Peter Obi, governors and a pathetic citizenry

You will get a sense of the awful state of citizenship in Nigeria if you have followed reactions that trail Saturday’s intervention by former Governor Peter Obi at 2016 The Platform in Lagos.

And this reinforces the significance of concerted efforts on raising the level of political consciousness among our people more than we worry about the failure of successive political leaderships.

Obi, a two-time governor of Anambra State, was invited to the annual national forum convoked by Covenant Christian Centre for the first time; he confessed that he never heard of the event and only came for an initiation; he did not come to impress.

Speaking on what he called, “Cutting waste in government,” Obi elected to restrict his contribution to the activities of state governors, a role he played for eight years. He gave empirical examples of wastage in the administration of Nigeria’s 36 states and illustrated opportunities for more efficiency by telling of how he dealt with each of the scenarios.

The kernel of Obi’s conversation is that if state governors were to cut down on monetary allocations and expenditure on security travels, servicing the offices of their wives and the like, they would be able to save a total of N1tn, which could be invested on people-oriented programmes within one year. This could see states being able to pay better attention to education, health, housing and other key developmental indices.

Rather than engage in arguments about how this proposal could become manifest, how to make the administration of states less opaque and how ordinary Nigerians can benefit more from their state governments, public commentary in Nigeria has largely been about whether Obi was truly as efficient and accountable as he claimed, whether he is qualified to contest for the Presidency in 2019 given what some of his critics describe as his “hypocrisy”.

This charge of hypocrisy is mainly hinged on the fact that Obi left the All Progressive Grand Alliance for the Peoples Democratic Party at the expiration of his governorship tenure.

But nothing could be more ludicrous than the reference to Obi’s defection to the PDP.  The purists who take this position are those who see the ruling All Progressives Congress  as the most pristine political platform that Nigeria has ever seen. That anyone could suggest this given revelations from the national Assembly and underhand dealings of some key players in the Muhammadu Buhari administration is a sad commentary on the readiness of Nigerians to take politicians as birds of the same feathers and seize national destiny from the predatory class.

Even if Obi accomplished nothing in his eight-year tenure, it would be impossible for him to have passed through that experience without coming out with some lifelong lessons, which if held with wisdom by Nigerians, could guide us into making better leadership choices.

Days after Obi made the bold declaration he did in Lagos, no one has come out to contradict him. But even if he had overstated his other accomplishments, it was common knowledge that when most of his colleagues flew around in chartered aircraft alongside their retinue of staff, Obi was visible at airport lounges pulling his own luggage and getting on commercial flights like every ordinary Nigerian. Exposing us to the possibility of making such demands on our governors should be cheery news to Nigerians of good conscience.

But it is even more than that!  Nigerians would appreciate the import of Obi’s exposition were they more acquainted with the roles that governors play in their lives.

The governor of a state or his godfather is the reason why we do not know our local government chairman, why we cannot determine who our councillor, House of Assembly member or representatives in Abuja is. He takes decisions about every single delegate to party primaries and uses the resources of the state to emasculate everyone in his way.

In the days of the recent oil flourishing, governors had presidents by the balls. They ran life in ways that many did not and still do not even imagine. They are the small god who you cannot question, which is why when they leave office after eight years, we are mostly confused about whether they have impacted positively on our state or otherwise.

The confusion is more because he will die to install a stooge who will perpetuate his dictatorship and cover his mess for a few more years. Sometimes, the stooge will develop wings to fly by himself; at other times, he is tied to the strings of his benefactor forever! Simply put, at the moment, we do not elect governors to serve us; we elect them to make servants of us.

Incidentally, they are in a position to affect our lives in very significant ways. For example, by the 1999 Constitution, responsibility for primary and secondary education is within the purview of local and state governments respectively. And since local governments are now mere appendages of states, it is safe to conclude that the responsibility for educating children at the primary and secondary levels belongs to governors.

There is no further testimony of how much we fail on this front than the number of out-of-school children in the country as well as the quality of basic education in our public schools. This is why Nigerians, including these governors, are wary of having their children in public schools even if these were where most of us got our education.

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 state governments.

But what do we have? Inefficiency and lack of capacity. A 2013 survey by the Nigeria Medical Association showed that our primary and secondary health care systems are deficient in human resource, lack basic health care facilities and services, as well as adequate funding and essential drugs. The implication of this is that most primary health care clinics and general hospitals are mere buildings without skilled personnel and adequate equipment for any meaningful intervention. This is why Nigeria is in the company of countries with the highest number of maternal and infant mortality. It is one of the reasons why people die cheaply in without questions.

And who says we should only demand the employment of youths from the Federal Government? Governors, if they put their minds to it, are able to provide gainful employment for thousands of the young men and women who are roaming the streets in our states before they migrate to compound the already complicated life in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and other cities.

Instead of ethnic and partisan arguments which neither advance the cause of good governance nor assure better life, we would concentrate on building the capacity of our compatriots to make informed decisions in future elections. We would employ Obi’s tips to our advantage (even if he fiddled with facts) and terminate the reign of bad leadership in our country.

As the former governor said while concluding his speech, the task of building this country that we have rests on all of us. If we keep quiet or engage in trifles while the country goes to waste, we will be guilty of having joined them to rape and abuse the country. But someday, the country will avenge for itself.

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