Nigeria’s President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari, no doubt, has a huge burden upon his shoulder. Nearly every sector throughout the country is threatened.  The sixteen years’ reign of the People Democratic Party, PDP, has been a matter of one step forward two steps backwards.  The economy is currently in comatose. The nation’s foreign reserve has been  depleted. To worsen things, inflation and unemployment is at an all-time high while  corruption is rife.  The truth, however, is that Nigeria is actually in trouble.

One of the very daunting tasks that General Buhari and his team would have to tackle, in earnest, is that of unpaid salaries. In the last sixteen years, the norm in budgetary planning, formulation and execution has been for recurrent expenditure to be excessively higher than capital outlay. This is not, in any way, peculiar to the Federal Government (FG) alone as nearly all the state governments in the country operate a similar unproductive budgetary planning.

The consequence of this is the poor state of social and physical infrastructure across the country. Almost all federal roads are in terrible conditions. The  PDP-led government, after sixteen years in power, could not fix the nation’s refineries as we continue to import refined petroleum products.  This is what happens when a nation fails to prioritize its developmental needs. No nation in the world, not even the almighty United States of America, touted as the number-one economy could develop via the kind of budgetary system we have been operating in the past sixteen years.

High wage bills, as well as escalating cost of governance, remains a major threat to the survival of democracy in the country. Presently, aside the various Federal Government agencies and parastatals that are being owed various degrees of salaries and emoluments, about twenty six (26) State Governments in the country are owing workers salaries in arrears of months. The State of Osun readily comes to mind here as the state has been singled out for target of media attack on this issue. I am piqued about this though  the state is not the only one in this dire financial strait. The Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola was, in fact, the first person to call national attention to this financial disaster in 2013, when he alleged that the FG had declared war on the state as allocation dropped to 40%.

It will be difficult to query his record as a worker-friendly administrator. In some states, in order to ensure workers go home with something; salaries are paid in bits, and my lawyer friend told me this was a breach of contract.  Expectedly, in most of the States, workers are threatening to go on strike in a bid to press home their demands for prompt payment of their wages. Things are not looking up at all.

With the decline in revenue accruing to the Federation Account through the sale of crude oil, some of the states might not be able to pay workers salaries, not to talk of paying arrears of pension and gratuity being owed pensioners. As things stand, the amount that stands to the credit of each of the states monthly is not enough to pay workers’ wages, and this means all other similar recurring expenditures would suffer. A few of them that try to embark on capital spending do so through loans from banks and bonds earlier negotiated, which must be serviced regularly at huge cost.

With this stark reality, it has therefore, become highly imperative for the incoming Buhari administration to take a holistic view of the whole issue with a view to saving our democracy from  imminent collapse. Bureaucracy is meant to help drive the pace of development in a democracy. In any nation where bureaucracy has become the problem rather than the solution, democracy would  become endangered. This is where General Buhari, and his team need to take decisive steps to save the country from what has become a chronic and nagging problem. As a stop-gap measure, one is actually canvassing that the incoming Buhari administration bails out the states that are owing excessive workers’ wages by offsetting such, and give them enough to pay pensions and gratuity. We have done it before.

Unpaid salaries have always plagued civil administration in Nigeria. Military takeover, had always been the quick fix, but with its recurring nature, it’s obvious we have not found the solution. Yes, government is always the biggest employer of labour; we cannot continue to bring idle hands into governments without a commensurate analysis of what is actually needed. This is to avert undue labour disputes that could cause needless troubles in the land. A sound employment policy would still address the problem of unemployment.

Equally, the idea of the Federal Government entering into wage negotiations on behalf of the State Governments should be discarded. Since the revenue base of each state differs, it would be inappropriate for both the Federal Government and the Labour Unions, to force State Governments to pay their worker’s wages being paid by the Federal Government. Each State Government ought to employ and pay according to its capacity. Equally important is that labour unions must desist from the incessant act of demanding for an arbitrary wage increase. While the work force deserves better pay packages, government has responsibilities to the larger society through the provision of social amenities and infrastructures.

In the same vein, governments across the land need to cut all avenues that open the door for wastes in governance. We have taken the issue of taxation too lightly in this country. No nation attains greatness without the adequate contributions of the citizens in the forms of taxes. We must start emphasizing our tax systems to make governments and citizens more fiscally responsible. Democracy is about bringing development to a greater number of the people. It is about human and capital development. It ceases to be democracy when just a few individuals or groups corner the commonwealth while the rest of the society languishes in abject poverty. Now that change has come, it is, indeed, the right time to get things done in the right way in order to get the right result. God bless Nigeria.


http://sunnewsonline.com/new/?p=119261


Cc:lalasticlala

Ok na so I made FTC for the second time

I no even understand all these unpaid salaries wey dem dey pack wait dis man ooo

Baba is coming to inherit gbese. No worries, who ever has stolen our money must vomit it o.

