Your Excellency, Mr Governor

Your Excellency, Mr. Governor, congratulations!  You have won the elections as determined by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Many are called, but few are chosen, as the Old Book tells us. Be it by fair means or foul, you have won the laurels. The lines have fallen unto you in pleasant places. Come May 29, you will be sworn in as Chief Executive of your State.

Next to the Presidency, the office of State Governor is the second most powerful political position in the land. Even more powerful, some would say, than the Presidency. Part II section 176 of the 1999 constitution provides that, “There shall be for each State of the Federation a Governor”. It goes further to declare that, “The Governor shall be the Chief Executive of the State”.

Napoleon Bonaparte always counseled that the best constitutions should be “short and vague”. Beyond stating that your position shall be that of “Chief Executive”, our constitution is rather vague about what your real powers shall be. As you would soon discover, they are potentially infinite — only limited by what you can get away with and whatever moral restraints and virtue your education, upbringing and moral precepts impose on your sense of political judgment, justice and decorum.

Come to think of it, the President of our Federal Republic is normally restrained by the National Assembly, the Supreme Court and other institutions of government. A state governor, on the other hand, has an almost limitless capacity to do and undo. He can, if he so wishes, place the entire State Assembly, commissioners, advisers, the civil service and even the judiciary into his own pocket. He can decide whether or not Local Government elections are to hold and how much the Local Government Chairmen are to spend. In short, at State level, the Governor is simply Lord of the Manor reminiscent of the medieval prebends that characterised the courts of Louis XIV in eighteenth century feudal France.

To illustrate the virtually unlimited powers of the Governors, I will narrate three anecdotes.

First, is the story told me by a dear friend of mine who happens to be an influential publisher. He once paid a visit to a schoolmate of ours who happened to be Governor of one of the north eastern states. He was well received in the plush residence of the Governor. While they were holding a conversation, my friend asked about a gentleman who happened to be a leading opposition figure in the State.

The Governor suddenly went livid. He grabbed his mobile phone and promised my friend that, with just one brief phone call, he could order the razing down of the man’s palatial home in the suburbs of the capital, if only to demonstrate who is in-charge. My dear friend found himself in the unenviable position of having to plead for mercy on behalf of this hapless man who had absolutely no knowledge of what was about to befall him and his property. Luckily, reason prevailed.

Another anecdote comes from the North Central. I was told of this Governor who was once driving with his motorcade to Abuja when his eyes fell on a breath-taking architectural edifice which was already built to linter-level. He became curious. He asked his orderly who could be the owner of the building. Upon being told it was owned by one businessman whom he considered an enemy, he immediately called his Chief of Staff.

He gave a simple instruction: “Go immediately to the Ministry of Works and arrange for bulldozers to demolish house XYZ which has already reached linter-level. If I return by 6pm this evening from Abuja and that house is still standing, consider yourself sacked”. He dropped the phone. As the Chief of Staff did not intend to lose his job, he carried out the order to its minutest detail.

A third example was something that happened to a dear friend of mine. We were students together in England. A rather bright chap, he earned a PhD in electronics at Imperial College London. A lecturer in the London university system as I was, he also moonlighted as a top-ranking consultant with technology firms in Europe.

During a visit to one of the north central states, he met the Governor who encouraged him to bring a proposal to help him resuscitate the moribund State television broadcaster. My friend went back to England and mobilised his team. He brought them to Nigeria and kept them at a hotel at his own expense. The Governor encouraged him with promises that the money for the project was in the pipeline and would soon be paid. They spent several months in Nigeria working tirelessly to get the project implemented. To his utter bewilderment, as soon as the project was completed the Governor switched off his phone and banned my friend from ever being seen in the vicinity of Government House.

The story later emerged that the Governor had substituted my friend’s invoice under his company logo with that of a company owned by his own cousin who was fronting for him. The company that did absolutely no work whatsoever was paid while my friend was ruined. The last time I met my friend was a decade ago and he did not seem to be with it mentally as well as physically.

The position of Governor is so powerful that few can resist the temptation to abuse its powers. One Governor had a penchant for issuing billion naira contracts cynically targeted at people adjudged to be potential rivals. The idea was to tempt them with juicy contract offers.

A mobilisation fee of 20 percent was given upfront to make the bait even more attractive. Encouraged, these hapless and gullible people fell for it. Most spent their own capital in addition to borrowing from the Shylock commercial banks to finance the contracts. As soon the job was done, the Governor would automatically shut them off.

Many were completely ruined. A good number died out of frustration and bitterness.  With the constitutional immunities that the Governors enjoy, there was simply nowhere these victims of high-class executive 419 could go for redress. I also recall a friend of mine who built a rather fine hotel in one of the northern state capitals. The Governor coveted it so much that he pressured him into selling it to him at a giveaway price. He was left with no option.

