(OPINION) Should minimum wage be governors’ headache? By Bola Bolawole

The country’s state governors are whimpering over a minimum wage of N18, 000: 00 per month that many of them were dragged, shoved, and kicked before they grudgingly agreed to pay in the first place – even when crude oil sold in the international market at over US$120 per barrel. Now that the commodity attracts just a third of its previous price, the governors are giving this as the reason why a minimum wage that is, at best, a starvation wage, is no longer tenable. If we may ask the governors, what is the “realistic” minimum wage in the current circumstance that they will be comfortable with: N15, 000; N12, 000 or even N10, 000? I tell you something: Even if workers work for free, many of our governors, because of their profligacy, will still run their states aground. In other words, the problem is not so much with the workers or their wage bill as it is with the governors themselves. The solution, therefore, will not be found in a cutback in workers’ peanuts or in down-sizing or right-sizing but in the re-ordering of the priorities of governors and their appendages who live like kings as well as in cutting back on corruption, which ensures that more than what is spent on the public finds its way from drain pipes into private pockets.
Last week in Abuja, the governors’ chairman, who is also the governor of Zamfara state, Abdulaziz Yari, said himself and his colleagues could no longer shoulder the minimum wage burden. They would table the matter before President Muhammadu Buhari and, possibly, would need to rub minds with a panel of economists and other experts to find a way out of the quagmire. This is why some people opposed the bail-out funds that were recently given to some of the states and which a few others are still waiting on the queue to access. The fear had been that the governors would play Oliver Twist; that they would get the impression that there was free money somewhere that they could recourse to again and again. It is this kind of mentality that leads nations to print money not backed up by productivity; inevitably crashing their national currency and dead-locking the economy. No further bail-out should be given to the governors. That road is an expressway to economic suicide. There are viable options available to the governors, so many of them. I offer them some here free of charge.
One: Let all governors discontinue drawing security votes. This, at best, is slush money. Two: let the states reduce the number of political appointees. This patronage system has become too huge a burden for the system to bear. Three: Let all governors phase out the office of the First Lady, another drain pipe on the resources of many of the states. Four: Inflation of contracts by hundreds and thousands of percentages is one of the major factors why we do not have value for money in many of the states. Votes for one project here can execute 10, 20 such projects or projects of even better standards elsewhere. Recently, the National Assembly screamed about an airport runway that was to cost more than a brand new standard airport! How much did former Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah, buy a bullet-proof car? How much did ex-Lagos state governor-turned super-Minister, Babatunde Raji Fashola, dig a borehole or set up a web site?
Five: Let phantom projects cease forthwith. Many “projects” exist only on paper but are never executed; money is voted for such phantoms, paperwork is done, and the funds are ferreted out but no sod is ever turned. If we get rid of this “bare-faced looting” (apologies, Nuhu Ribadu), the states will be more buoyant. Six: White-elephant projects should be discarded. Many of the projects that state governors embark upon are not only too ambitious; they are also vain-glorious. Most times, such projects are abandoned and funds committed to them end up a waste. No value is added to their states; yet, such states get saddled with humongous debt burdens. Seven: Much of the wage bills attributed to workers are usually not “consumed” by workers but are over-loaded by corrupt elements within the system. We have cases of “ghost” workers and “dead” pensioners drawing salaries all over the place. Recently, Kano state said it uncovered one such drain pipe that runs into hundreds of millions of Naira per annum in just one agency responsible for street-cleaning.
The above are rudimentary processes – not rocket science – that, if conscientiously applied by state governors, will tremendously improve the health status of their finances. Then there is the more taxing issue of lessening the states’ reliance on the Centre for hand-outs and bail-outs. The states, like the federal authorities, are also afflicted by the same virus of over-dependence on just one source of funding. While the federal depends on crude oil, the states depend on the money shared in Abuja. Everyone – state and federal – thereafter returns to play only lip-service to the need to diversify the economy. Many of the states have vast agricultural potentials and mineral resources that lie untapped. Let them go back to the basics; just like the leaders of the First Republic did to great advantage.
Then, of course, there is the hard truth: This country has too many governors. We are over-governed. Many of the governors should volunteer to leave their posts and return home! We should not be having more than 12 states and, therefore, 12 governors. In other words, we have an excess of 24 governors multiplied by their number of aides; we also have an excess of 24 State Houses of Assembly multiplied also by their own retinue of aides. We have an excess of 24 Chief Judges multiplied, again, by their own appendages. This is a drain. That is why it has been said that the cost of governance here is damn too high. Since the governors are asking for suggestions on how to proceed in the circumstance; let them first try out the above suggestions before descending on the measly take-home pay of the long-suffering Nigerian worker.