EDITORIAL
The government of Kaduna State decided to rightsize its workforce in order to free resources to engage in development programmes for the citizens but his fellow state governors have not been supportive. Instead in a statement they released a few days ago, they were sounding equivocal. This makes one to ask the question: Is this attitude the reason most of these states are not witnessing any meaningful development? Are state governors sitting over bloated civil service, and they lack the courage to take decisive actions such as this one that one of their colleagues has taken in Kaduna State? Do these governors have the interest of the people at heart? For if they do they would not watch a civil service that contributes little take away far more than half of their states’ revenue while nothing is left for development programmes.
These are fundamental questions in a situation where these governors see what is right, see what the problem is in their states but they are not willing do anything about it. As for a governor who’s doing something, they fail to back him up. At ElRUFAi News Magazine, we can say that we have now seen the reason this nation is the way it is and why most states are not moving anywhere.
We know that it is at the state level most development programmes that have impact on the people should be undertaken. We know there has to be resources to do this. We know that at this time the FG takes too much resources than it needs. In any case FG takes on too many responsibilities than is good for a federal system such as ours. In the event, the states are starved of the needed resources. Now that the Kaduna State government has identified one of the areas where it can minimize cost of governance and as such have resources freed for developmental programmes, there is silence where the loudest applaud should come from. This is strange. It is disappointing.
It is a strange phenomenon, considering that state governors have been making some demands of late. They say they want states to be able to pay workers based on each state’s financial capacity. They say the FG shouldn’t fix salary of workers for all states since this is a federal arrangement. They say FG should review fiscal allocation and more resources should come to the states. They say there should be diversification of the economy away from oil. All this is part of their efforts to have more funds for use for economic development in the states. None of these demands has the FG yielded to. Yet states must continue to function. In the face of the unwillingness of the FG to change, one would assume the best way to move on in the states is for the governors to look inward and reform how the system works. Wastages in the form of cost of governance have been identified.
One area of wastage is the bloated civil service. It is there in all the 36 states. The other is the number of political appointees, sometimes numbering thousands in some states. In these two aspects, Kaduna State has proved itself different in the few numbers of political appointees it has. It has been open, transparent in all its dealings regarding its political appointees, making known to the public how many it has and what they take home compared to what civil servants take home. Most state governors do not do this.
In a recent public information from the government of Kaduna State, it states as follows: “As part of its efforts to manage its fiscal challenges and preserve its capacity to serve the entire state, the Kaduna State Government announced in April 2021 its intention to rightsize its workforce. This exercise would affect political appointees and civil servants in the public service of the state with personnel strength of less than 100,000. The Kaduna State Government, which was the first government to begin paying the minimum wage in September 2019, will continue to honour this commitment. KDSG has also increased the pension under the defined benefits scheme to the minimum wage of N30,000 for every pensioner in the State.
“In April 2021, the KDSG also released details of its FAAC receipts and personnel costs in the six months leading to March 2021. These figures showed that personnel costs account for between 84.97% and 96.63% of the state’s FAAC revenues. In November 2020, KDSG had only N162.9m left after paying salaries. That month, Kaduna State got N4.83bn from FAAC and paid N4.66bn as wages. In March 2021, the state had only N321m left after settling personnel costs. The state got N4.819bn from FAAC and paid out N4.498bn, representing 93% of the money received. The balance cannot cover the funding requirements for standing orders, security and other costs essential to running the government, and the total does not include the wages of local government staff.”
Just as the Kaduna State government has stated, it is difficult to quarrel with the starkness of these figures. However, some who disagree with the decision to rightsize have alleged that most of the state’s personnel costs is devoted to paying political appointees. The state government has not only debunked this allegation but offered the following, noting that: “The facts conclusively refute this baseless claim. State civil servants accounted for 93.55% of the total wage bill of N4.498bn in March 2021. There were only 337 political appointees among the 31,401 direct employees of the Kaduna State Government (distinct from those working for the 23 local governments) as at March 2021.
“The state government’s total wage bill in March 2021 was N4.498bn. That month, the direct salary bill was N3.39bn, as the 31,064 state civil servants earned N3.13bn, while the 337 political appointees were paid N259.17m. Other components of the monthly wage bill were: payments of N478.8m to pensioners on defined benefits, N253.72m as the state government’s 40% contribution to the salaries of primary healthcare workers, N197.4m as 8% pension contribution and N173.3m for the 5% retirement benefit bond.”
With the latest strike organised by the NLC to protest the laudable reforms that the Kaduna State government has undertaken, the same thing that all the states should be undertaking, one would wonder why state governors appear to be acting strange. They have kept quiet at a time when they should state it clearly for the world to hear that a bloated and unproductive civil service is not what they need. They should be stating that the decision of the Kaduna State government to rightsize its workforce is in order, and what they too should be doing. They should be stating that this is even in consonance with some of the recommendations of the World Back and the IMF from which the FG has been trying to source for loans. The rest of the state governors should be saying they want development for their states, that if the FG would not let go the funds it holds on to, state governors have no choice than to rightsize a workforce that takes almost 100 percent of allocations accruable to them.
We believe at ElRUFAi News Magazine that these and many more are the things the state governors should be using the current situation in Kaduna State to tell the FG, NLC , and the rest of the world. Instead, we hear state governors’ silence so loudly. In fact, when they eventually released a statement a few days ago it was to tell the government of Kaduna State to negotiate. This is weak, insensitive, coming from the same state governors who experience what Kaduna State is experiencing in the hands of a bloated but unproductive workforce that is taking a lion share of public funds. Some of these states have their own simmering issues with NLC over unpaid allowances and unpaid minimum wages to their workers. This is sometimes due to inadequate funds. But Kaduna State is one of the few states that have been paying their workers the minimum wage, and Kaduna does not owe allowances unlike many of the states that ask Kaduna to negotiate. These state governors know how NLC has sometimes displayed a tendency to not reason with government with regard to a workforce that can not be viably maintained going by the current revenue profile of the government. These state governors know how NLC usually deploys lies to paint bad the good intents of a government in order to justify its own position. In fact, lately, the governor of Kaduna State accused NLC of publicizing lies about its activities, and on the basis of which NLC leadership mobilised uninformed people to join its rallies in Kaduna.
We believe at ElRUFAi News Magazine that except the state governors are up to something hypocritical, if they are not being economical with the truth, they ought to be all out supporting one of their own who is taking a courageous step that every state governor should be taking at this time. This step taken in Kaduna State should be applauded, considering the many years of bad governance, many years of misrule, many years of putting public funds in the pockets of a few that the state had witnessed in the past. The fact is that the surgical operation that the Kaduna State government is carrying out now is what is needed in each of the other thirty-five states. It is what is needed at the federal government level, and unless this is done, everyone should say bye-bye to economic development that could address some of the causes of the current state of insecurity that the nation witnesses.
Having stated this, however, ElRUFAi News Magazine seizes the opportunity to call on the Kaduna State government to ensure that it does not delay in carrying out any statutory financial obligations it has to every sacked government worker. This will ensure that such former government workers move on to establish themselves in other economic sectors which is helpful for their personal well-being as well as the economic growth of the state in general.
