Unemployment in Nigeria which is a direct brainchild of purulent politics and ineffective economics of successive Nigerian governments is having a ripple effect in the country, an effect which cuts across multiple channels.
According to multiple reports, the chairman of Igbo-Ekiti Local Government Area of Enugu State, Eric Odo, has appointed Senior Special Assistants on yam, garden egg and pepper.
The appointments which have come complete with appointment letters and portfolios have gone viral and clearly look ridiculous in the extreme, but the method in the madness is not lost on keen observers of the Nigerian political scene.
First, there is a renewed focus on Local Government Areas in Nigeria. The epochal judgment of the Supreme Court which granted financial autonomy to Nigeria’s 774 local government areas means that more than ever, their case to control their funds and have more on an impact on rural populations is stronger. As a result of this, Local governments which have always been battlegrounds for state governors and their opponents have become the center of renewed attention.
The destructive hysteria surrounding local government elections in Rivers, Kano, Plateau and Anambra states is testament to this.
Second, Nigeria’s politics is based on an extensive reward system that values sycophancy, nepotism and cronyism above all else. State governors have been known to dole out appointments within their states as if they are doughnuts, rolling out sensitive state agencies to their cronies as rewards for loyalty manifested as previous or ongoing service, many of them shady and seedy.
Third, there is the grotesque spectre of unemployment which hangs over Nigeria’s like a pod of overripe breadfruit. With many people qualified but unemployed in Nigeria, politics and the balkanization of political offices has seemingly become a way out of government’s failure to create jobs.
In Nigeria, all manner of political appointments have been floated at different levels of government as if to mock the sensibilities of Nigerians. Mere councillors have been known to appoint dozens of assistants, assign them nebulous portfolios and then deploy them to carry out all manner of nefarious tasks in service of Nigeria’s notoriously fickle political gods.
One such local government councillor in Nasarawa State when queried about his appointment of dozens of young people as aides cheekily replied that it was his own way of creating jobs. This kind of shallow thinking is precisely what is so antithetical to development in Nigeria.
This duplicity of government functions and proliferation of offices has had disastrous consequences for performance and the public funds. With so many political busybodies translating to more mouths to feed than hands for work, productivity suffers while public funds dry up.
This tendency to create political offices to cater for cronies is giving impetus to the fierce jostle for political appointments, which diminishes public office and undermines performance in government.
As Nigeria grapples with soaring corruption and steep poverty levels, the question of the outrageous costs of government has come up again and again. Proliferation of political offices is a chief driver of the cost of governance because each office created means more salaries and running costs. In a country where there is a sea of sticky fingers, there is no prize for guessing that many of such new offices will conduits for siphoning public funds.
This unimaginatively ridiculous move by the LG chairman also highlights the need to sound a reveille of caution to local government chairmen across the country. While it is true that many of them were planted rather than elected as local government chairmen by state governors, the financial autonomy granted local government areas by the Supreme Court must not be taken as a leeway to bankroll jamborees or debaucheries.
For years, local government areas around the country have been criminally neglected. The new financial dispensation is a historic opportunity to extend the dividends of democracy to local government areas. The opportunity must not be frittered away. It is time to work and no time to settle political scores or cronies.
Kene Obiezu,
