By Law Mefor
Nigeria is one country where living a lie has been elevated to an art. It is a nation of contradictions where a policeman is kitted and armed, and set off on empty stomach. After all, patriotism is all he needs to be suffering and smiling. Nigeria is a unique country where the total take-home pay of a civil servant may not even take him to the next bus stop. Yet, the leaders are sure that workers can look the other way when public funds are kept in their care.
Is it not truly hypocritical hoping that corruption will go away in the country where the keepers of public money have little or nothing to legitimately take care of their most basic needs? The way the public service is arranged in Nigeria is exactly what incentivises corruption. And because, naturally, survival comes before morality, preaching anticorruption to the public servants is like trying to reconcile God and Lucifer.
Let us do an analysis with a worker in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Over 70% of them live in the outskirts and many more in the remote Nassarawa and Niger states in rented one or two rooms going – usually – for about half a million naira and commute to work daily in public transport for about 24 days in a month. He eats his lunch, takes care of his family and dependents and attends to social needs in order to belong in the church, alumni associations, clubs, town unions and so forth on his minimum wage of N18,000!
That is not all. In his neighborhood he has to pay for security (vigilante service), pay for darkness (sorry, electricity), probably power his ‘I big pass my neighbour’, pay for service charge (whatever that means) if he lives in an estate, sink his own borehole for clean water or buy from water drawers. He has to send his wards to private schools (small or big) as public schools have since collapsed.
One can see that on the average, for a worker to survive in a place like Abuja, it may take well over N100 thousand per month whereas what comes to the average worker officially in the month may not be anywhere near half that amount. How then does he survive if not by cutting corners and looking for ‘extra earnings’? Teaching ‘do not steal’ to a bunch of workers who have no legitimate ways to earn an honest living is but a waste of time. It is simply hypocrisy.
This brings to the fore the prescriptions for fighting corruption by the Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, at the 4th University of Ibadan Alumni Association Public Service Lecture, which recently held in Ibadan. He spoke on ‘Federalism and The Legal Framework for Combating Corruption in Nigeria’ and the crux of his message was that Nigeria, being a federal state should wage the anti-graft war in a federal way, not a unitary manner as presently the case.
He, therefore, suggested the decentralisation of federal anti-corruption agencies, establishment of State anti-corruption agencies, domestication of auxiliary federal anti-graft laws by states, enthronement of fiscal federalism, decentralised policing, establishment of State orientation agencies, State social intervention/security schemes, State prisons, true economic reforms and public participation in the anti-corruption war major ways forward in the way against corruption.
Significantly also, he insisted the nation could not fight corruption on empty stomach. The Senator insisted N50,000 minimum wage would be more like it, rather than the current N18,000 while some State governors and executives pocket as much as N2 billion under the cover of Security Vote.
He wondered: “When a man who earns N18,000, cannot buy a bag of rice, how then can such a person take care of his family? Does it make sense to him if you tell him not to find alternative means of catering to the needs of his family? Is it not also possible to abolish the Security Vote and replace it with Contingency Vote so it can be appropriated and accounted for”, he queried.
That is where our problem lies- presence. Nigerians have been told that if they do not kill corruption, corruption would kill Nigeria. Agreed; but are we really fighting in a manner as to win the war? The conditions that will make Nigeria win the war are simply not there. Forget the propaganda of the current Government. After all, we all heard the same stories under Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan. And do not forget, PDP set up the EFCC and ICPC. Yet, corruption grew only larger under their watch.
Surprisingly, the conditions to make the nation do away with corruption are relatively simple. To begin with, government has to offer the civil servants a living wage. A living wage is the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their basic needs. This is not necessarily the same as subsistence, which refers to a biological minimum, though the two terms are commonly confused. These needs include shelter (housing) and other incidentals such as clothing and food. In some nations such as the United Kingdom and Switzerland, this standard generally means that a person working forty hours a week, with no additional income, should be able to afford the basics for quality of life, such as, food, shelter, utilities, transport, health care, minimal recreation, one course a year to upgrade their education, and childcare..
The living wage differs from the minimum wage in that the latter is set by law and can fail to meet the requirements to have a basic quality of life and leaves the family to rely on government and often illegal sources for additional income in uncivilized climes such as Nigeria.
Following such postulation, whoever wants to find an uncorrupt civil servant in Nigeria of today will have to pay a visit to the graveyards. Those not dipping their hands in public tills yet probably do not have the opportunity and they are daily praying for the opportunity to ‘hammer’. That is what has given rise to the clichés like ‘wait for your turn’; ‘na turn by turn’; ‘no put san san for my garri’, etc.
More importantly, the government itself has to deal with its own prolificacy, which is corruption in itself and this brings up the other issue Ike Ekweremadu talked about – abolition of security votes. What exactly is security vote? It is millions to billions of naira the President, Vice President, and Governors receive monthly, which neither goes through appropriation nor is accounted for. The humongous sums land in their laps to use as they please in the name of security. Yet, insecurity wrecks the country from north to south.
In order words, the monies hardly go into securing the country, but to advancement of personal interests and future of the top first citizens of Nigeria and 36 states. Imagine N1billion monthly to a governor. Multiply that by twelve and by 8 years they normally stay in office. N96 billion.
What corruption could be worse than such a system that allows a Governor to keep such a humongous unappropriated amount to himself?
We thought scrapping his security vote and those of the governors would be President Buhari’s first port of call. But now that Ekweremadu has courageously spoken out, can the government have workers paid reasonable wage as no one fights corruption on empty stomach. Scrapping the dubious security vote will also take care of the pay raise and make more money available for development.
–Mefor, a Forensic/Social Psychologist, Journalist and Author wrote from Abuja
