Nigeria is broke

By Joseph Edgar . . .
That is the screaming headline that woke us all up this environmental sanitation Saturday. Our Head of State has finally hit the nail on the head removing all doubts as to our true situation as a once proud oil rich country. We are broke and we cannot even afford all 36 Ministers.

Just as I was digesting the news, I saw a report of the number of aides Governors of Edo and Taraba states have appointed with its attendant drain on the lean resources of their respective states. There the contradiction that has continued to dog us as a nation state is once more thrown in our faces.

With trillions of petro dollars, Nigerians still linger in the throes of unwarranted poverty. We remain at the bottom of all indexes measuring poverty while at the same time, we can be found on most lists of extravagance and profiglacy. We have squandered all the wealth and have left this generation and indeed if we are not careful future generations with a basket of debt to pay.

Buhari is screaming frugality, some state governors are still living like Roman Emperors even when they cannot pay salaries. Today, I am not worried about the governors, I will face them another day. My issue is Buhari’s decision to still go ahead and appoint Ministers to fulfil constitutional dictate even though they will really have nothing doing.

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So basically he is saying that they would just be balloon Ministers who will just warm seats. But the question there is, won’t you still have to pay them some kind of allowance for even coming to Abuja at those times and won’t you just be creating another industry of lobbyist which would further lead to a bigger drain on the meager resources we are trying to safeguard.
I also cannot help but think that we are playing the ostrich game. If we are funding an over bloated National Assembly why can’t we fund just 36 people. This continuous play to the gallery is beginning to look like the bane of the administration. Am I the only one seeing it. How much does it cost to maintain one Senator compared to one Minister. We have 103 Senators and only God knows how many members in the House of Reps, all with fantastic salaries and rock star bonuses complete with staff and perks all paid by Nigerians. So if we can fund that why can’t we fund ministers whose job will be to really execute policies and projects that should take us out of the woods.

This to me is not a sign of seriousness and nobody is measuring or tracking the full ramifications of these statement on our markets. How will our foreign counter parties react to this statement coming from the President. How will this affect our credit lines, Foreign Direct investments and other such activities. If this statement was made to play to the gallery, it should be retracted, for I think with creative policies we definitely can afford the ministers.

Ministers unlike Senators can have their allowances slashed and pegged since they are political appointees and not voted for, and with their remunerations I think unlike the Assembly not prescribed by the constitution. Correct me if I am wrong, I do not see any legal reasons why the President cannot have a cabinet running under very strict austere measures. After all Obasanjo did it, when he monetized allowances of Civil Servants the sky did not fall.

I think enough of these grandstanding and let’s get down to serious work, there are over 170m Nigerians losing their jobs daily, losing their lives daily to avoidable crime, losing their lives daily to avoidable health mishap waiting to be redeemed by this overnment which promised change, or is this going to be another wait for Godot.

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