(Okwubunka of Asa) Umuiku-Isi-Asa Ukwa-West
E-mail: Ubanidon@yahoo.com
P.M.B. 7048, Aba
Phone: 08035523360

May 25, 2015.
A TIME TO SAY NO TO FLAMBOYANCE IN GOVERNANCE
SCRIPTED BY CHIEF (SIR) DON UBANI

The banking sector is one of the longest surviving institutions of human enterprise. Just to substantiate this assertion, two banks would be sited for illustration. Monte dei Paschidisiena was founded as Mount of Piety in 1472 and today remains one of Italy’s largest retail banks. Berenberg Bank was founded as a Merchant House in Hamburg in Germany in 1590 and is still a private Merchant bank run by its original founders and owners; the Berenberg family. Banks survive because of good planning, financial discipline and frugality.
As it has severally been stated, success does not come by chance. It is always planned and worked for. Two persons could be exposed to the same environmental conditions and equal opportunities yet one might excel in life, by far, more than the other. Some people, out of mere naivety and lack of deep knowledge of enterprise, attribute success to luck. In as much as providence plays a role in the life and growth of man, success is basically determined by strategic planning and hard work. A Latin axiom puts it more succinctly when it insists that ‘laboire et oraire’. This simply means ‘to work is to pray’. King Jaja of Opobo was a good beneficiary of the pragmatic application of this Latin wisdom.
Putting it in the right context, it has to be reiterated that the children of the poor, by dent of good planning, discipline and hard work could grow to be among the nouveaux riches while those of the rich could almost completely descend down the valley of irretrievable poverty due to lack of planning and discipline in management of the wealth their parents had accumulated for them. Success has no common boundary with indolence, profligacy, neither can it come by necromantic invocation.
On Friday 29th May, 2015 state governors that were elected on 11th April, 2015 would be sworn-in as the Chief Executives of their respective states. Some of them might be very familiar with both the political and economic terrain of their respective states while some others might not be very conversant with the present realities in their states.
For them that know and those that may not know, the naked truth is that they are coming into governance at a very critical moment in the economic life of Nigeria. The major source of revenue for the country; oil and gas, has terribly been weakened at the international market. The naira has become a mere shadow of its glorious past. Infrastructure has generally collapsed. Graduate and Youth unemployment has become the rule rather than the exception. The governed have not only lost hope in government but have become suspicious of government. The masses have not seen any wrong with the economy of Nigeria but, rather, they have attributed every blame to corrupt leadership, embezzlement and avoidable mismanagement. The people have, unarguably and, of course justifiably, become wary and sceptical of those in government.
With this type of scenario, no one should be in doubt of the onerous tasks ahead of the in-coming governors. In the first instance, since the population is psychologically dislocated, the new governors should apply a lot of clinical psychology in trying to revive them psychologically. There were certain life styles that became associated with governance in the present dispensation that were sources and causes of displeasure and disappointment amongst the Nigerian masses and ended up making those in government very unpopular. The new governors have, without waiting to be prompted by any external influence, to distance themselves from those life styles that made Nigerians loathe those in government.
To begin with, any governor that wants to succeed in this very critically challenging period, must guide against financial recklessness. Indiscipline in the management of the finances of a state could manifest itself in many ways. Salaries and allowances of officials and personnel of a state government must be made within the legitimate confines of the state’s budget. Anything contrary to this would tantamount to financial recklessness. Some governors, as experience has shown, add to the cost of governance by moving in avoidably expensive long convoys. The cost incurred via such an angle could be enormous.
With the present economic melt-down, it would be out of the reach of reason for any governor to contemplate chartering an air-craft on any official engagement. Financial discipline, in this regard would simply dictate that every Chief Executive of a state would have to be guided by good time management. If time is properly managed, the Chief Executive could effectively make use of commercial passengers’ air-lines and still meet up with his engagement. Afterall, the same weather or aviation challenges that could cause delays in flight operations equally affect charted flight schedules. No matter from what angle it might be seen, Nigerians would not be happy seeing their governors fly in chartered flights when majority of them can not afford two poorly-prepared meals a day. The day a governor starts living such flamboyant style is exactly the same day he commences the process of isolating himself from the masses and no other day would better tell the result of such flamboyance than the day of the next election.
