Akande on governance

My Participations: Bisi Akande on governance and financial management.

“It is a bonus to be cherished that this life narrative of a frontline politician has emerged from the hands of a man whose moral integrity in governance, as in all spheres of responsibility, has remained undented”. -Professor Wole Soyinka, in his Forward to My Participations: An Autobiography, by Chief Bisi Akande, page xx.

In this continuation of my serial review of Chief Bisi Akande’s book, I focus on two inter-related aspects of his political participations, namely, governance and financial management as revealed in the book. Akande devoted Chapters 9-13 to his service in Chief Bola Ige’s government (1979-1983), first as the Secretary to the State Government and later as the Deputy Governor. He would later devote ten chapters (18-27) to his experiences as the Governor of Osun State (1999-2003).

It is clear from the accounts in the book that Akande sees effective financial management as key to good governance, especially in Nigeria’s cash-strapped subnational governments. In the case of Osun state, often regarded as a Civil Service state, the wage bill has always been too large for the state’s federal allocation. Yet, the state’s Internally Generated Revenue often did not cover the shortfall. The result is often little or nothing left for capital development. Here’s how Akande painted the situation: “I inherited a staff of 23,077 workers, who were mostly inefficient and badly coordinated, yet insisted on being appropriated with N260 million per month out of a total monthly revenue of N150 million”. This contrasts sharply with “an average of 14,500 workers” with which Chief Obafemi Awolowo serviced the entire Western Region, now made up of the six States of the South-West plus Edo and Delta States in the South-South (page 293).

This finding informed Akande’s focus on personnel management, vetting of contractors’ charges, and cutting down on the excesses of civil servants. Fortunately, he learned the ropes very early as workers staged a violent protest within one week of his assumption of office as State Governor. Their goal was to cow him into submission to their demands, including bribes. Indeed, four labour union leaders showed him proof of bribes paid by previous governments (pages 292-293). Akande responded with characteristic bluntness by refusing to cooperate.

He thereafter developed a scheme of 10% senior policy-making management; 15% middle management staff; 20% supervisory executive staff; and 55% working staff. He thereafter briefed the House of Assembly about the precarious financial situation of the state and got it to pass a resolution for him not to spend beyond 70% of average state monthly income on salaries and wages (pages 296-297).

In order to implement this policy, Akande initiated an establishment audit, which revealed a top-heavy civil service in which there were more supervisors than the supervised! Similarly, there were well over 2,000 teachers in excess of the number needed. Yet, some key subjects, such as English Language and Mathematics, were inadequately staffed, while some schools had teachers without pupils! To complicate matters, the Federal Government increased the minimum wage, which put additional burden on the states.

Worse still, there was no State Secretariat as civil servants were distributed across local government offices and rented apartments. The Governor’s office was a building donated by the Federal Government, while the Government House was “an old wood-decked house with leaking roofs built for the Divisional Engineer by Awolowo’s administration in 1955” (pages 294-295).

Against the above backgrounds, Akande engaged in fund saving measures. He started by cutting down on political appointees, limiting the number of Commissioners to only eleven.  This was followed by pruning the civil service, including (a) retrenchment of workers with negative records of service and those who had attained retirement age or served for the maximum 35 years and (b) merging and reducing government agencies from 43 to 34. This, of course, intensified strikes by the Labour Unions, to which some reviewers of the book attributed his re-election loss, rather than to the massive rigging carried out by the Obasanjo-led People’s Democratic Party in 2003.

Akande also prevented contractors from milking on the state, by slashing proposed contract sums and subsequent variations. In one instance, he bluntly told a contractor, who had submitted a variation of N377 million: “You are the one who incurred this debt on our behalf. It is either you take my terms or you go to court. I can only pay you N140 million … After four days, he came back and accepted my terms” (page 398).

From his previous experience as SSG and Deputy Governor, Akande had seen through civil servants. He knew about budget padding and inflated purchases: “In one instance, they wanted to buy four tyres for an SUV … for N40,000 each”. On further enquiry, Akande discovered that the market price for the tyres varied from N9,000 to N11,000 (page 396). At the end of the day, the tyres were purchased for N10,000 each!

He resisted several attempts to offer bribe, even to prevent his own impeachment. He also resisted attempts by the late Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, to trap him into borrowing the sum of $300 million to repair the Ede-Osogbo Waterworks. Akande went behind the Ooni to get the same Waterworks completed with only half a million dollars, instead $300 million (page 336)!

As a further step to save funds, Akande also exposed the financial shenanigans of his Deputy, Iyiola Omisore, which led to the latter’s impeachment.

It was this prudent management of personnel and financial resources that allowed Akande, without borrowing a penny, to build the new sprawling Secretariat, including the iconic Bola Ige House, which the Osun State Government uses till today: “It is on record that the entire Secretariat and the Bola Ige House were built from savings I made from yearly recurrent expenditure” (page 395). He also embarked on road construction and rehabilitation, including the mapping out of the road network in and around Osogbo, which subsequent administrations embarked upon.

Anyone familiar with Akande’s biography would not be surprised by his prudence and no-nonsense governance style. Here is a man, who started building his own house in Ila with his first salary arrears at about age 20 (page 65); shunned a funeral party for his mother in order to save money for his brother’s education (page 69); became an Accountant at age 23; joined British Petroleum, where he worked in the Accounts Department and role to top executive level; and already knew the inner workings of government before he became Governor.

Source: The Nation