by Rotimi Fasan

 But Buhari came and shunned all that. Even when he could easily have access to Jonathan’s presidential fleet, he chose to travel commercial and would not accept a luxury car protocol officers brought to fetch him from the airport while on a visit abroad.

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has not been quick to appoint members of his cabinet and Nigerians have understandably not been too excited about it.

The few appointments he has so far made, though mostly of personal staff, look like a roll call of northerners, and again Nigerians have murmured loudly. But the president has shown a disposition to run a frugal administration for which Nigerians, except those who were members of the wastrel administrations that squandered the country’s riches, have rightly commended him.

There have been many reports in the media that Buhari has no belly for a large bureaucracy. The president is disposed to nothing but a lean administration, with fewer ministers and advisers than anything put in place by the immediate past administration of the Peoples Democratic Party. In terms of the cost of administering it, the Jonathan government left no one in doubt that Nigeria’s presidential system is indeed a huge drain on the country’s resources.

It is clearly part of our problem, and anyone interested in running a transparent government must cut down on the number of officials involved in the administration of the country. This has to happen right across the different arms of government.

While cost cutting might have been something of a moral imperative that our public officials were enjoined to consider before now, the financial crisis brought about by fast dwindling oil revenue has made it an obligation, even a duty requiring appropriate backing of the law to make it effective.

The damaging consequences of the ongoing financial crisis on available resources of states and even sections of the federal administration that are now unable to pay workers’ wages is just an indication that our politicians and public servants must now walk down the path of frugality in public service.

Government can and should no longer be an avenue for irresponsible use and misuse of the nation’s wealth. As should be expected of a responsible leader, one who was formerly head of a military government that was, in spite of all its huge deficit of democratic credentials, known for its frugal and inward-looking nationalistic fervor, President Buhari is providing the right lead.

Even before his administration was inaugurated, Buhari had adopted a low key style that was an example in public leadership. This may seem of little significance to some people used to the wasteful ways of our leaders but Buhari showed he was determined to walk a path different from the one of financial recklessness and irresponsibility of the government of his immediate predecessor where corruption walked on all fours.

Public officers were their own accountant, treasurer and financial guru all at once. In that state of financial opacity and chaos, everybody did as they liked and had generous access to the till.

But Buhari came and shunned all that. Even when he could easily have access to Jonathan’s presidential fleet, he chose to travel commercial and would not accept a luxury car protocol officers brought to fetch him from the airport while on a visit abroad. Given this antecedent action, it was not surprising that he rejected the fawning proposal to buy new official vehicles at costs running into hundreds of million of Naira. He has capped this by taking a 50% cut in pay along with his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo.

But nothing captivates the Nigerian politician more than empty spectacles. The Nigerian politician finds populist gestures irresistible. Which is why some of them are already coming up with proposals to cut their salaries by half or similar measures meant to show their readiness to reduce administrative cost. To be sure, Buhari’s frugal disposition has nothing to do with the populism of the political tribe. It is a natural tendency, it would seem, of somebody who knows the meaning of working for what one earns- not a ‘money-miss-road’ who suddenly happened on the corridors of power.

It would be good to see many of our so-called leaders, governors, ministers and their aides, and especially our self-minded legislators who swim in the ocean of unearned allowances, follow the example of the president. Our legislators are reputedly among the highest paid in the world even though they spend a huge part of their time on unearned recess. Since the beginning of the present legislative epoch, the National Assembly has been on recess and the only thing they have so far done is share out portfolios that have been the cause of acrimonious discord that has rendered legislative activities impossible.

But if our public officers are truly committed to the cost saving demands of these lean times, a good place to begin would be with their security allowances and such other hidden sources of unearned wealth that makes public service a rich avenue for officially sanctioned, large scale plundering of the national treasury. We’ve had enough of these worthless talks and cosmetic plans of giving up half of salaries that are just a dispensable fraction of the costs that make our mode of governance both unjustified and unsustainable.

There are too many avenues of wastage, means through which the public treasury is depleted by individuals who are sure candidates for jail. And thank God some of these individuals are beginning to move from state house to jail house. It should be something to look forward to how many of our public officials, governors, ministers, advisers, legislators, judges, etc would be brought to account by the justly awakened Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

It is an indication of what part the right leadership can play in public accountability that some of the untouchables of our country are now being rounded up and shown the way into prison until they can show their hands are clean and have not been soiled by their time in office. When was the last time the EFCC successfully got anyone arraigned and sent to jail pending when their case could be dispensed with? Why was this agency comatose under President Goodluck Jonathan?

How was it that all that many of his corrupt ministers, to say nothing of legislators and other officials- how was it all that many of these openly corrupt individuals went away with were mere slaps on the wrist? Some of them are now back in power either as senators or representatives of the Lower House, or governors of the Nigerian state.

What good can come of such arrangement? How come none of these people were ever charged? Of course, Nigerians still wait to see the outcome of cases of former public officials and politicians currently being investigated or standing trial under the Buhari administration.

– Nigerians would want to know that the president would not be privy to any arrangement to let this people off without adequate compensation to a sorely wronged country.
– See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/07/public-officials-what-manner-of-austerity/#sthash.I0ZwdOvh.dpuf