Wanted: A ceiling for maximum wage

ONE of the greatest problems that General Yakubu Gowon faced after the Civil War was what to do with the Nigerian armed forces. When the war started in 1967, the Nigerian armed forces – Army, Navy and Air Force – had less than 15,000 troops. At the end of the war in 1970, there were almost 500,000 men under arms.

Most of the men were between age 20 and 35, at the prime of their youth. Therefore, every year, the defence budget was always top of the list, higher than education or health.

There were suggestions on what to do with the war veterans – send them to the farm as the Chinese did after their own civil war – or simply discharge them as the American did after Second World War in 1945.

Gowon kept them. Gowon was toppled in July 1975 and his successor, General Murtala Mohammed decided to do something. Mohammed was killed in 1976 and his successor, General Olusegun Obasanjo did something.

The armed forces had to be reduced to a manageable size. He established the Armed Forces Resettlement Centre, Oshodi, Lagos where soldiers, facing discharge and imminent retirement, can go for training for a proper adjustment to civilian life.

The Nigerian public service is now in a post-war mode. It has expanded so much that it can no longer recruit, on a systematic basis, young people. No other enterprise, except government, could have allowed its expenditure on personnel to skyrocket the way ours has done. When the war ended in 1970, Nigeria had only 12 states. Now, we have 36.

The entire public service of the defunct Western State in 1976 was less than 20,000. Today, Ekiti State has more than 35,000 and Osun State 45,000.

The old Western Region which was left by the British under one government has now been divided into Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti, Lagos, Edo and Delta states.

Our parents paid for only one governor, we are paying for eight. They paid for 12 regional ministers (commissioners), we are paying for 200 or more. The expansion of the Federal Government is more astonishing, especially since the movement to Abuja in 1991 under General Ibrahim Babangida.

The civil war may have be over, but the army of the public service remains a formidable one. One of the glaring effects of our structural obesity is the inability of state governments to pay salaries.

The failure in paying salaries is a direct consequence of the huge state debt profile and the dwindling revenue from our oil sales. Some of the states like Osun and Bayelsa have schools, roads and social infrastructures to point to for their debts. Some states have little to show for the debts, except for cars bought for traditional rulers and sundry travellers in the corridors of power.

This is a difficult but not a hopeless situation. The Federal Government should provide the necessary leadership to solve the problem. It is good news that President Muhammadu Buhari appeared set to confront it.

He should do everything necessary to help states meet their obligations to workers. He should take the lead in reducing the cost of governance and bring sanity to public finance. The minimum wage is N18,000.00.

Should any public officer earn more than 100 times the minimum wage? There are many public officers who earned far more than 200 times the minimum wage. Therefore, the first thing to do is to set a ceiling for maximum wage, including housing, furniture, wardrobe and entertainment allowances, in the public sector. This should take into consideration pensions, severance pay and gratuities.

There are immediate and long-term options to consider. One of the immediate steps is the stoppage of the petroleum subsidy which would release funds to the Federation Account.

This would cause social uproar, but it is a price that has to be paid because the subsidy cannot be sustained forever. In the short-term, the President should lead in creaming off the fats from the public service, especially the top public office holders. In the long run, the government has to put Nigerians back to work. Once we were the greatest consumers of European chicken on the African continent.

Now that is a thing of the past. Thanks to NAFDAC, our appetite for foreign juice has been ameliorated. However, it is a shame that a country that produces the best wood in the world and which has a developed furniture industry is now importing inferior furniture from China on a large scale. A large population like ours would be a burden on the economy unless it is a working population.

Many of our youths are not working because we are consuming what we can produce, but are not producing. We prefer to import the wrong things. Which other oil producing country import fuel the way we do? We are clever in bringing coal to Newcastle. We need to produce what we consume and what we can export. This is a not homily. This is commonsense economics.

The President should also take steps to revisit the present 36 states structure. It is a structure that makes the Federal Government an overbearing Leviathan while the states look like puny supplicants.

The General Sani Abacha Constitutional Conference recommended that Nigeria should have six geopolitical zones. Buhari may also revisit it if it can be adapted into the federal units.

This is a tough constitutional issue, but once the leader leads, it would be easier to reach our destination. The President should take immediate steps to put a moratorium on public borrowing.

Proper auditing should be done on what the states have used borrowed money for and new modalities should be codified on how and in what circumstance a state can go borrowing. There may also be a need to tinker with the value of the naira and bring in more money to the treasury. So many things need to be done all at once.

It is indeed a difficult time for a nation that ran even its minting company aground. We now print our currencies at great cost in Hong Kong and Singapore. Some years ago, a minister, decrying the activities of another who was leading the campaign of an opposition party, said the minister was an ingrate for criticizing those who invited him to “come and eat.”

Our leaders have been eating all these years and it is now time to pay. All these translate to work, work, work, for Mr President, for the governors and all our other leaders. There are no quick fixes; no terminal date for this affliction unless we face it squarely and defeat the laxities in our system. Salaries have to be paid.

That is a burden that the President and the governors cannot transfer to anyone else. No military fiat can tackle this. It is painstaking and persistent work. •Babarinsa, author, media entrepreneur, is the Chairman & Editor-in-Chief of Gaskia Media Limited, Lagos.