The recent meeting on Tues­day last week between the President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress gover­nors and governors-elect is as important as the lessons it teach­es the Nation. For its proper im­port, it will be helpful to call it the meeting between Buhari and all the state governors and the local government chairmen in Nigeria. We may also go a step further to call it Nigerians meeting Buhari. This is because there is no differ­ence between an APC governor and PDP governor. Even the lo­cal government chairmen behave exactly like the governors. It might be safe to say that all monkeys look alike.

As usual, the meeting was to discuss the state of the economy. The pretending governors who are culprits in mismanagement com­plained that they are unable to pay staff salaries and pleaded with Bu­hari to rescue them.



They said: “As it stands today, most states of the federation have not been able to pay salaries and even the Federal Government has not paid April salaries. That is very worrisome and by May and June, that will be cumulative of about three months and we wondered that with the huge expectations from Nigerians and people who voted us into power, we are hoping that the President-elect will do all the things that are humanly possible to bring about a bailout, not only on the part of states, but also the Fed­eral Government so that people can get their salaries and turn around the economy.”

These governors and their counterparts who were not in that meeting are the same in ambition and content. They are generally dishonest and pretending, saying one thing and doing another. The exceptions are microscopic. If PDP is to be blamed for the ills of Nigeria, some of these governors passed through the PDP. If APC is the weak link in the chain, then the governors from APGA, ACN or ANPP are the donors of this bad behavior.

Today they are in PDP, tomor­row they populate APC and at the end of the day it is still the same wine in different vessels. They are together not because of ideology but the search for personal aggran­dizement. Their hands are stained. They cannot speak for a sane Ni­geria.

The pathetic situation being painted here by Buhari’s guests is an understatement. The position in the states is far more than agonizing for the ordinary Nigerian. While there may be a varying degree of impact from one state to the other, the poverty level in some states in Nigeria is harrowing. How can one explain the squalor and penu­ry in some parts of Northern Ni­geria? Is there any justification for the governor of rich Rivers State to owe salaries of workers and abandon nearly all projects just because he wants to win elections or for the simple reason that insti­tutional structures cannot check­mate him? We must tell ourselves the truth that these governors are not telling Buhari the whole truth. This decay is not a matter for any section of the country or political party. It is an issue, a very serious one, for all of us.

The starting point is to set our national priorities right and de­fine parameters to achieve them. Nigeria must dream. Our nation must sweat and not just remain a consumer tiger. We lack guts to do historic things. We are just there, anything satisfies us. In this new time, we must do something posi­tive that the world will talk about us. Drugs, criminality and misery cannot continue to define us or bring us to world stage. While this may be the duty line of leaders, the followers have a great role to play. We are all bakers in this en­terprise.

We are saddened that Buhari may have lost some of his fire­power that made him a hero in the mind of many people when he was a military Head of State but we have in him today, a bundle of experience which he can deploy to find a better way forward. Bu­hari is not known to be flamboy­ant or a man of affluent living and if he keeps his living habits intact and continues to shun excessive luxury he will be the best driver in this process. This is a time to live by example and not deceit.



Buhari needs a high moral ground to face these governors. While it is easy today to blame President Goodluck Jonathan because he lost election, the gov­ernors must be held accountable for the betrayal of trust of their people. Most of the governors are eminently corrupt. The lifestyle of these governors and members their families constitute a dire eco­nomic danger to their states.

The oil wealth has made Ni­geria lazy. Every state looks up to Abuja for handouts and apart from two or three, none has done much to diversify their economies or enhance internally generated revenues. Therefore the day the oil prices go low, the nation falls sick and if the world no longer needs the oil, Nigeria will then die. What a life!

The insatiable desire to ac­quire wealth for private use is at the root of all the abuse. They use state apparatus and resources to develop private interests. The state Houses of Assembly, which should check these excesses are themselves products of selection by the governor. When the going is good, the state legislators act as collaborators and look the other way while the governors rape their states and share part of the loot to them. When the tide changes, the legislators turn against their mas­ter and begin to threaten impeach­ment even few days to the end of their tenure. The ongoing squabble between Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State and his Enugu State counterpart Sullivan Chime and their legislators is not a surprise. These are isolated situations and in other cases where the conflict is not made public, it can only be seen as honour among thieves or peace of the graveyard.

Buhari must face the cost of leg­islation in Nigeria. The National As­sembly is too expensive and succes­sive sessions of the parliament have rebuffed calls to either disclose their true earnings or cut down on their salaries and allowances so that some money would be spared for the less opportune members of the society through investment in infrastructure. The National Assembly members should be in agreement with Bu­hari on this matter if the nation must come out of this quagmire.

The state governors and ministers who will work with Buhari may not be able to fit into the General’s life­style of simplicity and piety. So cor­ruption will thrive and if that fails, they will begin to grumble and in­stigate their stooges in the National Assembly to call for Buhari’s head. Buhari will then be told pointedly that he does not have the military command structure to sack them be­cause democracy is at play.

If he insists and resists their ava­rice, the rainmakers will remind the masquerade of the wood used to carve the mask
From opinionng.com

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