AND even in some states like Delta, thetake-home of the so-called elected class with their political appointees may well be anything five and 10 times that of the civil service.

Because governance must cease to be about emptying the treasuries, I think it is high time some of us including Labor, human right groups, women groups, youth groups and even faith-based organizations sponsored a bill to make total take-home of all elected officers with all their appointees not more than a quarter of the civil service working with them.

With proper mobilisation and full-scale weight of lobby by these groups, such a bill must know legislative accent and executive signature. That will instill some fiscal discipline, because only few men (and usually the best and true nationalists) will step forward; and with a select team they would dare to govern.

My friend, Stephen Dieseruvwe, alerted me on Facebook the other day when he said that: “The salary of the Nigerian Senator is 778 times the salary of a Nigerian worker on the minimum wage of N18, 000.00 per month, while the salary of a House of Representatives member is 543 times the salary of workers on the minimum wage.

This means, it will take 778 years for a worker on the minimum wage to earn the annual salary of the Nigerian Senator, or 543 years to earn the annual salary of a member of the House of Representatives. This is insane, and is man’s inhumanity to man.

This situation has to be redressed. Arise Nigerians, arise!” Yes, it is time for Nigerians to fix the salaries of our politicians from the backdoor since only the politicians can fix their own salaries. And the backdoor approach is that suggested bill that must tie the total pay of any political group to the total pay of the civil service connected to it; that is, without mentioning figures. It is like setting the perimetres. Then, let them go and fix their salaries accordingly!

Oh, how really sad what your parliamentarians take home presently! Why must not our motor-parks empty their selves (with their fights) into our parliaments? And I can even tell you that there are many motor-parks across the nation where very many agberos will dare not pull themselves to pieces or tear their wears to shreds when very young, decent school boys and girls go to such motor-parks (on excursion).

But in a parliament; a Nigerian parliament, history was made when your legislators did a do-or-die and kill-and-go mêlée to the glare of us all in our quiet homes and right in the presence of young, decent school boys and girls who thought they were around to learn governance. They saw a speaker umpiring scores of Mike Tysons doing it not the ring-side way but the motor-park way: Kill-and-go!

Governance my foot; apology to the one who holds the propriety right to do-or-die politics that has bred so much rubbish in this country, including the apical disgrace that is the legislative combat just referred. But, can the wages, stealing and inflation of contracts and ghost appointees, and bloated appointments of the executive arm, justify this legislative greed and madness?

When governance is too attractive only the greedy will step forward. And their stepping forward has been the ruin of our country. They may even want a third term to bury the ruin; so that all of us can forget about Nigeria. There are too many greedy ones in our body politics.

Nobody knows anything about national wealth creation. All eyes are on this manna called oil, hence the frenzying about its unceasing windfall. Providence is their concept of governance. Anybody can govern if that is what it is! They all want to manage resources from the centre; no one knows how to create them. And no one knows what it means to lead, let alone lead.

But then, if we must assume that governance is in no way about generation of wealth but all about going to the national till, which is wholly the result of Providence as it is today, and using it profitably we may not be too troubled; but not even many know how to spend what is given to them to spend for others. And the result of this is the very sorry malady we have today in our hands: Too many rogues are mounting the saddle of governance at all levels. It will remain so because governance is too attractive.

We should make governance extremely unattractive, yet with pointed and binding deliverable electioneering promises, with very informed governmental goals and targets and visibly flourishing drive to achieve same in whole or near so; and fully accountable and with unbending laws of recall then we are getting set to beat a nation into line. It is then patriots and nationalists would step forward. Nearly all the characters on stage today will vamoose into thin air, as we say.

EFEROVO IGHO, a  commentator  on  national  issues, wrote from Warri, Delta State.