Trimming the State

“Shortcuts may carry more traffic than the main road.” Ugandan Proverb.

In spite of the torrents of scathing criticisms and curses which trailed his report call for trimming the federal civil service by as much as 50% for consuming 70% of the country’s budget on salaries and allowances, it is almost certain that Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Governor of the Central Bank, is sitting pretty, enjoying all the furore he had triggered. It is in the character of the man to stir the hornet’s nest, possibly because he knows that the hornet’s sting has no bite. In virtually every one of his famed altercations, he had taken on foes and positions which were already substantially weakened by their own internal contradictions. His extensive knowledge of the banking and financial sector helped him in taking on colleagues in banks that were virtual, elaborate corporate frauds operating under political protection and damaging complicity of state institutions. The cast iron CBN Act gives him huge protection to take on the legislature almost on a regular basis, and not blink. His high profile support for reforming the subsidy regime earned him legions of new enemies; but he was well-placed to know that the public was on the losing side in the battle to preserve the scandalously-corrupt contraption called fuel subsidy.

By the time Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi ceases to be Governor of the CBN, he would have created a new image of a public officer who ruffles feathers with personal courage, professionalism and an abiding need to remain visible in the public domain. To his legion of enemies, Malam Sanusi appears to have added civil servants, whose jobs he reportedly said should be sacrificed so that money for capital expenditure will be available for budgeting.

It is difficult to speak up for Malam Sanusi’s periodic forays into controversy, because he has a way of explaining away assumptions, misinterpretations, miscalculations or any one of many hostile reactions to his provocations. He had taken on the federal legislature over certain costs of its operations and its relationship with the national budget. The fiasco that followed cost an arm and a leg, quite probably the legislators’; and it marked a new low in the relationship between the CBN Governor and the legislators. It is possible that he will explain this furore away by insisting that he meant total personnel cost in the budget, not salaries of civil servants.

Predictably, the demand for a radical reduction of the workforce to reduce personnel cost and boost the size of the capital budget, though not new, has been denounced by labour and a host of other traditional elements of the anti-Sanusi opposition. To be sure, Sanusi had been marked by labour as a mortal enemy since his subsidy-removal role, and although he had consistently drawn attention to areas of waste and corruption, these had little impact because they were muffled by the public odium he had acquired over the subsidy issue.

Ideally, it would make better sense to wait for Malam Sanusi to avail the nation with the facts and figures that will vindicate his reported claim over salaries of civil servant. But these facts and figures may not be forthcoming, and if or when they do, they may simply open up another dimension in a debate started long before Malam Sanusi joined it, and which is unlikely to be concluded to anyone’s satisfaction. At this stage, it is safe to say that the CBN Governor is way off the mark if he thinks that civil servants will radically improve the quantum of funds available for real investment in infrastructure and human capital development.

Civil servants are the non-political level of the public service which receives salaries and consolidated allowances. They form part of the public service, which includes public officers who are not civil servants, para-military organizations and security agencies, political appointees of all types, and sundry appointees who hold their offices at the pleasure of political office holders.

A damaging misconception has persisted which lumps career civil servants with other public officers, and “personnel cost” in budgets is routinely passed-off as the cost of salaries and allowances of civil servants. If he has figures, the CBN Governor will do the nation a great service if he can make public, total remuneration of civil servants in relation to political appointees, elected officials, legislators, judicial officers, and the wider public service. He could state the proportion of personnel cost in overall recurrent expenditure. He could also provide an analyses of that fraud called overheads, and trace where it ends. He may find that take-home pays of civil servants represents a very small percentage of overall recurrent expenditure. The legislature is reluctant to pry too deeply into sub-head 1 because it has its own baggage of huge salaries and away of political appointees.

No excuses should be made for people at the level of Malam Sanusi for not knowing the difference between career civil servants, the core bureaucracy which runs Ministries, Departments and Agencies, and the wider public service, particularly the huge non-civil service layer which exists above and around it, and which increases by the day. But in the event that there is some confusion, the civil servant is that creature who struggled just two years ago for an N18,000 national minimum wage. The federal civil servant keeps the machinery of state going, a state run by political office holders who receive huge amounts as salaries and allowances, legislated by the National Assembly on the recommendation of the Revenue Mobilization,  Allocation and Fiscal Commission under President Yar’Adua. These include the President and Vice President, all political appointees, Permanent Secretaries, legislators, judicial officers, C.E.Os of parastatals, members of Boards of agencies and statutory bodies, Governors, Commissioners, Local Government Chairmen and  Councillors, and every other political appointee (Advisers, SSAs, SAs etc) and public office holders appointed by politicians at will. S/he is blamed for every ill in the system by the political level,yet is absolutely indispensable. S/he is paid wretched wages but survives because the political level's patronage system allows massive corruption from which s/he benefits.

The federal civil servant is that human specie that travels for two or three hours every day from the far outreaches of the FCT and neighbouring States to come to work and go back home. His/her salary and allowances are consolidated under a contraption called CONTISS, and it does not cover even half of basic needs. S/he processes and documents  massive contracts and frauds, and partakes in the largess. S/he  lives on the margins of existence, and would have walked away long ago but for the pervasiveness of corruption in the system for which  s/he is both a victim and a beneficiary.

Last week, the federal civil servant would have heard that NNPC will spend N2.1 trillion in 2013; that only 249 staff of the PPPRA, an oil and gas related agency will receive salaries amounting to N6.2bn in 2013; that the Minister of Petroleum plans to spend N6.2 for awareness campaign around the Petroleum Industry Bill; and the presidency intends to build a new banquet hall at the cost of N2.2b. Very little, if any, of these colossal sums will go to the civil servant, but s/he will know where the crumbs are. Sadly, even if savings were to be made from salaries of civil servants, corruption by the political level will make them irrelevant in terms of improving available resources for real development.

Malam Sanusi has fired a shot at a real problem, and it is important that the nation does not shut its ears against the message because it dislikes the messenger. The real issue is that the cost of governance is too high because too many people are paid for doing absolutely nothing. These are not civil servants, but an entire army of political appointees, C.E.Os and Boards and staff of Agencies and parastatals which are no more than monstrous anachronisms, political cronies, and public office holders who receive huge pays and steal the nation blind. Virtually everyone on the list of public office holders covered by the current pay structure is grossly overpaid, and civil servants are grossly underpaid. The nation runs a wasteful federal system and a bi-cameral structure that adds no value to the quality of our governance or democratic system. It is not the civil service that deprives the nation of resources. It is politicians and their cronies who receive huge salaries and allowances, and run quite possibly the most corrupt system known to man. This is the parasitic layer that needs to be drastically trimmed.