Although it is not expressly stated in our constitution, the emerging convention is that the President normally requests the Governors to nominate candidates for ministerial office in the federal cabinet. While the President has ultimate discretion, the evolving norm is not for him to reject a candidate put forward by his Governor. Most Governors tend to choose nominees that they consider to be weak.

A friend of mine, a royal prince from one of the south western states, was once complaining to his Governor that the person he had nominated as minister was doing such an awful job at the federal level. The Governor laughed. He declared, “I knew him to be a buffoon that’s why I sent him to Abuja”. Clearly, with few exceptions, the Governors prefer to nominate ministers that will not have the capacity or potential to outshine them politically. We as a country are the worse for it.

I have been told of a former minister from one of the northern states who felt obliged to remit regular “returns” in payment to his State Governor for nominating him in the first place. Unlike civilised countries where ministers are selected from the cohort of the most brilliant minds of their generation, ours, with some exceptions, are drawn from the ranks of the hoi polloi.

Until our constitution is changed or drastically revised, we sadly have to live with Governors that have potentially unlimited powers.  Powers to sign land titles; powers of life and death over the citizens in their domains. Powers even to commandeer the private properties of others. Governorsby law are the chief law enforcement and security officers in their states. They have command over a bourgeoning state bureaucracy. They decide on the budget and their spending powers are limited only by how much largesse comes from Abuja every month. I know one Governor who was paying his wife as First Lady — an office that does not exist in our constitution – more than double what his Deputy was earning. One Governor was virtually blind and gave over the powers of reading and signing official State documents and policy decisions to his twenty-seven year old son; a boy that was once kicked out of school for doing drugs.

Of course, the State Assemblies do occasionally flex their legislative muscles. They may even threaten impeachment. But most Governors have perfected ways of cajoling the legislators, coercing or bribing them.  With no fiduciary controls of any kind, the State Governors have virtually unlimited spending powers. Some of them, having spent up all their statutory allocations, resorted to borrowing and to floating questionable bonds even as backlogs of salaries continued to mount for months on end. Those that are doing their eight years have arranged for themselves titillating pension scams on top of the billions they have squirrelled away.

Lest I am misunderstood: there have been some good Governors as there have been bad ones. Babatunde Raji Fashola has been a successful Governor of Lagos State. I liked him the very first time I saw him; a decent, civilised bloke – a true Omoluabi, as the Yoruba would say.

Engineer Rabiu Kwankwaso has done rather well for Kano. Sule Lamido in Jigawa did as much as he could for the masses in his poverty-stricken domain. Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo has made quite an impact in Gombe. Godswill Akpabio has been a builder of the Order of Nehemiah in Akwa Ibom, thanks, some would say, to the humungous financial resources at his command.

Jonah David Jang started off extremely well in Plateau State, but, somehow, he derailed along the way. Having won the prize for being the best Governor in terms of infrastructure development, he became a victim of nepotism. His insistence that his nephew carry the flag of the PDP ended up dividing his people and paving the way for the opposition to take over the State. Such pig-headed folly is better imagined than actually experienced!

There have been some notable disasters, of course: Gabriel Suswam in Benue State, Mukhtar Ramalan Yero in Kaduna State and Theodore Orji in Abia, are a few examples. Despite his cherubic, handsome face, Isa Yuguda of Bauchi impresses me as a rather colourless wimp. One doesn’t know where to place the likes of Rochas Okorocha of Imo, who is full of song and dance, signifying very little that is of real substance.

In concluding this piece, let’s consider four critical success factors that make for effectiveness at State-level leadership in our Nigeria of today.

First, the Governors must have a clear plan and agenda — a blueprint for the development of their states. If in doubt, they can consult me. Several years ago, I drafted the economic blueprints for Plateau and Nasarawa States. I also designed a major programme for youth entrepreneurship for the South-South region that has taken off quite successfully. But it is not enough to have a blueprint. You must cost it realistically and design the financing framework, in addition to developing a clear roadmap for implementation. Our country is replete with ambitious plans that are covered by cobwebs in dingy government archives.

Secondly, the success or failure of the State Governor, as in all government at whatever level, depends on the quality of the people he surrounds himself with. He must take special care in selecting his Commissioners and Advisers, placing a premium on ability and track record. Under no circumstances should merit be sacrificed at the expense of political considerations. As some notorious recent examples would counsel, women should not be appointed merely to fulfil gender balance.

Thirdly, the Governor must keep on top of the public finances. The first law of success is to balance the books. Keep a tap on inflows and outflows. If you hand-over your finance ministry to a thief you will soon reap the whirlwind. Your Commissioner of Finance should be a person of resourcefulness, sagacity, boldness and integrity. Common sense also dictates that you should not live above your means. Some Governors have this false notion that the State has unlimited resources to spend. When they take over in the coming month, some of them will soon find out that their States are virtually bankrupt. A good number are overburdened with debt.