Any governor that is mounting the stable at this time in Nigeria, for goodness sake, is best advised to distance himself from what psychologists may regard as ‘pecuniary hedonism’. Some people in government erroneously believe that endless acquisition of wealth could be a major source of happiness. Therefore, while in government, they would be busy diverting public fund meant to address and re-write the miserable plight of indigenes and residents of their states to use by members of their nuclear families and very few of their extended families and cronies. It is not uncommon to observe people in government buying buildings, demolishing them and in their places, put up magnificent edifices. They do this while many public servants are not paid and nothing is done to address infrastructural decay in their states. Why these looters of public treasury think the masses, who have been deprived by their gluttonous acts, would not take cognizance of this chain of deprivation, is what battles not a few. Of course, being not in a position to remove the governor, the electorate wait, both patiently and impatiently, for the next round of elections.
On assumption of office, it is expected that the new governors would be realistic in their administrative polices. This would reflect first in the appointments they would make. The era of numerosity of political appointees has been subsumed by the present economic reality. A state that has seventeen local government council areas may not necessarily have a State Executive Council that exceeds twenty Honourable Commissioners. The Commissioners must be individuals that know their onions and are altruistic. They should be persons that are prepared to serve their states, without attaching much materialism to service. Experience has shown that some individuals once appointed, embark on building hotels, to the detriment of service delivery. In any case, in appreciation of the economic reality on ground, no commissioner should be paid one hundred thousand naira more than the monthly salary of a Permanent-Secretary in the state. Such salary should be contained in the ministry’s salary voucher. There should not be anything like security vote.
Emphasis should, here, be repeated on time management. God, in His wisdom, made the day a span of only twenty-four hours. No matter how creative man could develop to be, he will not be able to add even one second to the duration of a day. Americans, Europeans, Chinese and Indians are centuries ahead of Africans because of how well they have been able to manage their time. For investors to have sustainable interest in a state, the concept of time must be put in a constructive display. If a Chief Executive is manifested for an engagement at 10a.m only for him to arrive 12 noon, it kills interest in people who want to do business with the state. Besides, it paralyses the administration of the state as commissioners and other state functionaries in the manifest would end up wasting two precious hours that could have been put into effective productivity. it is, therefore, advised that punctuality and regularity should be the motto of the in-coming governors.
Development analysts are aware that one of the causes of infrastructural collapse in Nigeria is the quality of contractors that governments award contracts to. As it has been said severally, what one does not have, one does not offer. Any governor that means well should live above sentiments. Contracts should be awarded to construction companies that have competence; expertise, experience, capacity and pedigree. No contract should be awarded on the basis of personal, family or primordial considerations. In a place like Aba, for instance, it would be better that the in-coming governor does only twenty roads with good drainages that could last for, at least, twelve years than doing thirty or more roads that would collapse even before the end of the first tenure of the governor. Any contract given to an incompetent contractor is certainly a machinery moulded against the electoral chances of the governor and his political party.
Nigerians, as was made manifest in 2015 general election, have ceased to vote for parties. They now vote for quantifiable and verifiable performance. The era of sentiment is gone and gone forever.
Flamboyance in governance also leads to insensitivity to the plight of the masses. Insensitivity could manifest itself in many ways. Apart from fundamental financial indiscipline it orchestrates, it could bring about unrestrained desire to unduly exploit tax payers via multiple taxation. Nigerians have groaned more than enough because of double or, in most cases, multiple taxation. In-coming governors are, for this reason, counselled to meticulously and humanely harmonize their machinery for internal revenue generation in such a way that multiple or double taxation should just become a thing of the past. This also implies that the use of hostile touts and thugs in state revenue drive as has been the case should equally be stopped.
This commentary would not be deemed conclusive if the in-coming governors are not dutifully reminded that they are coming on a recovery mission. This being the case, their priority and focus should be on experience, competence, transparency and unfailing assiduity. A cabinet that parades men and women that have the above attributes should be a cabinet that should be allowed to stay for, at least, four consecutive years for effective service delivery. Time and experience have proved that indiscriminate dissolution of state executive councils does not allow for optimum performance in service delivery.
The new governors and even the re-elected ones should be as scrupulous and shrewd as banks that do not allow indiscretion to rub them off constructive existence and growth. This equally implies that the era of indiscriminate expenditure on awards that do not impact on the lives of the masses should be avoided.

Chief (Sir) Don Ubani; KSC, Jp
(Okwubunka of Asa)