Governors are rascals

The president of Nigeria has always come under intense public scrutiny. His actions, or inactions, often translate into any sense of failures, or the general sense of accomplishment attached to Nigeria.

If the Eagles win an international competition, then the president is doing well. If there is a fire in the Alaba international Market, the president is summoned to intervene, sometimes by wide public outcry. No one considers that the Alaba International Market falls under the municipal oversight of the Ojo local government in Lagos, which should, under normal circumstances, provide the fire and emergency services; market security, and enforce safety codes.

These duties of the local or municipal government, are sometimes taken over by the states, and so functions and responsibilities of the tiers of government blur so much that the average citizen has no idea where the recourse to public services lie. To whom should we go to demand proper public education for our children? Who should carry away our garbage? Who fixes the gutters or the streets lights? Who collects property tax, and to what end?

These questions lie at the heart, or let us simply say, reflect the deformity of our federal system, and has been at the heart of our schizophrenic constitution, which seems to have been conceived and written by people with bi-polar disorder.

In any case, in most instances, Nigerians think that the power of the president of Nigeria is absolute. Recently, some people have even started to call on president Buhari to “probe” the activities of their state governors. It is true that the President of the republic has enormous powers, but under a democratic dispensation, his powers does not include interrogating, probing, or sanctioning the governor of a state. In actual fact, the President has the same powers as the governor of a state except that the state is a smaller territory within the federation.

The Federal constitution which established the powers of the federal government equally established the powers of the state government, to the extent of endowing each state with a unicameral legislature. It is incumbent on these legislatures to probe and sanction the executive excess of the governors. What has often not been clear to many Nigerians, who are generally ignorant about the functions of the state, is that each tier of government under the federal system is independent and has laws. But while the president is often the subject of intense scrutiny, very often, the other tiers seem to be mere appendages to power.

There is a backdrop to this: the military governments unified legislative and executive functions, and basically established a command structure of state that reflected the military hierarchy, in which the states were in fact governed as appendages of the central government. States depend mostly on “federal allocations.” Nigerians continue to look at the center as the absolute source of national power and political action.

They overlook the significant agency of the states and their governors, and in focusing utmost attention on the presidency miss the point of the responsibility of governance at the 2nd tier. Indeed, since 1999, many of the states have had ineffective legislatures. They have mostly been rubber stamp Assemblies. In a democracy, the most powerful arm of government is the legislature. But in Nigeria, it has remained dormant because we tend generally to imagine power as a person. We also tend to elect, especially at the state levels, people of doubtful quality and pedigree to the Assemblies.

This certainly is the case in Imo state. For instance, we have not recreated the powerful House of Assembly of the 2nd republic under the Atuloma Speakership, and a House Majority under the whip of Nze HSK Osuji, and the Minority whip, the then young, fiery lawyer, Mike Ahamba, whose contributions and debates were given equal airing in the “Assembly Reports” of both the Imo State Broadcasting Service (IBS) and the Statesman – a quality regional paper of those years owned by the Imo state government.

Perhaps it is the absence of really powerful local media oversight in these places, but the effect is that since 1999, many of the governors elected from these states have been rascals – more so in Imo –where it seems public opinion has never counted for much. For instance, a man who was once held for armed robbery made a serious bid for power – to be governor of Imo. The current governor, Mr. Anayo Okorocha, has very little pedigree. You may hear him now and then claim that he had two private jets before becoming governor of Imo State. Okorocha was not a trust fund kid.

He was neither an Anyaehie nor Akwiwu or some known quantity of the old money from that region of Imo, none of whom owned private jets in any case. As the late Ikemba Nnewi used to say, the likes of Okorocha, who taught in a second rate, unaccredited commercial school in the city of Jos while some of us were already university undergraduates in the 1980s, must somehow have suddenly found and planted a money-bearing tree behind his house, to be able to afford private jets long before being governor of Imo. Either that, or he has some shady past of which it is the duty of the EFCC to investigate. But certainly, and what is rather clear is that as governor of Imo state, Rochas Okorocha, great ally these days of the anti-corruption president, has questions to answer about his tenure in Imo.

For the past four years of his administration, Mr. Okorocha has illegally appropriated the funds of the Local governments of Imo State, with the connivance of the leadership of the Imo State House of Assembly under Uwajumogu, and defrauded the populace into thinking that he is providing the children with “free education” – something already paid for by the federal government. And you’d wonder how in the hell this is possible, given that Imo has high literacy.

He has commissioned some rather poorly constructed roads, over-inflated the contracts, and some of those who have questioned some of these questionable contracts and expenditure of his government have disappeared; the likes of Emenike Ihekweaba.

To top it all, the administration has been owing public sector workers and pensioners a backlog of their salaries and pensions. Last week, Imo workers finally rose in protest. They blockaded the Imo House of Assembly and the State government house, demanding that their monies be paid, and the ridiculous policy or move to commercialize parastatals by the Okorocha government be reversed, and be not given legislative backing. It would seem that the days of impunity may finally be coming to an end in places like Imo state, and that serious attention will now be paid to those who govern at the two other important tiers of government, where we have paid very little attention.

The EFCC has commenced probing the former governor of River state, Rotimi Amechi. It must also begin the probe of the Imo administration under Okorocha. Let me therefore be clear: governors and local government chairmen have also wasted, stolen, and misappropriated billions of public funds in the last fifteen years.

The elected members of the Assemblies of these states must be held accountable by the public, as the workers in Imo state have been reported to do last week. Legislators who collude with the executive administrations to deny workers their wages, and illegally seize local government funds that should have been used for grassroots development, must be recalled by their constituents. Unless the people insist, and hold elected leadership hostage and accountable, the only dividend they will reap from democracy will be chaos and tyranny. And every rascal who becomes governor will claim a free rein, and will become, as most seem to have become, infected by the God-complex.