Governing Naija, no be beans oh

Blame it on GEJ

AnneMomoh:
Governing Naija, no be beans oh

I dey tell u

infact, na after abt 2yrs we go know how far with GMB.

I pray he presides well, or else hmmmm

Infact sometimes I wonder,where is this man going to start from..With God and dedication all things are possible sha..May God grant him wisdom to succeed.

TeamSimple:
Infact sometimes I wonder,where is this man going to start from..With God and dedication all things are possible sha..May God grant him wisdom to succeed.

Hmmmmmmmm, so u can reason like a human being, u could have started with that hatred all over you. I just forgot the topic is about your father buhari , nonsense.

AmucheJane:
Hmmmmmmmm, so u can reason like a human being, u could have started with that hatred all over you. I just forgot the topic is about your father buhari , nonsense.

You again? *faints

Why is it that Nigerian journalists do not know how to summarize and make their points early enough in their write up. For crying out loud, why spend half of your write up talking about all the problems in Nigeria like we do not know them already. You only end up making your article unnecessarily long, tedious and boring.

Is federal govt. indebted to any state?

Hmnnn... And some people dey cAll GEJ heroe.

The commentator made a grave error by saying that the united states operates a better budgetary system than Nigeria.
If I'm right, the US has a budget of about 3 trillion dollars (about 500 trillion naira) and over 90 percent of the budget is spent on recurrent expenditure. I doubt if the US federal government budgets on capital expenditure.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the Nigerian budget.

jumper524:
dis guy where u get ur sense 4rm who told u that?

I know what I'm saying. The Nigerian government has the ability and authority to create money(naira) by fiat.
There is something called quantitative easing, its a monetary policy instrument used by government to stimulate the economy.
The Nigerian government should adopt such policies to solve some of their expenditure problems. The United states of America does the same thing.

.

The fact is some states are richer than others
and same goes also in united States. Every
States, local government area need to generate
their revenue and spend according to what is
generated. Oil prices will continue to go down
due to oil discovery in new places and over
reliance on oil is a recipe for disaster..
Buhari does not have any magic to do and he
knows that. All he has to do is true federalism
and reduce in cost of governance.
Federal government has way too much
responsilities that makes it impossible to
accomplish.

He would have to repair b4 he can change it

PDP ha sucked us Dry!!!!!

..

The task ahead is indeed daunting but I believe he'd pull through.

Wish that was me he's writing a letter to... Such a wonderful gentleman.

Unpaid salaries should not be headache of the FG but rather the state governors thats why they are there

Smh.


Jonathan wants to make sure he leaves a mess for buhari to clean up.





Jonathan....evil. He just realised we have boko haram in nigeria.

May we find & recognise the way to right all the past wrongs

It's a pity some people wanted this same administration to continue sucking and milking the nation dry for the next four years. Obasanjo was widely criticized but I could remember a statement Obasanjo made after settling nigeria's foreign debts "now that the debts are being settled no foreigner will ever accuse you of owing his or her country when you are on their land" fast forward to 2015 and the case is something else, when u tell a foreigner you from Nigeria, they start looking at you with pity like someone who had been in hell throughout he's or her life.

It's so obvious if all funds embezzled only in this outgoing administration is recovered it will serve the nation for the next four years without touching a dime from the oil industry and other sectors.

we are eager to see the change he talked about

Even our national Depth has extremely increased, Only God will punish our predecessors and the GEJ administrators. Baba has a lot of work to do, I believe God is on his side

my illiterate presido..............shey??

werin the person before him gej inherit? with that we can know exactly werin to talk. was it easy for gej also?

publicenemy:
Ju

ju for juju

azimibraun:
werin the person before him gej inherit? with that we can know exactly werin to talk. was it easy for gej also?

Obasanjo settled every kobo Nigeria was owing that should be enough to show you how far this administration had damaged Nigeria. Even before Yaradua died he reduced the price of petrol. So hard to point to something positive in this outgoing administration

AmucheJane:
Hmmmmmmmm, so u can reason like a human being, u could have started with that hatred all over you. I just forgot the topic is about your father buhari , nonsense.

Smh