The Gospel of Common Sense

Senator Ben Bruce explains why he lent a hand to the people of Osun State in their challenging moment

Recently, I decided to donate my wardrobe allowance to widows in my constituency and to civil servants in Osun state.

At the time of taking that decision, I did not even anticipate that it would be received with extreme emotions across both divides. My decision has attracted applause and condemnation and it is perhaps necessary for me to elaborate on why I did what I did.

In the first week of this month, my counselor and priest whose name I will not reveal had drawn my attention to the call by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), to assist civil servants in Osun who were going through hard times.

Several churches and philanthropic organisations had already donated to them and I felt that those gestures had gone a long way.

And then my priest drew my attention to a headline in the papers which described in detail the plight of those workers. I was moved!

It further moved me to think that many of them would be entering into the holy month of Ramadan without adequate preparations to break their obligatory fast. This realization moved me to intervene and intervene I did.

And like I did say in my tweet, "we are starting in Osun, but we will not end there. I will do as much to help workers who've not been paid in other states".
My action was not meant as a slight to Governor Rauf Aregbesola who must be commended for increasing the Internally Generated Revenue of the state of Osun by over 300 per cent.

It is common knowledge that through such initiatives as Opon Imo, Aregbesola, a solid disciple of the progressive and powerful political movement of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has made an impact in the lives of the citizens of the state of Osun.

While giving a Ramadan lecture at the Women Development Center in Abuja some days ago, Governor Aregbesola rightly said he was not helpless because he had Allah (SAW).

This is true and I agree with Governor Aregbesola. By making my donation, I was simply demonstrating the love that God expects us to show to those who might be going through difficult times.

In one of the hadiths, Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him), said "none of you believes until he wants for his brother what he wants for himself".

It was this brotherly love that motivated me to obey the call of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, to show love and brotherliness to our brothers in Osun.
No one should think my donation is an indictment on the state of Osun. That would be a misread of the situation.

This issue is a national emergency. It is not an issue localized only to Osun state. As I tweeted 2 weeks ago, as many as 18 states may be affected by this challenge.
The issue of unpaid salaries is but an urgent reminder that we need to reform our revenue allocation system and devolve powers and responsibilities from the federal government to the states and local governments.

The current revenue allocation formula where the Federal Government gets 52% of national revenues while the 36 states get 26.72% and Local Governments get 20.60% is in need of a change.

It was rather inconvenient to bring this subject up during the electioneering period but now is an expedient time to address it.

The Nigerian federal government is too big and powerful to the extent that it is almost a joke to call our federal government federal.

The word federal indicates that a system of government is in place whereby several states form a unity but remain independent in internal affairs.

Is this true of Nigeria? Certainly not! Our states are dependent on the federal government, meaning that the federal government is not federal. A better term would be a central or unitary government.
Ideally, states gather together to form a federation and that federation is of their making. But in our own peculiar situation, the military class of 1966 and its successors banded together at the federal level and created states and that is why our thinking in Nigeria is that the center is the creator of the units instead of vice versa.

But we cannot continue in this anomaly where the federal government sets up a minimum wage and expects all states to pay that minimum wage without taking into effect that though all states are equal, they are not all uniform in their economic capabilities.

This economic inequality is not due to laziness or any other form of subjective incapacity.
No!
Take a state like Lagos or Rivers or Delta. It is not of their making that one was a Federal Capital which for decades received the lion’s share of capital development which attracted a population shift or that others had oil which caused them to be an oil hub which positively affected their economy.

These are providential circumstances which made these states better able to perform economically and it is thus not sound business sense to expect these states to compete with others in such areas like salaries and what have you.
The 8th National Assembly has to put on its thinking cap and device ways to devolve powers and responsibilities from the federal government to the states and this must come with a review of the allocations formula in favor of the states.
Our situation has changed from what it used to be in the military era. Today's states are entirely responsible for education from primary to secondary level and jointly responsible for tertiary education with the federal government.
If the federal government builds roads, they build roads too. If the federal government constructs power plants, they build their own Independent Power plants. If the federal government builds airports, they build their own state airports.

Other than the military, police, paramilitary and foreign affairs, there is nothing that the federal government does that the states do not do.
Conversely, there is plenty that the states do that the federal government does not do including building markets, constructing and servicing intercity roads, providing social services for orphans, indigent residents and the elderly. With all these, they also have to pay teachers salary and run a healthcare system while ensuring that intra and intercity transport services are up and running.

Is it conceivable that they can do all these on just a paltry 26.72% split amongst 36 states?
Something has to give. We must generate ideas to help the states survive and be better able to pay salaries and provide social services otherwise we could have an Arab Spring on our hands.

This is why I had proposed matching grants in an earlier article I wrote as a way of helping our states help themselves.
Let us reduce the allocation to the federal government to 30%, however, we should not add the 20% that will be taken from them to the allocation to the states.
Rather, that money should go to an escrow account and be used for matching grants to encourage states to increase their Internally Generated Revenue.

So, every month, the federation accounts allocation committee, FAAC, disburses the 80% of the federally generated revenue, thereafter, states now present to the FAAC their Internally Generated Revenue figures which must be verifiable. After verification, the FAAC then gives each state an amount equal to the IGR they generated to be taken from the 20% in escrow.

States that do not generate any IGR will simply get their monthly allocation and nothing else.

This will spur states to explore alternative sources of income and wean them off their current dependency on oil. Because, let us face it, the days of oil are numbered.

Ideas are ruling the world and Nigeria must prepare for that new world or prepare to fade away. I don't know about you, but I do not want to fade away.

Apple momentarily displaced ExxonMobil as the world's most valuable company then dethroned permanently Coke as the world’s most valuable brand proving that the days when the world relied on minerals and commodities is going.

An ideas revolution is taking over the world. And Nigerian youths are part of this ideas revolution that is taking over the world.

We need to reform Nigeria so she is better able to give our youths the platform they need to turn their ideas from negatives like 419; terrorism and kidnapping to ideas this generate billions.
We gave the world Chinedu Echeruo who recently sold his app to Apple for a billion dollars.

Just this past Monday, Her Majesty, the Queen of England honoured four Nigerian youths as part of her inaugural Queen’s Young Leaders (YQL) program.

Nigerian Youths need the right environment. There are many Chinedu Echeruos among our youth who can turn ideas to billion dollar apps. We just need to reform Nigeria's structure in such a way that the federating states are better able to provide that right environment for all to thrive in.

All I am saying is that I just want to make Commonsense.

Bruce is a senator representing Bayelsa East and the Chairman, Silverbird Entertainment Group.

(This Day)