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Atsar Terver
 Public Commentator
 Port Harcourt
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The tour is just another trick in the bag of the current PDP led Federal government to extort money from the State Governors and also arm-twist them to line up behind Jonathan in 2015. This is the most wasteful government Nigeria has been unfortunate to have in her checkered history. The PDP has evolved into one of the biggest power cult and savage monster in Africa. The party constitutes the greatest impediment to development, prosperity and happiness of this great nation. Nigerians must unite in 2015 to chase out this gang of deceitful leaders or remain perpetually under servitude.

 
Good Governance Tour: Matters Arising.

The current political leadership in Nigeria may not be very good at breeding creative ideas that will make this Nation a better place to live but they are extremely good at springing up all manners of absurdities. When you think they have exhausted their tactics then there emerges a record breaker to rubbish what his predecessors have achieved in the pursuit of vanity. The latest addition to the feathers of this administration’s records of narcissism is the so-called ‘Good Governance Tour’ being conducted by the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku.
 

Though he is one Minister one would do well not to take too seriously, Maku has acquired some queer notoriety for the absurd in the way he goes about his job as Information Minister. It is either he is churning out invectives on critics of the government or mouthing fictitious statistics to prove some non-existent strides of this government. And now he has delved into an odyssey which hitherto would have evoked derision if not anger from the public. As an Information Minister he now goes about with a retinue of journalists and aides, 120 of them, from state-to-state, looking for something to ‘inform’ the public about!

By the way the performance or otherwise of any State Governor is not stargazing and does not require some explorer with a pair of binoculars to detect. It does not require a jamboree by an apparently idle Minister for the people of the state to know, for instance,that the roads in the state are good. What on earth are the Minister and his news-for-cash journalists going to see in one or two days, that the millions of indigenes of the state who are resident in the state all their life won’t see?

Amazingly, in their ignorance and shallow zeal to be in the ‘good books’ of the Presidency, some State Governors are falling heels over each other to host this ‘busybody’ delegation and would even go extra miles to please the Minister through financial pecks so as to get a ‘good report’. It is against this background that I commend the courage of Comrade Oshiomole for calling off Maku’s bluff.

Thanks to Comrade Oshiomole, for refusing to pay for this wasteful jamboree and thereby exposing the scam, without which one would not have known that Maku uses this tour to milk the states dry of their lean resources. With Oshiomole’s revelation, if a state is to provide accommodation, flight tickets, feeding and probably honorarium for each of the 120 delegates, one can reasonably estimate the cost of the visit per state to somewhere in the range of N120 Million. This translates to about N 4.3Billion to cover the 36 States of the Federation! The obvious question is; of what benefit to the Nation is such a huge expenditure? N4.3billion is a lot of money which could be put to better uses that will be of common good to the public, like road rehabilitation, water supply and education.

The other question is why should it take a Maku, to report on the performance of State Governors? What brief did Jonathan give this man when he became minister? Where in the Nigerian constitution did he derive these ‘touring’ powers? Was he appointed by Jonathan or by the Nigerian Governors Forum to report their activities? Have the State Governors sought his help to publicize their work? 

Has the Presidency or the Federal Government become so idle that the Federal Minister of Information now has no work to do and so he now has to scavenge the states for something to do? If so why not just resign?

I am told that the Ministry of information Headquarters in Abuja where Maku holds sway does not even have functional toilets and staffs of the Ministry have to resort to use of nearby fast-food joints to answer the call of nature. If Maku cannot provide good governance to his staff, what a mockery is he making of himself with is ‘Good Governance’ tour?

There is a fundamental problem with the thinking that the Federal Government is a supervisor of the federating states. As far as the Nigerian Constitution is concerned, the Federal Government cannot supervise, assess, evaluate, reward or punish a State Governors’ performance or lack of it. The State Governors are accountable to the people of their States through their respective Houses of Assembly which have the sole authority to remove a non-performing governor.

Even if we assume the tour is for Federal Government projects, one would still expect the works to speak for themselves. A smooth ride from Benin to Lagos by the citizens is a more eloquent testimony of good governance than televised half-hearted rhetoric, video clips and pictures of the Lagos-Benin Highway. Maku’s tour is therefore uncalled-for and whatever outcome there from, of no worth whatsoever.

The tour is just another trick in the bag of the current PDP led Federal government to extort money from the State Governors and also arm-twist them to line up behind Jonathan in 2015. This is the most wasteful government Nigeria has been unfortunate to have in her checkered history. The PDP has evolved into one of the biggest power cult and savage monster in Africa. The party constitutes the greatest impediment to development, prosperity and happiness of this great nation. Nigerians must unite in 2015 to chase out this gang of deceitful leaders or remain perpetually under servitude.
 

 

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