Before proceeding on their end-of-year recess, members of the National Assembly hurriedly passed for a second reading a bill on the proposed North-East Development Commission (NEDC). The hurry on this Bill is similar to that on the controversial anti-media bill of late. Many reasons have been advanced to show how this NEDC proposal is a booby trap that is inimical to the very wellbeing of the downtrodden in the region and to the corporate aspiration for sustainable development, unity and fiscal efficiency in Nigeria. Hence, President Buhari has been strongly advised to distance his government from the actualization of the potential dangers embedded in this bill. It is, therefore, gratifying to know that the President has instead gone ahead to constitute a North-East Rehabilitation Committee of eminent Nigerians for providing needed succour and relief to the real victims of terrorism in the region, thus making it unnecessary to continue the quest for a politically motivated NEDC.
The politicians that are proposing this NEDC “statutory agency” are the same self-seeking rulers whose greed and avid corruption led to both the region’s relative backwardness and the disorientation of the very youth population that feed the insurgency army; they primarily aim at establishing a drain pipe like the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) through which they can suck from the central pool. For sure, they either will be appointed the NEDC Board members or will nominate their proxies to man the principal offices, as with the NDDC. Their presumably non-North Eastern supporters of the Bill are either returning a similar scratch on their backs in previous drain pipes like the NDDC, or are hoping to be so supported in a future establishment of other drain pipes. The NEDC Bill is unarguably not informed by any truly sectional or overall national interest.
Going by our cry for lean governments to reduce the high cost of governance, such a commission is an avoidable negation of fiscal efficiency. The federal ministries of works, housing, environment, health and education, etc. can still be mandated to more efficiently execute whatever projects the federal government has for the region or any part of the country, without the inefficiencies associated with an additional federal parastatal whose huge personnel cost and overheads will eat up the greater portion of such a commission’s annual budgets – even when the Oronsaye Report is still starring at us! After all, the federal government has prosecuted the Boko Haram war through the regular Ministry of Defence, without establishing a “Ministry of Boko Haram” or a “North-East Defence Commission”; so have the various health and educational programmes (like anti-polio, anti-meningitis, almajiri schools, etc) been successfully executed in the North and South without the creation of new commissions. The under-development of the North-East (and other sections of the country) predates the Boko Haram insurgency military campaigns, and the federal government has not been held particularly culpable. Indeed, the federal government and other regions have made enormous sacrifices and contributions to wage an avoidable war, even without insisting on prosecuting those fingered as stoking the religious war. Observers point out that the proposed NEDC extends beyond the three states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe particularly ravaged in the insurgency; hence it is not just for “war reconstruction.”
It is also contended that the quest for fiscal federalism is undermined when the federal government is drawn into funding such a regional development master plan to the exclusion of other regions; the Niger Delta scenario has been internationally acclaimed as a unique case designed and funded so uniquely. It has been said that the federal government will incur agitations from other regions facing developmental challenges, whilst it currently lacks the resources to establish parallel “commissions” for each of the geo-political zones. So, why stray into additional crisis?
The present federal government would do well to concentrate on fully liberating the North-East, and restoring security in the entire country; it can then challenge the respective states and regions to institute accountable governments that make the wellbeing of citizens their primary responsibility.
Apart from finding money to repair the damaged federal structures in the region, federal government currently grapples with special interventions in providing critical humanitarian services as carried out by NEMA; the Presidential Initiative of the past administration had about N80bn in commitments for funding such programmes, and much more could be garnered from the goodwill of local and international donors (including state governments like Lagos, Rivers, Delta, Akwa-Ibom and Bayelsa from other regions), even as the World Bank recently approved a $2.1bn (over N420bn) soft loan for the region.
With all this and more, the Sambisa Forests of the North-East could/should be turned into a melting pot for investment in the huge agro-biz potentials of one of our misgoverned regions. Selfless and visionary leaders in any of the North-East states will find a flood-gate of individual and corporate investors scampering for abundant business opportunities in the region (more than what the turncoat politicians hope to wrest from a declining federal purse), giving the assurances of stable power supply and security of lives and property. Students of a secondary school in Lagos State were recently reported to have made a donation of N300, 000 to victims of Boko Haram in the Norh-East. All of this will be undermined and lost with the establishment of a politically-contrived NEDC.
The lack of courage in many legislators to speak against the obvious pitfalls in this Bill is quite understandable. Let the parliamentarians peg their monthly emoluments at N500,000, and prune their current annual budget to N25bn as long demanded, and commit themselves to truly tackling the development challenges in their respective states.
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