Police,
which by such seemingly innocuous acts is cast as unreliable. Ironically, in
using the military to brace up his embattled administration, President Jonathan
seem to have overlooked the fact that he has opened the Pandora’s Box
and allowed the genie to slip out of the bottle. The military on Nigerian
streets is never a good omen.
Any intended governance reform and the transformative agenda
must of necessity consider the nexus between the blurred lines between having
statutory authority and flawed implementation of policies, as well as its
contribution to corruption and official malfeasance. The salutary but unintended
consequence of the fuel subsidy withholding policy and the fuel subsidy
withdrawal policy is that they have both unearthed for the Nigerians to see how
the national wealth is mismanaged without clear lines of authority and
legislative mandate. Such
composites of bad governance must come to an end immediately. It is time to
unbundle Nigeria’s governance morass.
With neither
anger nor partiality, until next time, keep the law, stay impartial, and observe
closely.
--------
Hank Eso
is a columnist for
Kwenu.com.
His observations on Nigerian, African and global politics and related issues,
has appeared in various print media, journals and internet-based sites.
© Hank Eso, 22 January 2012.
Email:
hankeso@aol.com