28/10/2020
Nigerians wake up every day to read of discoveries of new food warehouses in different states. While some people conclude that the Governors are hiding the food from the public, or plan to hoard it for their families and cronies, to an extent, with my understanding of Nigeria I respectfully disagree. I really do not think the Governors will come so low as to hide food. Let me tell you what I think is happening.
2. Nigerian government does not have an administrative system to efficiently distribute palliatives. No federal, State, or local government have any income derivative database to use for such purpose. You can imagine we run governments without database. No functional death or birth registries. No functional registries of income distribution within the population, no functional census, worst still, government in some cases have no idea how many employees they have in payroll, we run a ghost system not a government. That explains why you hear of several CBN intervention programs, it ends up in the pockets of politicians and does not trickle down, there reason is there is no functional system to distribute social intervention program in Nigeria. So when states received the palliatives, they really did not know where to start.
3. Some years back together with some Nigerians in diaspora, we tried everything humanly possible to build such a system in Nigeria, the Nigerian government kept resisting it. This has nothing to do with Buhari or his government. We wanted to build a system similar to the Social Security Numbers as found in most developed societies like United States. Nigeria has over 12 different databases that are not working and incapable of synchronization functions. The only system Nigeria built that came closer to being functional is the banks BVN, however, the BVN does not have a social function linking it to individual income base other than banking identification. So, in summary, Nigeria has no functional database that can be used to alleviate poverty based on income or palliative distribution.
4. In 2017, when the World bank decided to distribute the Conditional cash transfer program in Nigeria to the very poor in five selected state, they discovered Nigeria had no database for them to use, the apex bank resorted to putting together a custom database themselves through Finance Ministry and NDE which they used. Which country in the world will allow an International agency to put together such a database on her behalf? Why do we have a government if we are incapable of developing our own development systems? How do our Economist reach economic conclusions without functional national databases? Things like these happen only in Nigeria where we have people in government who have no Capacity to implement public administrations, No business being in government or run effective bureaucratic systems.
5. So, what you see happening today in the palliative distributions is that Governors received this palliative but do not know where to start distributing it because they have no functional distribution state databases.
6. Some state resort to distribute the palliatives through Politicians in the ward level, some resort to distributing it through local chiefs, some governors planned to distribute it to made up list of widows, it is a shame that sixty years after independence we have no functional system to distribute palliatives or CBN initiatives to reduce poverty. It is a shame that sixty years after independence we still resort to primitive distribution initiatives in a 21st century world. You can all see the consequences of a failed educational system over the years.
7. The Nigerian government should as a matter of urgency put in place a system. Not at federal level, not at state level, the system should be built on local government level. Let every local government in the country build an income derivatives database linked with internal revenue and tax systems of the local Councils. Let every individual and small businesses in Local councils be properly identified and all already existing database systems like national ID, National Passports, Voters registration cards, school records, bank BVN all be synchronized to a simple income based database, managed by our own type of Social Security Administration. This explanation sounds complex, but it is not. We just need Nigerians who know what to do to manage our resources. National wealth is not how much resources you have, it is how well you are able to manage the resources you have. Africa is where we are today because our Political managers lack Capacity to do what they are assigned or elected to do.
8. Our failure is a failure in Public administration, though greatly influenced by politics. The Nigerian government bureaucracy, over the years hijacked by Politicians and their appointees, who have usurped the functions or traditional bureaucrats have failed. If we fail to fix this system now, the looting we just witnessed will be considered a child’s play compared to what may befall us in the future. Trying to appeal to the conscience of the Public not to loot and destroy property is counterproductive, a hungry man does not think properly if food is before him, what we need to do is to fix the system. Fix the system, do it right once and for all.
9. If we had a system in Place as explained above, distributing CBN intervention programs or food palliatives would have been extremely easy. First, Palliatives are distributed to Local Government headquarters, Chairmen would have used the database system, the system contains everyone’s names within the Council, and it is linked to individual phone numbers. Text message alerts should have been sent to the residents within the Council and distribution would have been done alphabetically based on last names with designated pick up locations.
10. You can now understand why some palliatives got stored to the point of getting spoilt, we have a government, but we have no system, we have structures without workable systems. While leadership plays a significant role on why things hardly work, more important is the system. Until we decide to sit down and fix this system, the dividends of democracy will never reach the people. This is what I mean in most of my writings when I say Nigeria is organized to fail and that Nigeria has no system.
