Northern Governors Must Look In The Mirror (II) - Daily Trust

In the first instalment of this series two weeks ago, we made the case that one of the most consequential developments in Nigeria in recent years is significant, and still rising, increases in federal allocations to states and local governments. Monthly revenues accruing to states from the FAAC have risen several times what they were just a few years ago.

Despite this fiscal expansion, however, there has been little or no improvement in the lived realities of Nigerians in the northern states particularly, a serious deficit that we must highlight. What are northern governors doing with these increased resources they now receive from the federal government on a monthly basis? We cannot raise this question loud enough.

In that piece two weeks ago, I argued that the major problem is a lack of vision and ambition on the part of the northern leadership, particularly, the lack of awareness by northern governors that acting collectively across many policy areas is the surest bet to raise the political, economic and social fortunes of the region within the Nigerian federal setting. If the 19 states of the North were to pool even a fraction of their resources and coordinate their efforts, their transformative impacts would be far greater than the current tokenistic approaches across the region. The second problem, in my view, is a lack of unified northern leadership voice and direction.

Yet, direction is possibly the most important function of political leadership. Northern Nigeria today faces all kinds of challenges, most of which are not only interconnected, but also cut across most of the states in the region, from insecurity, out-of-school children, rural poverty, and unemployment, to fragmented identities. Yet, you would struggle to find a clear, evidence-based and unified position of the northern governors on such issues.

Of course, individual governors occasionally speak out on one or more of these issues, but there is scarcely a sustained and forceful position of the governors that can give effective voice and direction. Consider, for example, the recent terrorist attacks in Borno State. The Northern States Governors’ Forum (NSGF) issued a statement condemning the attacks, expressing sympathy with victims, and calling for stronger action by security agencies.

Such responses, now only too familiar, have their place, but they do not provide an effective voice or direction as far as serious leadership is concerned. The attacks in recent months represent a clear escalation of a situation we all thought had reduced to the minimum. Unfortunately, northern governors did not find the occasion important enough to call for even a virtual meeting of the governors.

What the NSGF needs is a clear regional strategy on insecurity that outlines the roles of the federal government as well as those of the governors themselves in bringing about the end of all these security troubles. The NSGF needs clear proposals that show their own joint security initiatives, funding commitments, and regional coordination, as well as the expectations from the federal government. Press statements are useful, but they do not by themselves solve problems.

Press statements are not evidence of serious leadership in such circumstances. This lack of effective voice and leadership direction applies to other policy areas such as education, health, employment creation, and so on. The crisis of out-of-school children in northern Nigeria is particularly galling.

It is a generational emergency that requires immediate, serious and coordinated intervention of the northern leadership, and then support by the federal government and other interested parties, like the private and non-profit sectors. What, for example, is the collective strategy of the northern leadership on the almajiri situation? How are states learning or pooling resources on this most embarrassing of all northern challenges?

If northern states now have more money, why is basic education still parlous across the region? In the few occasions that northern governors do speak collectively, their voice tends to carry much weight. For example, their intervention on the recent tax reform proposals was widely noted and respected, especially across the northern region.

It demonstrated that when they choose to act with a unified vision and voice, they can influence political and policy outcomes nationally. The problem, therefore, is not the lack of capacity but inconsistency. Too often, the silence of the northern leadership on pressing regional or national issues tends to create a vacuum of leadership, which in turn, causes confusion or worsening conditions on the ground.

Moreover, with some exceptions, there is also the problem of the lack of developmental imagination at the level of individual states. The world over, few political leaders have as much power and influence as a state governor in Nigeria. The average state governor in Nigeria controls the entire structure of local government, including their finances, in his state.

The average governor also often has a firm control of the state legislature—perhaps the most ineffective governance institution in this country—and the state judiciary. Governors certainly also control the state electoral commissions in their states. Many federal agencies, particularly the security agencies, also often defer to the governors, at least, for the most part.

However, in the northern region particularly, it is not clear what governors do with all this power in terms of bold and transformative thinking about how to reimagine development in their states. Instead, what we often see are projects that are highly visible but of limited economic value, like the flyovers across many northern states’ capitals nowadays. Tens of billions of naira have been spent on flyovers and similar infrastructure, and often in cities where the effective enforcement of simple traffic rules would suffice.

These flyovers are growing in number and expense that we must ask: do northern governors not have a better idea of development than such generally pointless structures? How do more flyovers address the real challenges of internal revenue generation, roads, unemployment and poor educational levels? Perhaps the less said the better.

Flyovers have their place, of course. But their erection must align with a coherent economic vision, with the development of local industries, with promoting local small and medium enterprises. Flyovers must certainly align with serious investments in education and skills development that prepare young people for the future.

Flyovers must certainly not take the lion’s share of a state government’s public spending, as they now do in many states across northern Nigeria.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is also the problem of the growing intolerance of criticism in virtually all northern states today. It is now the case that northern governors, and may be all the governors, have grown impossibly sensitive to criticism, whether from opposition figures, the media, civil society, or ordinary citizens. I don’t know how it has now happened, but political criticism of any kind is now interpreted as an expression of hostility or disloyalty, rather than as a legitimate part of democratic engagement.

This is clearly an erosion of our democratic tradition in Nigeria, because criticism has always been a strong part of Nigerian politics and political processes. In the First Republic, for example, even revered political leaders like the late Sardauna of Sokoto and Chief Obafemi Awolowo faced sustained and often sharp criticism from opposition figures within their own regional domains.