Harm The Poor Governance In Nigeria!

by L.Chinedu Arizona-Ogwu

A constitution of a democratic country distinguishes the ‘ordinary policies’ and the legislations
on one hand and creates a basic and a more ingrained structure of government (Galston 2005)
on the other. It represents the authoritative order of a state as a foundation of the democratic
order of a state mechanism. Setting the defined values, norms and further explaining the grounds
of behaviorism, it is the Bible of any democratic nation.

Before now, the world understood that Nigeria is a democratic country where democracy had been failing for a long time. It is viewed as the only democratic country in the world to have the option of non-partial hand-picked government (government-by-appointment), where the constitution stating the presence of press freedom was ignored; Nigeria became the new venture of democratic reforms and conditional freedom of press.

Today, economic disparity is one of the most crucial risks the people of Nigeria has to expect in the nearness future. It is ‘tightly interconnected with corruption, demographic challenges, fragile states, social imbalances and asset-price collapse’ and is influenced by governance failures. If the authority leaves the challenges uncheked, it can influence chronic health failure, illicit trade, food insecurity, mass protest and state insecurity.

This government was sworn in to reform the democratic flaw that infected
past regime at the same time shifting the paradigm of obstacles for Nigeria socio-economic growth.With constant international concern in the past few years regarding the degradation of human right, the world outside Nigeria ranked it to be most risky and vulnerable for human right to live.

There is three specific reasons theNigerian economy had failed to grow in recent times; of which deficit few problem we face emanates.

Constitutionally;a president or the governor in most parliamentary systems can set a budget and know that, in all but the direst of crises, it will become law; but ours has no such asurrance.
The second is that the situation has been complicated by the weakness of party authority in the national assembly. A pernicious system of ‘earmarks’ has grown up—in effect, private appropriations granted by the Lawmakers to its members for favourite projects (known as ‘constituency project’ for their districts or states), often agreed as a result of a near-corrupt process of ‘log-rolling’ (or trading of favours).
The third and most important reason for the economy backdrop—and the hardest factor to remove—is political. This is the acute ideological polarisation of the national assembly and its attendant political tribes.

There is a need to check steep rise in the petrol, gas, electricity and water prices, raising taxes and interest rates, reducing agricultural subsidy, shutting down state owned factories and job retrenchment, etc. These recommended solutions and policy measures smack of reverse Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s tendencies. These tend to harm the poor often in the guise of poverty reduction and create a rich, powerful, elite class of people, accustomed to ritzy western lifestyle with all the perks.

People grumble when the natural gas, fuel, electricity and water rates go up and hurt the pocket monies.
In order to confront the economic downturn, the whole world has resorted to expansionary monetary policy, reducing interest rates to historical low in order to jumpstart the economy, enhance financial activities and create jobs; Nigeria needs to learn from these actions. Even China, usually conservative in monetary policy matters, has undertaken a drastic interest rate cut.

There has been no tangible investment in the country for nearly a decade now since apart the building of the Eleme Petro-chemicals Company (now Indorama) for a variety of reasons including global economic slowdown, two decades of army dominated harmful regime, lack of infrastructure and electricity and a failure to create investment friendly climate or attract meaningful investment. If the situation continues, this will make borrowing money more harmful and will put a further dent and damper in the investment climate, reduce economic activities and job creation.

Democratic politicians regard entitlement programmes such as constituency project fund ‘as near-economy backdrop; any president who dares to touch them can expect fierce political denunciation. Sitting politicians inside Nigeria are committed to tax cuts, both for ideological and political motives: as a means of handing out money to their relatively wealthy supporters, and (according to the tenets of supply-side economics) as a way to ensure an economic-growth effect as wealth ‘trickles down’ from rich party stalwalt to poor incumbent politician. With no or minimal consensus on fundamentals, any serious negotiation on deficit-reduction is soon mired in deadlock.

If the pushy, inept and unprofessional Politicians did the same jobs as they do here in recent years and suggested the same remedies as they enforce in this country in the days of the tyranny , they would be unceremoniously and collectively run this nation down. It is a pity that we do not have the guts, confidence and good sense to do the same and come out of the vicious economy setback.

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1 comment

Adekunle j February 5, 2011 - 8:58 am

CITIZENS WELFARE IS WHAT GOOD GOVERNANCE IMPLIES.

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