At a time of dwindling global oil prices, it is evident that less and less resources are available for allocation to States. It was rumoured that the outgoing Goodluck Jonathan administration recently had to resort to borrowing to pay salaries of federal government workers. If at federal level we have these fiscal challenges you can imagine what it must be for some of the lesser endowed States. If you are from the so-called “oil producing States” or from Lagos where internally generated revenue (IGR) rivals that coming from federal coffers, you have less to worry. If, however, you are from Kebbi, Yobe or some other poverty-stricken climate-ravaged backwater, you have a good deal to worry about.

Balancing the books and controlling costs is one thing, sourcing for other means of financing is another. Governors ought to tap into the potentials of IGR in their States. But they also have to understand that they must help the private sectorgrow the businesses that could later be taxed for future revenue. Encouraging an environment conducive to doing business is as vital as the right mix of incentives and the right institutional environment as well as infrastructural provisioning. Other sources of development funding could derive from grants and soft loans from the international agencies and from bilateral donors such as DFID, USAID, GIZ and JICA, among others.

Fourthly, security is a prime duty of the State Governor. Where there is insecurity, including robbery and other forms of violent crime, ethnic and sectarian conflict, there cannot be peace. And where there is no peace, development will be impossible. The Nigeria we have today is a lawless country where violence and crime have become a way of life. In the Middle Belt so-called “Fulanis” and other foreign mercenaries are killing and maiming women and children on almost daily basis. As I write this piece, last night they descended on the village of Kwi, near Heipang Airport in Jos. People have phoned me all the way in Brussels, crying desperately for help. It has been heart-breaking. There is simply no one to help these defenceless people. No government can consider itself a success if it cannot take adequate measures to secure the lives and properties of its citizens.

Fourthly, an effective Governor must exercise full control over the civil service. One suspects that many of the States’ bureaucracies are filled with ghost workers. A human resources audit may well be necessary to flush out these ghost workers as well as fictitious pensioners. These could save the state a lot of money while enhancing efficiency of the civil service. Appointment of permanent secretaries and senior civil servants should be strictly on merit. This will enforce a culture of discipline, excellence and professionalism that would enable the civil service perform at its optimal best. Where necessary, reforms should be implemented. Agencies that are not performing should be restructured while those that constitute a profitless drain on scarce resources should be closed down.

Your Excellency, Governor, four years seem like a long time. But you will soon find out that they pass rather quickly. Inundated by frivolous demands from traditional rulers, prayer contractors, women of easy virtue, dubious contractors and other vulgar types, it is easy to lose focus and to derail. As a politician, you cannot, of course, overlook the demands of politics. But I would insist that the highest demand of politics is development – the kind of development that changes lives, improves human welfare and gives our people hope of a better future and fulfils the promise of the life more abundant.

You must therefore, develop a clear vision of what you want to achieve. You have to have a plan; one that gives your people hope of a better life. There is so much misery in our country. The youths have been robbed of their future. The suffering of our people is immense. Of course, there is no magic wand to bring out instantaneous solutions in one fell swoop.

The dream of our New Jerusalem will take years – even decades. But every step matters. David failed the giant Goliath with a sling shot and five stones. Moses parted the Red Sea with one staff and the children of Israel walked across the wilderness to the Land of Promise. If you have faith like a mustard seed, you can move the mountain of poverty that has sat on the back of our people for millenniums. Despair is the worst sin of all.

As a public finance specialist, I am the first to know that it is not possible to do everything, even with the best of intentions. You have to operate with the binding constraints of means and ends. You must therefore prioritise. Focus on the practical needs of your people: food, agriculture, housing, education, roads, electricity, rural infrastructures, urban development, health, and above all, peace and security, without which nothing is possible. Block all the leakages that civil servants use to bleed our coffers dry. Live modestly. Avoid the flamboyant motorcades that the accident-prone Suswam of Benue used to terrorise Middle Belt roads with.

Governor, Sir, destiny has opened the doors for you to make history. The most gifted geniuses of world history such as Plato, Aristotle and Albert Einstein, never had the opportunity that you have to touch lives and to leave the world better than you found it. Do not fall into the temptations that overtook some of your predecessors who went on to abuse their privileges without restraint or civility. The Nigerian electorate  are more discerning and more critical than ever. The upsets that overtook the once impregnable Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) juggernaut should be a capital lesson to every politician who succumbs to the Icarus Syndrome and the arrogance of power.

The conservative British politician and former minister in the government of Harold Macmillan in the 1960s, Enoch Powell, famously declared that all political careers ultimately end in failure. Before entering politics, he was one of the most brilliant young men of his generation at Cambridge, having been appointed to a professorship in Classics when he was only twenty-five. If, as Governor, you do well, you might get re-elected while leaving your mark on history. If you squander the opportunity, Powell’s prophecy will be your lot sooner than you imagine. The choice is yours.