IF governance is all about tackling and surmounting daunting challenges on entirely sacrificial note with huge results, you will need the likes of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and David Ben-Gurion. Those beautiful ones are not yet born in Nigeria.

If governance is about daringness, huge foresight with crave to turn out results where hopelessness consumes all others then that will be up Wilson Churchill’s alley. So far, only Obafemi Awolowo came close here among all Nigerians of all ages. Governance, properly defined, almost has no example in Nigeria apart from Awolowo’s tenure as premier.

The sound inputs that governance requires, the intriguing working of governance, and the enthralling result of governance – real governance – has not been seen with the eyes here (in Nigeria) since Western Nigerian days. Because real governance can only attract great performers, this is beyond the borders of many of our past and present leaders. Talk of misgovernance, and then researchers have more than enough materials to work with here!

Today, governance has been made grossly attractive and with no obligation to deliver. That is why you get candidates who ordinarily should be in the motor parks in government. We have been running motor-park government all the while. When governors (used here in the generic sense) have deep-seated area boys mindset, parade motor-park mentality, handle governance with grip of gangsterism and plunge headlong into our treasuries as worst of rogues would, then all academic credentials are total rubbish. We need academic credentials that would alter savagery and barbarism in governance and in our national life.

The current minimum wage brouhaha with the salary payment punch-ups is because of this malady. Mismanagement of our national resources by rogue politicians is what has been reporting itself to us since the minimum wage increase debate started. Now, it has come to a climax: ‘Corruption’ is making its point; ‘ineptitude’ is justifying itself, and ‘avarice’ even needing more money to spend. And no rubbish can ooze more than this.

If West Africa were to be one single country (which really would have been better) the material resources God has bestowed on Nigeria with more than enough to manage the region to the marvel of the world, that is if the resources are in hands of good governors. So, why can’t we use this resource to govern Nigeria and Nigerians! Why are we talking like unschooled bunch? Why are we talking incompetence with arrogance? What is cocoa that Obafemi Awolowo could use to transform the whole of the then Western Nigeria (which include present Edo and Delta states), giving us free education, making life and living worthwhile, creating benchmarks in Nigeria in virtually every area and giving Africa few firsts, and your governors cannot use oil money, nay, oil windfall monies to affect our lives in their small states. Now, they are even babbling in this matter of national minimum wage. What is even this minimum wage!

With good leadership and focused governance the Nigerian state can pay with ease a national minimum wage thrice what Labour has asked for and has been granted. We cannot pay the minimum wage of N18,000 because of ineptitude and greed of the political class expressed in full-scale corruption, over-bloated political workforce and equally over-bloated salaries. Tackle ineptitude and greed, and Labor would go home with N54, 000 minimum wage as against this ordinarily annoying N18, 000 that is getting your governors’ hackles up; rough hackles that only ineptitude and corruption could occasion. What is N18, 000? For a family of six, that is almost halfway with only kerosene!

And the entire proposition by these so-called state governors to increase their share of Federal revenue allocation and or to remove oil subsidy so that they can pay salaries is very sickening and only help us to place more properly those who our system calls ‘governors’ where they really are. That call can only make sense to looters (and not managers) of our treasuries! Can you think of Awolowo getting one tenth of what any state governor is getting from the Federal Government and still asking for removal of oil subsidy to be able to pay salaries of staff of such a state. I really don’t know…

Ineptitude and greed must be fought with all senses. This writer believes that the states in a federal setting should have increased revenue allocation but not necessarily to pay state salaries but for different purposes, which purposes will soon be a subject matter of another piece. But we must say it here that there should be huge devolution of power and responsibilities from the federal to states with accompanied increased financial allocation because the Federal Government urgently needs to scale down its activities and ministries to 12 at the most because we must be seen to practice federalism. However, rather than speak grammar about increased revenue allocation to pay state staff salaries, ineptitude and corruption should be addressed.

You don’t, as a matter of first resort, need increased federal allocation to pay state staff. It doesn’t make sense. Address ineptitude! Fight profligacy! The state governments should tap and use internally-generated funds to pay state staff. Awolowo does not need to be tutored here; rather he is a huge lesson. And we are not talking of these oppressive taxes we are burdening the peasants, talakawas, okada riders, street traders and ‘wretched of the earth’ with. In Nigeria there should not really be this class of people as we write. If governance has remained in the hands of the Awolowos and Aminu Kanos till now, the gap between the Dangotes, Otedolas and Adenugas (in business), the Iboris, Igbinedions, Uduaghans, Atikus, OBJs (in politics) and that class of people would have been drastically bridged. And this is one chief essence of governance.

The national and state treasuries apparently exist for the benefit of their so-called managers or handlers and their friends in politics and business, which also explains why everyone wants to be in government to allocate to themselves and their bloated teams whatever their avarice dictates. The take home of your councillor today is more than the best paid professor in our country today. Talk of the uncountable councillors, too many council chairmen, countless state board chairmen and untold members, myriad legislators, innumerable commissioners, sundry advisers and assistants and so on and so forth, and what you have can only be grossly nasty.

Is it reasonable at all that the total take homes of a state’s entire elected class and political appointees should come near that of its civil service? And is it not even madder when the total take-home of the entire elected class and political appointees in a state equals that of its civil service? Yet the maddest thing takes place in many states in Nigeria, and at the federal level too, be it the executive or legislature. The total take-home of the elected class and political appointees here and there not only doubles but more than doubles and in some cases more than triple that of the civil service connected to them.

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