Center for Social Justice, Author at Centre for Social Justice

A proper understanding of the context of resources within a nation space, its mobilisation and use for the common good is imperative. This is so, especially at this time when political parties and candidates are moving around pleading to be given the opportunity to govern at the federal and state levels. Understanding optimum resource use and mobilisation will play a central role in our pursuit of good governance, economic growth and development. Thus, it is expected that every presidential candidate should, beyond borrowing and the dwindling oil money, address how they will mobilise Nigerians to fund their economic growth and development. Our governments have always stated that we lack resources to undertake public projects. Budgets are very poorly funded across the tiers of government and the usual excuse is the paucity of resources. Our infrastructure deficit is premised on the absence of resources. Pray, what is the definition of national, state or local government level resources within the context of a country like Nigeria? Do we take national resources to be the same as resources belonging to governments and the public space or an inventory of our natural resources like minerals? It is the position of this discourse that we may not be poor in terms of resource generation and endowment, as our governments consistently state and many Nigerians have been convinced to believe. It is the duty of government to mobilise both public and private resources for the purpose of development. Suffice to say that, development is a people’s work in action as no nation or people can develop another. It is Nigerians who have to use their resources to develop Nigeria under the guidance of intelligent leadership. And the consistent failure to lead or provide leadership is responsible for our resource complaints. Therefore, the central resource challenge appears to be one of harnessing, mobilisation, management and ensuring value for money from available resources. The management challenge crystallises in the examples given in these real life pictures detailed hereunder. The authorities of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja allocated undeveloped land to purported developers, virtually free of charge but with very little processing fees that may not be more than N20m. The purpose of the allocation is for the developer to develop estates to be made available to Nigerians at affordable rates using mortgage. This land in the first place was acquired from the natives under the Land Use Act, virtually without paying any tangible compensation, compared to the value of the land due to the idea that government is simply paying for unexhausted improvement. The developer adds little or no value beyond clearing the bush, and turns around to divide the large portions of land into plots that can accommodate 100 four-bedroom duplexes. The developer fixes the price of each plot at between N10m and N15m per plot. All they end up investing, may be not more that N50m and they thereafter make a kill and get between N1bn and N1.5bn as unearned profits. The original owners of the land get nothing out of this money and government that compulsorily acquired it in the first place gets nothing and a millionaire is created. Within the estates, since the developer developed nothing and no one is holding them to account, the buyers of the plots build and each will sink a borehole and within the estate, you could possibly get 70 to 80 boreholes sunk at the cost of about N500,000 each. When the seismic challenges related to reckless perforation of the earth’s bowels begin to unravel, more resources will be needed to cover the first wrong investments. But this is an estate that could have been served by one industrial borehole and back-up in the event the first one fails. Just like the average Nigerian, every owner invests in noisy polluting electricity generator that gulps thousands of litres of petrol and diesel every day. Again, this is an estate that could get electricity from a central clean source that will cost less than 50% of the price of the generators and the fuel. In some parts of Abuja, residents not only construct estate roads, they also mobilise and contribute money to build public access roads. They do this when they compare the costs of perpetual bad roads and the investment they would make in the roads. After the foregoing, the persons who went through all this torture are expected to pay tax to government. Pray, for what purpose? In the above instance, if government had kept its part of the social contract by providing potable public water, even if at a fee or ensured that developers kept their part of the bargain by providing water, the economy as whole will have saved the difference between 80 different boreholes and one or two functional boreholes serving the community. The financial resource, even if privately-owned would have been available for investment in other very important spheres of private but national life. Instead of building local schools and maintaining standards through equipping the schools, employing quality teaching personnel who are well paid, our elite proceed to pay children’s school fees in institutions outside Nigeria. First, these institutions cost much more than if the education had been acquired in Nigeria. The flight tickets and challenge of getting foreign currency to pay these fees and the cost of a child living in a foreign land are all outrageous. Again, we refuse to build good hospitals and or equip the available ones; we pay our doctors and other medical personnel peanuts, treat them with disdain and contempt to the extent that they vote to leave our shores. Our elite proceed at the slightest headache to visit hospitals abroad at a greater expense (sometimes, double the local cost) than if the facilities are available locally. In the health and education scenario, we are not only mismanaging our financial resources, because it costs Nigerians (who can afford it) more; it deprives the majority of the population of the accruable benefits. Again, beyond financial resources, we train doctors and drive them away to other countries thereby frittering away our human resources. We oil the economy of the host countries and put perpetual pressure on the value of the Naira, our local currency. And politicians walk around bemoaning job losses and poor economic growth. How do you expect to create jobs when the existing jobs are shipped abroad? How do you grow your economy when every value added has to be done aboard? It is the duty of government to strategise on how to use public resources in a way and manner that benefits the public instead of privatising public resources for the benefit of a few. Also, taxing Nigerians and spending the tax proceeds judiciously, in value for money approach, for projects and programmes that have been popularly selected, will make more sense for the development of infrastructure instead of letting every person to do it for themselves. Of course, everyone knows that there are limits to this self-help approach. Self-help may not pay for super highways and speed trains that cut across so many local governments and states. Also, perpetual borrowing is not the answer. Let those who want to lead show that they understand the ideas around mobilisation and use of public and private resources for development.

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