By Owei Lakemfa
The World Bank in its May 2025 Report stated that 75.5 per cent of rural Nigerians are engaged in deadly combats with poverty. The number in the urban areas, it said, is 41.3 per cent with an additional 13 million Nigerians, projected to slip below the poverty line by the end of the year. It also stated that 63 per cent of the entire peoples of the Giant of Africa are experiencing deprivations in various aspects of life.
The slavish Bank, which praises the Tinubu administration for allegedly taking hard decisions such as the removal of fuel subsidy and floating of the Naira, now says these measures, which have resulted in high inflation rates, are responsible for the deepening poverty. To these should be added the ever-rising electricity tariff and the prohibitive cost of fuel that have shot up transportation costs. This is to the extent that while the Constitution guarantees Nigerians the fundamental right to movement, this is circumscribed by the high cost of transportation.
For those who may point out that the Tinubu administration has increased the National Minimum Wage from Buhari’s N30,000 to N70,000, may I respectfully point out that wages are not about quantum, but value. For instance, while the National Minimum Wage under the Jonathan administration was N18,000, it purchased two-and-half bags of foreign rice. As at July 2025, the Minimum Wage can only buy three quarters of the same rice which now goes for N98,000. The N70,000 Minimum Wage, which many states are yet to pay, cannot even buy the local Big Bull rice which now goes for N78,000 in Abuja.
Such frightening statistics, as those released by the World Bank, are enough to cause emergency sessions of the National Assembly, NASS, to seek solutions. But the Assembly’s main focus seems to be how to multiply bureaucracies. It is like parents with starving children thinking of how to secure some morsel, while their eldest child is obsessed with how to upgrade his iPhone. So, rather than double down on how to provide food for those starving, or schools for the over 18 million out-of-school children, the NASS from July 4-5, 2025, was quite busy holding Public Hearings on its money-guzzling ritual of constitutional amendments.
The main constitutional amendments are not about production or development, but how to increase the bureaucracies and gobble more money. This, for a debtor-country with a current over hanging debt of N149.39 trillion or $91.46 billion, is a prodigal venture. More so when it is a 22.725 per cent increase over the 2024 debt, and the government continues to take more foreign loans with a promisory note to be redeemed by future generations. All these are against the background of the Tinubu administration vowing to reduce the bueaurocracy by implementing the Oronsanye Report.
That Report proposes the merger of 220 of the 541 agencies, and reducing the number of agencies from 263 to 161. Unfortunately, that remains a renewed hope as the administration, rather than reduce bureaucracy, has been expanding it. For instance, in July 2024, it established a new Ministry of Livestock Development, and three months later, created another ministry, this time, one for Regional Development. It has followed these up by creating six regional development agencies.
To further expand the bureaucracy and possibly more ‘jobs for the boys’ where agencies in the country usually have three or four executive directors, each of these new ones will have a dozen. It means just for these regional agencies, the country’s depleted finances will be burdened with 72 new Executive Directors. If you add the six Managing Directors, that comes to 78 new chiefs to be catered for; each with a paraphernalia of office to be serviced from the national purse. But all these are nothing much compared to the NASS constitutional amendment Hearings wherein 31 new states are proposed with an upgrade of the Federal Capital Territory to the status of a state.
The current 36 states are essentially a burden. Except Lagos, the remaining 35 are financially crippled, balancing on crutches of monthly allocations and oil derivation. One politician described them as retarded babies perpetually in need of feeding bottles. If we are to add 32 new states, each with an “Executive” Governor, a ‘spare tyre’ Deputy Governor, a ‘Yes’ State Assembly and a money-guzzling state bureaucracy, our economy may simply collapse. The very idea of adding more states to the current ones is a clear indication that those proposing them simply want a greater pie of the national cake baked not from production, but a dilapidated rentier economy. It is very easy and convenient to ask for more states because they are mere consumer agencies. They are not required to add any value.
Then, of course, since Nigeria is a ‘democracy’, there will be trade-offs and some elites will feed fatter, raising and moving funds to secure backing for their bids. In all these, there is hardly any critical reflection, including the fact that in what has turned out to be the glorious days of the immediate post-independence First Republic, the entire country was a three-region structure with three regional Premiers running them. Those three men, practically built the foundations of this country and funded their programmes, including virtually free education and solid infrastructural development. Now, we have 36 men trying to do the same job. Rather than pause to reflect and work out a better way forward, the political elites want to burden the country with more states.
There is, of course, another line of profligacy being proposed. The local governments are like states, distribution centres where monthly, federally-collected funds are shared. What makes them more ‘democratic’ than the states is that the sharing of allocated funds is wider. In almost all cases, the sharing starts with the “Executive” Governors taking their own share and passing on the balance to the local governments. The Chairmen and Councillors then meet in their conclaves to pay off the local government staff as they can be troublesome and meddlesome. Then they pay ransom to the traditional rulers in their jurisdiction, and then share the rest of the money with the Chairman taking the lion share.
As for their mandate, they send out armed touts wearing reflective jackets to extort traders and motorists. This is the story of most of the 774 local governments in the country. So, I am rather surprised that the proposal is merely to increase them by 18, making a total 792. My apologies; I almost forgot that there is also a proposal for another bureaucracy: the “Establishment of State Security Council” to advise governors on security. If Nigerians were allowed to vote between having food and more bureaucracies, I have no doubt the ‘Ayes’ will have it.
