Nigeria is the giant of Africa in
name, no doubt. But in action, Nigeria is more or less like a lame duck. For
well over five decades, crude oil and other rich mineral resources have been
discovered and exploited in huge commercial quantities and the nation’s large
population still battle with mass poverty and insecurity, no thanks to the rich
presence in the polity of well endowed criminal elements who have taken the
commanding lead in the various segments of Nigeria’s political spectrum thereby
institutionalizing corruption and fiscal indiscipline.
In the last two decades, corruption
has become the single largest contributor to Nigeria’s underdevelopment,
infrastructure deficits and mass poverty even as successive governments over
the years have failed to build viable regulatory and enforcement institutions
to check the unprecedented spread of these social vices of corruption, bribery
and outright theft of public resources by top government officials at all
levels beginning from the federal down to the rural government settings.
One of the ways worked out by the previous
government of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo to stem the high tide of corruption was
the setting up of fiscal Responsibility Commission among few other anti-graft
institutions. The formation of these anti-graft agencies derived inspiration
basically from section 15[5] of the Nigerian Constitution of 1999[as amended]
which frowns against corruption and abuse of power and consequently obliges all
segments of the Nigerian society to eradicate corruption.
The fiscal Responsibility Commission
was one of the logical products of the resolve of corporate Nigeria to
strangulate corruption and fiscal indiscipline that constitute serious cog in
the wheel of progress of Nigeria. Fiscal responsibility commission on paper has
the vision of ensuring the enthronement of a regime of prudent, ethical and
effective management of public monies and resources across all tiers of
government.
The Fiscal responsibility
commission’s mission on paper is to reform the management of Nigeria’s public
finances through regular monitoring of government financial activities,
uncompromising investigation and public reporting backed by a firm commitment
to enforcement under the rule of law.
The Fiscal Responsibility Act of
2007 saddled the body with the functions of among others; to monitor and
enforce the provisions of the Act and by so doing, promote economic objectives
contained in section 16 of the Nigerian Constitutions; and to disseminate such
standard practices including international good practices that will result in
greater efficiency in the allocation and management of public expenditure,
revenue collection, debt control and transparency in Fiscal matters.
It was established by the fiscal
Responsibility Act of 2007 as an independent agency in the performance of its
core functions.
But since 2007 when it became
operational, it is a notorious fact that fiscal indiscipline and abuses of the
provisions of the fiscal responsibility law have become widespread just as this
agency saddled with these onerous tasks of tackling the challenges of
corruption has conveniently gone to sleep and become a toothless bull dog.
Total lack of transparency now characterizes the handling of public fund by all
sections of public officials including bureaucrats in the various federal
ministries.
Like few other dysfunctional
anti-graft institutions, the fiscal responsibility commission has consistently
become very irresponsible and has become only responsible in creating media
noise without ever adopting effective measures to name, shame, prosecute and
punish offenders. Coupled with the fact that the fiscal commission is run like
a secret society devoid of transparent partnership of credible civil society
groups, this agency of government which cost tax payers so much resources to
maintain has become a dysfunctional contraption and the only way to save the
country from tolerating a perfectly incompetent and unworkable contraption is
to introduce radical reforms of the administration of this near-moribund fiscal
responsibility commission.
By law, the fiscal Responsibility
Commission ought to be composed of representatives of broad spectrum of schools
of thought including the civil society groups engaged in causes relating to
probity, transparency and governance, the selection process of the hierarchy of
this agency has become opaque and muddled up in partisan politics.
A major imperfection of the fiscal
responsibility body is the total disregard of the freedom of information Act of
2011 even when the constitution in section 15(5) provides that; “The state
shall abolish all corrupt practices and abuse of power.”
Recently, the fiscal responsibility
commission denied the request under freedom of information Act of 2011
instituted by HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA to compel the boss
of that agency to name and shame a top public office holder he accused in a
newspaper interview (without disclosing identity) of large scale corruption.
The human rights group had requested
that the chairman of the fiscal commission disclose the identity of a top federal
government official that was indicted of cornering to himself huge government
revenue in foreign denominations of a particular agency but the fiscal
responsibility chairman denied the Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria
that germane request supported by section 1 of the freedom of information Act.
The chairman of the fiscal
Responsibility Commission had in an interview published on August 6th 2013 by
Daily Trust accused the unnamed government official of stealing millions of
dollars belonging to the federal government.
The human rights group had
innocuously demanded that the fiscal commission give Nigerians the name of the
official since the money stolen rightly belonged to the people of Nigeria but
as is the practice with the dysfunctional state of affairs of most federal
government agencies which still operate the corruption – friendly principle of
“say no evil even when you see evil happening”, it failed to respond to this
patriotic request.
Hiding under the nebulous provision
of the fiscal responsibility Act, the agency said it will not honour the
freedom of information request because disclosing the name of the indicted
official will harm the ongoing investigation.
“I can confirm to you that the
Fiscal Responsibility Commission will withhold the information you have
requested because we consider that the exemptions under the following section
of the F.O.I. Act, 2011 apply to your request. They are section 14(1)(e) and
Section 12(1)(a),(i),(ii),(iii),(iv),(vi);(4)”
“We appreciate that this will be a
considerable disappointment to you and would herein endeavour to explain to you
why we reached the decision to refuse your request as outlined above, “the
fiscal commission gladly announced to the Human Rights Writers’ Association of
Nigeria.
Annoyingly, few days after refusing
to name and shame a public official indicted by it for large scale fraud, the
same fiscal responsibility commission was quoted in the Nigerian media (The
Guardian, Friday September 6th 2013, pg. 1) as raising alarm over the
recklessness of states in Nigeria to over borrow.
The fiscal responsibility commission
also regretted that only five states out of the 36 states in Nigeria have
embraced the Fiscal Responsibility Act in the last six years of its existence.
But I have this piece of news for
this noisy commission and that is to tell the officials to desist from
disturbing our peace with irrelevant noise since the hierarchy cannot provide
the required leadership qualities for other federating units to embrace the law.
What do you expect from the body
when the head is rotten? “Physician, heal thyself,” [courtesy of the Holy
Bible].
The officials of the Nigeria’s
fiscal responsibility commission should please buy a copy of the well
researched leadership book from the prestigious Harvard Business School titled;
“Hand Book of leadership theory and practice.”
In the section one of this book
where the versatile authors analytically highlighted the all important issue of
“the impact of leadership: performance and meaning,” whereby they stated
rightly thus; “… Put simply, if leadership does not directly impact or
significantly impact organizational performance, then leadership does not
matter to organizational life.”
To tackle the widespread cases of
fiscal indiscipline, corruption and inefficiency in the running of government
business, agencies like the fiscal responsibility commission must say no to the
business-as-usual tendency of covering up for corrupt officials and become
vibrant anti-graft institutions.
*
Emmanuel
Onwubiko, Head, HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA;
blogs@www.huriwa.blogspot.com. http://www.huriwa.org/;
12/9/2013
No comments:
Post a Comment