AUTOGRAPH BY NSEOBONG OKON-EKONG
There is a deafening public outcry over the national unemployment rate, everywhere you turn. This year, KPMG, a global leader in audit, tax and advisory services projected Nigeria’s unemployment rate to hit 40.6%, which is a 2.9% increase from 37.7%, the previous year.
Both 2022 and 2023 are very significant in the country’s political calendar, which follows a four-year season; like seed and harvest time: There is a campaign year, when the ground is fertile to sow empty promises. What follows is the election year, when, having sown the wind, there is an expectation to reap the whirlwind.
Nigerians are currently living with the draconian consequences of their electoral choices, which happened to them; whether by crook or by hook. There is every reason to believe that the present set of national and sub-national leaders produced from the 2023 general elections emerged on purpose rather than by chance.
They are the ones who went about during the 2022 campaigns with brightly decorated potentials. At the end of the day, everything turned out like a rich bank account at the end of the rainbow.
Now that the chickens have come home to roost, Nigerians should be applauding the ingenuity with which their leaders are dealing with the unemployment rate.
In Kano State, Governor Abba Yusuf appointed 97 people as special advisers and assistants. What is playing out in Kano and elsewhere, adequately, sums the subject of a research by Carrie Stecki, Ph.D titled, ‘The Greater the Effort, the Sweeter the Reward (and the Harder the Loss).
Everyone knows the 2023 governorship election in Kano was a fierce confrontation between the All Progressives Congress and the New Nigeria Peoples Party. Yusuf carried the flag of the NNPP. With this appointment, at least two persons from each of Kano’s 44 local government areas have secured gainful employment, but what is that compared to its population of over 16 million people?
“Nigerians are currently living with the draconian consequences of their electoral choices, which happened to them; whether by crook or by hook”
Better to quickly reward a segment that can be quite restive, like the thugs in Kano, popularly known as ‘Yan daba’. These deadly killer gangs have given Kano a bad name, sometimes beheading people in the name of religion. Investment that can grow the state’s commerce and agriculture to retain its pride of place as the largest non-oil and gas economy in Nigeria can wait.
Given Nigeria’s patriarchal society, where men dominate all aspects of power, Adamawa State Governor, Ahmadu Fintiri would have been mocked eternally if his second term bid was successfully blocked by Aishatu Ahmed, a woman who contested against him on the platform of the All Progressives Congress.
The governorship election in Adamawa went into overdrive. Once he was able to wriggle free, Fintiri was determined to show that he doesn’t live under a rock. Unconcerned about what anybody else may think, he hired 47 people to give him visibility in the media.
They include two special advisers, 10 senior special advisers and 35 special assistants on social media and content creation. The world must hear he conquered a woman!
Up till now, no one has come near the record set by the immediate past Governor of Cross River State, Senator Ben Ayade in creating superfluous jobs.
Five months to the end of his tenure, he engaged 89 aides. In one fell swoop, the former governor of Cross River appointed 18 Special Assistants on Religious Matters. As he continued to pray harder and sought the face of God on the best way to move the state forward, Ayade received divine messages: Cross River needed to consume more groundnuts and for that, Ayade appointed a Special Assistant on groundnut processing. On the same day, he got other SAs to help him deliver on water supply, fertiliser supply, food storage, yam export and dry season farming.
Enugu State Governor, Peter Mbah, is chasing his own trophy for appointing the most number of aides in the South East. He has recruited 77, so far and still counting. It’s a sure thing; Mbah would need SAs to relate with IPOB and another to deal with sit-at-home.
Many have criticized President Bola Tinubu’s appointment of 48 ministers, pegging their worries around the high cost of governance. In point of fact, neither the president nor these governors have done anything outside the law. Section 196, sub-section 1-3 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended, allows the House of Assembly of the states to decide on the matter aides to the governor.
Those who lap up the opportunity of these seemingly redundant appointments know it’s the closest they can get to Xanadu. If nothing, they can tell others of its magnificence and beauty.
