Governor Yari and his billionaire boys’ club

One of the most unfortunate contradictions of our current political experience is that a man, known as Abdul-Aziz Yari Abubakar, is chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum.

Abubakar, the governor of Zamfara State in North-West Nigeria was elected to chair what is supposed to be the equivalent of America’s National Governors Association, shortly after he won his second term in 2015.

Like the NGA, which was founded in 1908, the NGF is a non-partisan platform in which governors of Nigeria’s 36 states are supposed to come together and promote visionary and impactful leadership for states with the aid of a peer review mechanism.

But that seems to be where all the semblance between the original and the Nigerian imitation ends. Every year, the American body has two meetings: the NGA Summer and Winter Meetings. In each of these meetings, the 50 or so governors of United Sates of America share ideas about “best practices and speak with a collective voice on national policy.”

The governors go into serious business and discussion sessions on all and every issue that affects the people. Papers are delivered, policies formulated and agreements reached on education, health, agriculture, environment, cyber security and an assortment of strategies to improve the lives of Americans.

The NGA has, over the years, built a seamless leadership succession structure in which governors elected on the platform of the two major parties: The Democratic and Republican parties, take turns at chairmanship. Every chair has a one-year tenure and is assisted by a deputy from the other party.

One of the most significant things about the NGA is that every person elected to chair the group is expected to spearhead something known as “initiative of the chair.” This, year in, year out, is a deliberate focus on issues that affect the people.

In addition, the NGA has standing committees comprising of governors on virtually every area of governance. This is also supported by the “NGA Center for Best Practices,” which helps governors and their key policy staff to develop and implement innovative solutions to governance and policy challenges in their states.” Essentially therefore, the NGA plays a significant role in the development of the United States by mobilising a consensus amongst its members.

This is why it is unfortunate that the NGF is currently led by a man whose concept of development is, to say the least, pedestrian. Recall that at the peak of the outbreak of the cerebrospinal meningitis in Nigeria earlier this year, Yari, it was who, like the playwright desirous of bringing a quick denouement to his piece of work, placed the duty on the gods by employing a literary device known as du ex machina.

Yari, whose state took the highest toll of fatality from the epidemic told us that God sent the particular strain of meningitis to Nigeria as a punishment for the particular sin of fornication. He went ahead to send persistent preachments to Nigerians on the need to depart from their sins and walk in righteousness.

While adherents of our major religions agree that God may indeed send pestilence to torment the unfaithful unto repentance, Yari’s obsession with the subject of sexual immorality was disingenuous. Even if fornication was such a rampant indulgence of Nigerians, why was the affliction more common amongst those at the lower echelons of society than the upper class which has the resources and incentive to philander?

More importantly, how is sexual promiscuity the sin that upsets God so much that he bypasses the greed and wickedness of our political leaders to deal anger on the same people rendered hapless by the former, while the perpetrators of the people suffering walk free and propound outrageous theories. Is there really any God so unjust to subject His people to this double jeopardy?

The truth that Yari hid from us however is the absolute lack of capacity to run a government that has any chance of improving the lives of the people who elected him.

As events in the past couple of days, including a confession by Yari himself, after six years on the saddle, there are only 46 doctors tending to the health needs of about  4.7 million people in the state. While the World Health Organisation recommends a doctor patient ratio of 1:600, Zamfara State posts a 1:102,174 ratio!

There is said to be a Federal Medical Centre with over 70 doctors in the state alright, but we must not forget that if things worked properly, the FMC is a tertiary institution that should ordinarily be for referrals. It should therefore be no alibi for the irresponsibility of the Zamfara State Government.

So, if you have a man of Yari’s mindset as leader of a forum which has development conscious people like Akinwumi Ambode of Lagos and Nasir el-rufai of Kaduna amongst a few others, how do you expect such an organisation to impact on the lives of a majority of Nigerians who live in the states? Remarkably, Yari’s leadership is under probe for the mismanagement of the Paris Club refund money from which the chair is alleged to have initiated the building of an ultra-modern hotel in Lagos by an online news platform recently.

Unfortunately, very little development can visit this country until governors of the 36 states deliberately invest towards the purpose.

For starters, state and local governments are not just the closest tiers of government in the federal system; the 1999 Constitution also dumps some of the most critical developmental responsibilities on them.

Primary and secondary education; primary and secondary health care delivery; rural development and such important interventions, which could make significant changes in the lives of the common man are direct duties of the local and state governments.

Let us take education, for instance. At the moment, Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children in the world. This number refers to children who are supposed to be receiving basic education. The quality of teaching at this level of education is equally pathetic.  Now, since local governments are mere appendages of state governments, it is safe to conclude that the responsibility for educating children at the primary and secondary levels rests with the states. It is doubtful that there are many states in Nigeria who can boast of any outstanding quality on both fronts.

The same goes for the health sector. Primary health care is the responsibility of the local government while secondary health care is the constitutional duty of all state governments but what do we have? Inefficiency and lack of capacity all the way.

Medical practitioners have always complained that most primary and secondary health care systems are deficient in human resources, basic health care facilities, services, as well as adequate funding and essential drugs. The implication of this is that most primary health care clinics and general hospitals are buildings, mostly without skilled personnel and adequate equipment for any meaningful intervention.

And who says we should only demand the employment of thousands of our youths from the Federal Government. As we have seen in Lagos and a few other places, states are able to provide gainful employment for thousands of the young men and women who are roaming the streets all over the country and reduce the level of social resentment all over the country.

Has the governors’ forum, for instance, realised that a little bit of creativity would make agriculture attractive to thousands of Nigerians youths and that done, we  would be solving the employment problem as well as tackling our food security challenges. What about raising a new generation of well-trained hands in assorted vocations in areas where Nigeria currently lags behind?

One cannot deny the fact that many governors embark on elaborate capital projects aimed at improving infrastructural deficit but even these projects, do not usually go to down to the rural areas. As a result, the bulk of rural people still suffer from lack of basic amenities including roads, potable water and so on, all of which open them up to penury and disease.

These are issues that a proactive forum of governors can tackle as a body interested in the overall development of a country. But can an organisation yield more than the capacity of the one at its head? This is the dilemma of the NGF as it currently stands. What is the usefulness of a body of governors when even the most basic successes of one governor cannot be emulated by all other governors? The NGF is nothing but a mere club of governors, who dispense billions of monies belonging to their states annually even if just to the advantage of a few.

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