By Tonnie Iredia

Two federal legislators,  Senator Smart Adeyemi, one-time union leader and broadcast journalist and Ado Doguwa arguably Nigeria’s foremost family-man, who currently serves as Leader of the House of Representatives were in their elements last week while condemning Nigeria’s unprecedented level of insecurity. The immediate issue at stake was an attack on an Abuja-Kaduna bound train.

Their outbursts and deep feelings of frustration and helplessness over the unfortunate trend were deeply emotional. Many other persons had cause to similarly despair. On his part, Fidet Okhiria, Managing Director of the Nigerian Railway Corporation simply prayed for everyone to do his assigned job. Painfully, those mandated to do different jobs in the country are hardly committed.

While some are not interested in their jobs because they were either wrongly deployed, or too connected to be cautioned to perform, many others are forever distracted from operating professionally. Although there are analysts who would argue that the above conclusion is rather sweeping, it is in earnest too notorious to require proof. For example, government itself hardly does its job.

Of recent, high ranking officials such as governors and even the Minister of Defence at various times sought to convert the security and welfare of the citizenry into a self-defence affair. Yet, the job was not only specifically given to government by the Constitution, it was categorized as the ‘primary purpose’ of government. However, there is nothing wrong in government appealing to the people to partner with her by providing information that can facilitate the execution of the job, but the exact body that the job is actually assigned to is not contentious. If governments hardly meet their primary purpose, why should individuals do their jobs?

Over the years, government has been wonderful at identifying issues that call for action for which they quickly set up panels to study and make recommendations. But, the only part which always remains undone is government’s implementation of the recommendations of any panel. Some 14 years ago, a former Inspector General of Police, M. D. Yusuf, chaired a panel on police reforms and submitted a report which contained 125 recommendations. The report ended up in a file. This created a solid base for police personnel to imagine embarking on strike the other week.

Police authorities promptly looked into colonial rules and appropriately briefed the nation that a police strike is an abomination, but nothing was done about the unpaid newly approved wages to the personnel who must never contemplate a strike. Whether the police would in the circumstance perform well is a subject on which we all seem to anticipate the same outcome.In 2012, I was one of those invited to share views with the Oronsaye panel set up by the Jonathan administration to reduce the size of government.

Two things were clear to me; one, that the panel was under pressure to merge several government bodies and two that the recommendations would as usual not be implemented. So, I simply advised the panel to not follow the body language of the authorities to merge agencies with what is generally called mother ministries. I knew for instance, that it would be fatal to merge the Nigerian Television Authority NTA which I had headed with the Ministry of Information.

To start with, because television business cannot be managed bureaucratically which is all the Ministry can do, television workers would have been distracted and frustrated. Apart from the fact that the new supervisors of the merger would close at 4pm daily and leave the business to a skeletal team of junior staff, they would in addition be off duty during the 48hours of every weekend when more viewers would look forward to good programming.

The point to be made is that the compromised relationship between agencies and ministries in Nigeria has been a veritable distraction to seamless project implementation. In June 2016, employees of the Ministry of Finance went on strike and disallowed the Minister entry into her office. Reason? She stopped the sharing of funds said to be in excess of targets made by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) which was conveniently classified as a child of the Ministry. One recent achievement of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company NNPC did not concern refinery or petroleum products, rather she was assigned the construction of 21 roads through her tax liabilities on the basis of the executive order on Tax Credit.

Irrespective of the source of the funding, why can’t it be given to the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) that should on the basis of specialization, do a better job while putting its huge workforce into optimal use?

Nigeria obviously needs to be more sensitive in allowing societal institutions to do the job for which they were established and to also stop distracting others with jobs not originally within their schedules.

Many years back, government usually rewarded those who assisted her party during campaigns by appointing them into boards and governing councils only. Now, they are also strangely appointed into management positions and deployed to functions for which they supersede their hitherto better experienced and more senior colleagues. This trend largely distracts some organizations while others are over-burdened at the expense of good performance. Today, because of the daily occurrences of killings across the nation, the military, has been overtly distracted with sundry tasks.

When the General Lucky Irabor led service chiefs came into office, they got a presidential order to end insurgency before the raining season which was some 5weeks away. While still designing their strategy on it, our legislators summoned them to give account of the state of affairs in their services which they could not do because of the job at hand and for which they were roundly condemned on national television. In truth, the admonition was questionable because the appropriate team from which the information should have been demanded got hurriedly cleared by the same legislature to become Ambassadors.

Again last week, immediately the attack on the Kaduna bound train occurred, the military once again got fresh orders from their Commander in Chief.  Less than 24hours later, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives who was obviously unaware of the nature of the presidential directive was fuming over the failure of the same service chiefs to personally appear to brief the legislators!   By Section 89 of the Constitution, the legislature is empowered to summon persons to elicit information from them for good lawmaking, which everyone including the military should respect, but it is inconceivable that the same service chiefs would be required to simultaneously serve two masters with differing modus operandi. Rather than fume, the legislature should employ a different modality.

First, its relevant committees should collate available basic information on security which they gathered from their frequent oversight visits to the military. In addition, the legislators who are acclaimed to be closest to the people should help point out to the military, the bandits etc. who reportedly live among their people. Such collaboration is more proactive at this critical period instead of summoning chief executives which yields negligible fruits.

Not long ago, the former chief executive of the Niger Delta Development Commission NDDC who was summoned to answer huge charges of fraud reportedly appeared in person only to faint without throwing light on the allegations. At the same time, his supervising Minister who also appeared in person merely alleged on camera before denying later that NDDC contracts were cornered by legislators.

Consequently, the summons failed to illuminate the use into which the legislature put the information gathered during that session and how it helped the Niger Delta for whose sake the NDDC was established. Now that legislators have shown how concerned they are over poor performance of many agencies, especially the failure of the military to solve daily killings, it is hoped that they would opt for a supportive rather than combative approach.

Indeed, the National Assembly will do well to distant itself from those who distract public officers so that Nigeria can begin to build strong institutions instead of bullies.

Vanguard News Nigeria