Like Osun, Like Delta – by Frank Ofili

If you thought Osun State was the only culpable state in terms of owing its workers arrears of salary, you are gravely mistaken. 

My own state Delta, the almighty oil-producing state, with special allocation for bearing oil, is presently owing local government workers 7 months salary arrears. 

Whatever the financial position of the state may be, owing workers for upwards of 7 months is unacceptable. How does the government expect these people to survive? Or even perform on the job and not be involved in some form  of corruption or the other? 

I believe the state government can make adjustments here and there in order to make out something to pay local government workers their salary, even if it has to lend to local councils to do so. How can a governor justify having a multiplicity of special assistants, many of them doing the same thing, yet he cannot pay civil servants their salary? 

I believe the government can do better in terms of being prudent and making adjustments to be able to at least reduce salary arrears of local government workers. 

Something has got to give; something has to happen. People are dying, families are suffering. The essence of governance is not to make people suffer. Government has to assure the local council workers that it is still there for them otherwise the government itself would lose its relevance to them. 

It may well be that the state government has been faithful in releasing the local councils' share of their allocation, but given the current global crash of crude oil price, the local councils share of the allocation has become inadequate. Nevertheless, the buck stops at the governor's table to think out some creative ways to address the problem, at least in the interim. Last year, the Federal Government extended such gesture to some states through a bailout fund. There is nothing stopping the state from doing something similar.

Once was a time when Nigeria truly operated a tri-partite intergovernmental fiscal relations whereby the three tiers of government – local, state and federal – derived there financial allocation  direct from the Federation Account as provided for in the 1989 Constitution. This was in the late 1980s and 1990s. Local governments truly had financial autonomy at the time and could afford to pay their workers without much tears.

This  was however removed by the 1999 Constitution in favour of a Distributable Pull Account between state and local government. Although the 1999 Constitution specified the areas in which local governments can exercise tax jurisdiction in order to internally generate revenue, it nevertheless made them a responsibility of, and subject to, the state government. It must be noted that many local councils are not economically viable in the first place as over 80 percent are peasants; so generating internal revenue through tax, fines and levies does not alleviate their financial situation in any way. 

The intention of the framers of the 1999 Constitution may be good, but it nevertheless sounded the death knell of the local council finances and autonomy. Local councils became subject to the whims and  caprices of the state governor and it was only a matter of time before we start witnessing what we are seeing today. 

But the question to answer is, is the financial position of Delta State so bad that local government workers cannot be paid for 7 months?  Since local councils are now the responsibility of the state, what is the state government's plan towards liquidating these arrears of salaries?

In many respects this pitiable situation is just one of the many manifestations of the structural imbalance in our country. There is too much concentration of power at the centre. A country where thousands of local council employees are owed several months of their legitimate income and one federal legislature alone earns over N20 million in a month (and he doesn't get owed a dime), plus other kindred legitimate and illegitimate allowances. 

Something has got to give; something has to happen. People are dying, families are suffering. The essence of governance is not to make people suffer. Government has to assure the local council workers that it is still there for them otherwise the government itself would lose its relevance to them. 

If the Delta State local governments situation is prevalent in many states in the country, then I opine that the Federal and  State governments as well as the National Assembly have to do something. They have to work out something in the short term and agree a template and timeline for liquidating these salary arrears. After all local councils constitute the senatorial zones and constituencies the federal legislators are in Abuja to represent. I mean, these guys have to do something. Owing local council workers 7 months salary arrears is unacceptable. 

More worthwhile however would be a restructuring of the whole gamut of the Nigerian fiscal federation, but that is story for another day.