14,000 heads are better than one

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY MAHMUD JEGA

Governors all over this country must be green with envy at the quantity of advice that Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike is getting from his very large retinue of advisers. Not only advice; the quantity of assistance that Wike gets in the implementation of his policies from his stadium-sized army of assistants must be the envy of every other governor in Nigeria.

On October 11, this year, newspapers splashed the story that Governor Wike appointed 14,000 special advisers, 319 Ward Liaison Officers and 40 Local Government Area Liaison Officers. Wike’s Media Assistant Kelvin Ebiri said “the advisers will play a pivotal role in the administration.” Twenty-four hours later, another story splashed that Wike appointed 28,000 Special Assistants for political units. Three weeks later, Wike increased the number of special assistants to 100,000, nearly thrice the capacity of Port Harcourt’s Adokiye Amiesimaka Stadium. And while swearing them in last Friday, Wike announced that he was doubling the number to 200,000. This was because, he said, his inbox “nearly crashed” due to petitions from other Rivers State people who are “willing to serve” because “the work is too much” for 100,000 assistants.

Willing to serve? Willing to chop is more like it. Wike himself said at last Friday’s inauguration that he made the appointments in order to put food in the appointees’ stomachs. He said it was in fulfillment of a promise he made to “begin to implement a policy of stomach infrastructure of putting money in the pockets of Rivers people.” He added, “I am using Rivers money to put food on the table of Rivers people, so why should that be anybody’s problem? Is there anything wrong in using your money to put food in your stomach?” There is none, except that many things are definitionally, historically, politically, administratively and legally jumbled up here, including the meaning of advisers, the meaning of assistants, quantity of advice, quality of advice, timing of advice, channel of advice, fulfillment of promise and meaning of stomach infrastructure.

We probably didn’t have an institution of Special Advisers in the First Republic. The 1979 Constitution first introduced them, however stating that the President and governors must seek legislative approval for the number of advisers they can appoint. President Shehu Shagari sought National Assembly approval to appoint 15 advisers but it approved ten, of which he assigned three to Vice President Alex Ekwueme. Although the National Assembly approved 15 Special Advisers for President Buhari in 2015, he left most of the posts unfilled. To each man his style. These 14,000 Special Advisers that Wike appointed, did the Rivers State Assembly approve the number? If it didn’t, then it was illegal and if it did, then the Assembly is worse than a rubber stamp. If the Finance Ministry pays them without a State Assembly resolution approving the number, did the State Auditor General query it, as auditors used to do in times past?

In this Republic, proliferation of Special Advisers and Assistants began as the 2003 elections approached. I know a man who was appointed along with two dozen others as a Special Assistant in 2003. At first they were not assigned any portfolios. When they pressed for it, the Secretary to the State Government issued a circular assigning to them some portfolios. Insofar as those were the same portfolios assigned to commissioners, they sought further clarification from the SSG. He told them to report to the respective ministries. When they went there, they asked for their offices but there were none. The SSG then issued another circular and said they should work from their homes. Has Wike got offices and portfolios for his 14,000 advisers and 200,000 assistants, or are they to work from boats moored in the Rivers creeks?

There is this saying that two heads are better than one, which underlines the importance of seeking advice. As officials of the old Sokoto State Students Association when we were students, we once visited the late Emir of Gwandu Haruna al-Rashid. He said to us, “Before a person does anything, he should think, think deeply, and then seek advice. That is because however much you think, you will not see a certain angle to an issue but another person will immediately see it because of his experience in life.”

If two heads are better than one, by logical extension, 14,000 heads are better than two heads and Governor Wike will get a huge quantity of advice from all his advisers. My only worry is the logistics of it. A meeting with 14,000 advisers must he held in a stadium or at least, at the convocation theatre of the University of Port Harcourt. When you assemble so many people in one place and seek their advice, there is something called cacophony, a harsh, discordant mixture of sounds when too many people are saying too many things at the same time. There is also such a thing as playing to the gallery. Many of the advisers could take their cue from Governor Wike, who resorts to singing, dancing and gyrating whenever he sees a crowd. It is not for nothing that the best deliberations and the most quality advice usually emanates from small councils of people, not from rallies. Therefore, two heads are better than one if the heads are not more than a certain number!

Wike has only seven months left to serve as governor. Chances are he will never meet face to face with some of the 14,000 advisers, will never know what they are thinking and will never benefit from their advice. Which is probably just as well because many of them have no advice to offer. Since the governor himself said the appointment is meant to put food in their stomachs, they will be preoccupied with trying to make the best out of it in the seven months available. There is almost no public servant in Nigeria who is satisfied with his salary, so these advisers will cost Rivers State Treasury much more than their salaries. Memos will soon be flying around as they seek more money for travel, equipment and “to discharge their duties.”

 Will Nyesom Wike even listen to them? There was this story in the Second Republic, that GNPP leader Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim ran into Dr. Bala Mohammed at an airport, and he was introduced to him as Political Adviser to Kano State Governor Mohammed Abubakar Rimi.  Waziri bluntly told Bala, “You have no work!” Reminded that he was Rimi’s Political Adviser, Waziri said, “Rimi does not listen to advice!” Even though he holds many meetings in London, does it look like Wike listens to advice?

Then there are the 200,000 special assistants, ward and local government officers. The 1979 Constitution, of which the 1999 Constitution is a clone, did not envisage that Federal Government will have any structure other than the state government to inform and help it at the state level. In any case, Federal Government ministries and agencies have numerous offices in every state. So, it was quite controversial in 1980 when President Shagari proposed to appoint Presidential Liaison Officers [PLOs] in every state, to help “coordinate” the work of federal agencies. The controversy was enhanced when many of the PLOs he appointed were defeated governorship candidates of his NPN party.

In the same vein, Governor Wike already has the unmitigated help and assistance of all the local government chairmen and councilors in Rivers State in any ward or polling unit. The biggest institutional sick babies of the 1999 Constitution are the State Independent Electoral Commissions. Wherever they conducted LG elections, the party in power in that state won everything, with one or two exceptions. In some states, governors do not even bother to hold LG elections but appoint their own persons as caretaker chairmen and councilors. With that kind of facility, in addition to political party structures reaching all the way down to every ward and village, what assistants do you need again?

Wike was however not the first governor in Nigeria to install an unbeatable election-winning grassroots organization. Governor Ibrahim Saminu Turaki once set up a five-member committee per each polling unit in Jigawa State, through which he disbursed a monthly grant. This matter came up for discussion one day in 2007 when President Umaru Yar’adua hosted 5 of us to lunch on a Sunday afternoon, just before he did a live television chat [probably the only one he did]. He was asked about the Turaki formula, and he said, “With that kind of system on ground, who can defeat you in an election?” It means with 200,000 Treasury-paid agents manning the wards and polling units for Wike, who can defeat him in any election?

Governor Wike’s impulsive, expensive and extra-budgetary creation of hundreds of thousands of offices however calls for a national soul search on how to curb excesses of state governors. The Constitution expected state assemblies to do that but they are mostly asleep. If other outgoing and incoming governors see the electoral value of what Wike did to their own personal political goals, many of them will replicate it, at the expense of responsible governance. This thing called “stomach infrastructure,” first popularised by then Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose in 2014. What happened to the old wisdom that it is better to teach a person to fish than to give him fish?