An Open Letter To His Excelency Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello (Asb) Executive Governor Of Niger State
Your Excellency Sir.
A leader is assessed by the ovation from society “wherever” he go or the pains of the society “whenever” he goes. Such a twisted reality has made leadership responsibility a win or nothing exposition. As such with a year in to your administration as the Chief Executive Officer of Niger State it has become imperative that your administration has had to deal with more difficulties than ealier anticipated a metamorphosis of decayed structural, Institutional and infrastructure of governance spanning the past 16years of plutocratic policy package as well as the socio-political and economic decisions implemented by the PDP.
The 2015 decision by Electorates to unanimously extinguish the raging political inferno in the form of PDP lead government is an obvious manifestation of failure despite having been in political control for 16 unforgiving years. Equally, over the same period, the administrative mechanism of state have all been compromised with inefficiency predominating a regime of high allocation from federation account and less than average internally generated revenuemobilization or profile, next to nothing in savings and exponential debt burden a reality that may have come to hunt your government.
With the present unfavourable “Financial weather” a critically wholistic re-evaluation of the state financial structure has become a matter of “Urgent Necessity” an analysis with well defined objectives which among other things should include.
A comprehensive evaluation of government expenditure with objective of reducing the cost of governance, instill financial integrity and efficiency.
– Reorganize and strengthen both political and state institutions of government aimed at blocking leakages waste and corruption in public offices.
– A radical departure from low internal generation of Revenue and depending less on federal allocation by reviewing and remodeling of existing tax policy structure (Digitalization of tax collection framework)
– Taking lesson from President Muhammadu Buhari’s strategy of reducing Federal Ministries by half half from over 40 to just over 20 hence reducing the cost of maintaining those offices and improving efficiency in addition to chatting an objective clear cut policy direction with focus on (quality and not numbers)
– Analyse the significance, performance and reduce the number of Agencies finance by the state government in addition to productive utilization to help your government resolve existing immediate challenges.
Your Excellency Sir
As a leader with indept business acumen and experience may have already know. Contemporary capitalist economic model advocated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and implemented by various government globally is in most part basically rescheduling the inevitable economy crash. Predicated on engaging the symptoms of a disease coused by a virus and not the virus itself.
Realistically, such economy crisis management paradigm or (Damage control) has no place in a polity still in it’s experimental stage of democracy as Nigeria and by economic extension, any policy that promote taking of loan to payback previous loan or taking loan to service recurrent expenditure consistently would face fundamental economic decline on the long run and ramification that will be hard to swallow by electorates (Masses) therefore in Niger State as in any other state of the federation, economic initiative must be rooted from within. In addition to resolving divergent socio-polical, economic challenges and conflicting intrest that predominates in the political circle.
Acknowledging a situation is one thing, the ability to chart proactively practical or feasible course of action to address the problem is another thing entirely. With declining price of crude oil internationally the need for government to initiate alternative souces of revenue has become expeditiously necessary compounded by near absence of effective policy framework with the private business initiative in mind. It is on this premise that i have taken the time to examine alternative sources of taxable revenue mechanism for the State Government. Observably the problem is not that of resources alone rather and largely articulation of ideas predicated on economic relations of the people. It is on this backdrop that government will be required to determine how to promote private business within the state and to improve revenue profile on the long run.
Your Excellency Sir. Having dug deep in to existing internal revenue mechanisms what the government has been loosing on a daily basis is quite significant and could go a long way in augmenting the financial challenges of your government in addition to improving the fast eroding political goodwill of your government through new strategy of engaging nigerlites accross different communication platforms.
“May God save Nigeria from enemies within and without”
TSADO MOHAMMED.
