The Cost of governance and cost of maintaining political and judicial office holders in Nigeria are killing Nigeria, thrown Nigeria into economic recession and could lead Nigeria into great economic depression than Ghost Workers. I recently watched the minister for finance, Kemi Adeosun on ChannelsTV where she was telling Nigeria that under her watch in the Federal Ministry of Finance, Nigeria has save over N4bn by detecting over 20,000 ghost workers on the FG monthly payroll. She said this has brought down the monthly recurrent wages bills of FG from N165bn in December 2015 to N161.3bn in July 2016.
I give her credit for her good job so far, however if Kemi Adeosun can sit down with president Muhammadu Buhari and the RMFAC Boss, I can guarantee that Nigeria FG monthly recurrent wages bills will reduce to N100bn it they can review my proposal below and many of the write ups on my Facebook timeline.
Since the price of crude oil revenue has crashed from $120 per barrel to $40 per barrel (to one-third price / barrel), the budgeted recurrent spendings on judiciary, executive and legislative office holders HAVE NOT been slashed to one-third of its initial Budget?
If the answer is NO, then why are NIGERIANS shocked when they heard Nigeria is in Economic Recession?
Recession or no recession, certain political and judicial office holders who are far less than 18,000 persons in Nigerians are earning an astonishing N1.126 trillion recurrent renumeration and wages annually.
It's unfortunate that the National Assembly have refused to reduce their largest pay and allowances in the world as a way of reducing the cost of governance. While the RMFAC looks elsewhere!
The United Nations recent called Nigeria the poorest and most unequal among countries of the world with 64% of her population living below poverty line. This is according to the report read during a consultative meeting on the formulation of the UN Development Assistance Framework IV (UNDAF IV) for the South East geo-political zone in Awka.
The UN says:
"Poverty and hunger have remained high in rural areas, remote communities and among female – headed households and these cut across the six geo-political zones, with prevalence ranging from approximately 46.9 percent in the South West to 74.3 percent in North West and North East.”
"On unemployment, the report notes that Youth unemployment which is 42% in 2016 has continued to create helplessness and despair resulting into upsurge in crime and terrorism.
"Over 10 million Nigerian children of school age are out of school with no knowledge or skills."
"It estimates Nigeria’s revenue to have fallen as much as 33%, which it says resulted in the contraction of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the first three months of 2016." - UN
For man years when Nigeria FG borrowed money (from either foreign or domestic sources), the money were not spent on Roads, Bridges, Electricity, Hospitals, Schools, Rail Systems. No! The loans were spent on recurrent spending to sustain and keep maintaining few Nigerians in the corridors of power while while 90% of Nigerians are struggling to compete and utilize the insufficient and dilapidated social infrastructures while the population continue to surge.
Since the 3rd Mainland Bridge was constructed and commissioned during IBB era in 1990, can any Nigeria name another massive capital project(s) in such magnitude that has(have) been constructed and commissioned since 26 years ago by Nigerian Federal Government?
NB: Nigeria Population was 96 million (1990) and Nigeria Population estimate 26 years after (2016) is 180 million (2016).
This sorry situation is against the background of virtually all recent past and serving governors awarding themselves scandalous and end of tenure benefits while members of the legislature immorally awarding themselves outrageous retirement benefits running into hundreds of millions of naira for serving their states, some for just a tenure of four years.
Opinion by Mayowa Michael Adeleye
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