NIGERIA! Never a dull moment, and I’m not talking entertainment. There is an endless procession of events that impact our lives, individually and as a collective, almost on a daily basis. Just look at the issues that dominate the headlines this week, last week, the previous week, and the one before that. We are all trying to wrap our heads round the Natasha-Akpabio furore that erupted in the Senate, and then emergency rule happened in Rivers State.
While Osun State is embroiled in another crisis over local government elections, herdsmen militias have been on rampage in Benue, Delta and Bayelsa states, killing, maiming, raping. As all these are going on, the Federal Government had been busy dashing out universities as if they were T-shirts and face caps, and in some cases, adopting them as if they were orphans.
In the same breath, the president signed into law bills passed by the National Assembly to give life to the South-South Development Commission and the South-West Development Commission.
That development is the one I’m focusing on this week. Now, by legislative action, which will now be implemented by the executive, we have the North-East Development Commission, South-West Development Commission, South-South Development Development Commission, and Hydro Power Producing Areas Development Commission, HYPPADEC. Preceding all of them were Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission, OMPADEC, which later morphed into the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC.
All these commissions will be staffed by chief executives, howsoever designated, directors/commissioners howsoever designated, deputy directors, executive officers, secretaries, in short, the full complement of a bureaucracy. They will need office buildings, official cars, guest houses, running costs, and will front budgets. When they fully take off, their officials will also begin to access privileges that we did not envisage. They will start to travel abroad and around the country.
I am worried that with these commissions, the Tinubu administration, already populated with 52 cabinet-level members and 904 ministries, departments and agencies, MDAs, is distastefully turgescent and a putrefying drain on public resources at a time of great need.
What generated the need for these regional development commissions, if one may ask? Failure of governance, driven by the inability of people in government to apply rigour to the management of public affairs seem to be the reason. After more than six decades as a Nigerian, I think I am in a position to aver that the last time Nigerians saw rigour in government work, which means the last time government really worked for the people of Nigeria, was the Second Republic which was terminated in December 31, 1983.
Watchers of public and governmental affairs will notice that as the economy got more and more complex, so also did government machinery fail to keep pace. Take the Nigeria Police, for example. There was a time in this country when the Highway Patrol Unit of the Police maintained sanity on the roads. Remember also that the Police had (still has?) the MTD (Motor Traffic Division). As a result of serial failures and institutional abdication of duty, the Federal Road Safety Corps was created to carry out the schedule of maintaining sanity on our roads. What has been the result?
More accidents and road mishaps! Remember also that the Narcotics division of the Police later emerged to become the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA. Though the NDLEA seems to be up to its task, the truth of the matter is that the business of trading in narcotics has boomed almost a thousandfold in recent years. Similarly, the Special Branch of the Police was differentiated to become the State Security Services, SSS, or the Department of State Security, DSS; I do not know which is which again! Just keep in mind that narcotics and traffic control are regular police duties for which we now have specialised organisations.
So, what will all these regional development commissions be doing? What are they expected to do that the ministries do not have on their table? NDDC, for example, is doing roads, boreholes, providing street lighting and executing a million other projects in the states of the Niger Delta. So, what will the South-South Development Commission also be doing? If these commissions are to execute projects, what do we need the ministries and ministers for, given the humongous resources voted every year to keep them in office? In fact, what do we need the 904 MDAs for?
At a time we should be looking out to cut costs of governance, we are actually bloating them! To all intents and purposes, the Oronsaye Report is dead, buried under a pile of rubbish in a garbage dump three stories high. By the time appropriations are made to give life to all these commissions, there WILL be nothing left by way of funds for our schools, hospitals, roads, and other critical infrastructure. Is this the path we have chosen for ourselves? It seems we have consciously opted to mire our dear country in the murk of underdevelopment.
There is no way this country is going to develop when all the funds needed for developmental activities are consumed by the sprawling bureaucracies being created. It may look politically correct from the prisms of the present federal administration to do these at the moment, but in the long term, it is a road to disaster. NOW is the time to backtrack and rein in the proclivity to expand governance. What I advise the Tinubu administration to do is get more serious and see how to cut fuel energy costs, boost agricultural productivity, and wipe out the scourge of insecurity so that our people can breathe. TGIF.
The post Development commissions and the turgescent government, by Adekunle Adekoya appeared first on Vanguard News.
