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obenox@hotmail.com Padua, Italy

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FOR PROJECTS/PROGRAMMES CONTINUITY COMMISSION IN NIGERIA

he sinful habit of abandoning beneficial programmes, policies, or uncompleted (and in some cases completed) viable or socially sustainable projects by the federal, state and local governments is a vampire on the nation's jugular. The habit distorts and delays Nigeria's development process much more than the much publicised sin of corrupt practices. The sin of corrupt practices is venial when compared to the evil of abandoning public projects and programmes; moreso, in cases where huge sums of money had been committed to the abandoned projects/programmes. Hapless citizens often watch in anger and in perplexity as governments, for one excuse or the other, abandon or stiffle projects or programmes started by their predecessor/s. These governments violate constitutional provisions on fiscal responsibility.

There has to be a special agency now, an ombudsman sort of, to check-mate the perpetrators of this act.

An administration at any level of government in Nigeria perceives a project, programme or policy it believes the government can finance and is beneficial to the governed. It embarks on it, it injects funds, often running into millions, or even billions of Naira into the project, gets it to a level, (or even completes and commissions it), and then leaves office. A new government moves in, for some motives, it abandons it. The money spent on the project is washed into the drains with time.

Scenes like the above have been created many times before by the various levels of government since independence, and for now, there are not enough indications that we have had enough of such retrograde politics.

Some time in the past, the Newswatch magazine traversed the Nigerian landscape documenting projects abandoned by the various governments in the country. The weekly magazine was overwhelmed with what it saw and that prompted it to do a cover story on the issue.

Abandoning viable or sustainable social projects/programmes of preceding governments is not the art of military governments alone. Civilian governments are in it also. Today, the speed at which governments at the various levels are rushing to finish up and commission projects as the end of their tenures approaches not only attests to the reality that the malaise of projects abandonment is still with us, it is also giving the out-going leaders some nightmare.

When Sam Mbakwe was serving as the governor of the old Imo state, he peered into the future and built an electric power generating plant at Amaraku to supplement the power provided by the then NEPA. Many rural and urban areas benefited then from the plant. But succeeding governments not only allowed the power plant to die, at one point the components of the plant were dismantled and auctioned! Today inadequate power supply is the greatest challenge facing productivity in Nigeria. Nigerians have no choice other than to believe in the out-going government's promise that the power supply situation in the country shall improve after it leaves office.

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Lateef Jakande serving as the governor of Lagos state looked ahead of his time and embarked on the metro system of urban mass transit for Lagosians. When he left office, the succeeding goverment raised some dubious arguments it used to derail the project. Today the Lagos state government still clings to buses as the major means of urban mass transit. Optimists are at the same time clinging to hope, expecting that the numerous buses the state government recently unleashed on the roads would generate enough revenues for their replacement before they are thrown to the scrap yard.

Similar woeful stories of vital projects/programmes abandoned by the various governments can be found all over Nigeria.

There are many factors, mostly unsavoury, that influence administrations to abandon sustainable projects/programmes/policies on which their predecessors had invested huge sums of public money. Sectional greed, ethnicity, religious bigotry, and to a larger extent, crass ignorance of the virtues of even and grassroots development, are among them.

Many elected executives once in office tend to penalize areas that did not co-operate with them during the electoral process. In doing this they go to the extent of abandoning or stiffling projects sited in those areas by their predecessor/s.

In some cases the head of the new administration would want to transfer the project to his area of origin; he/she first abandons the project with the intention to remodel it on a latter date for relocation; and often, with a compromised and acquiescent legislature, he would therefore not broach any moral questions in abandoning the unfinished project in spite of the huge sums of money already committed to it by his predecessor/s.

Many of the states in Nigeria today are one-city states. This is one of the ugly results of military governance. The military would create a state, name a town as the state capital; a military governor or administrator is moved into the state capital, with time he provides amenities and social infrastruture, such as potable water, electricity, boulevards, street light, educational institutions, etc, all only within the state capital. People abandon other areas of the state for the state capital. Meanwhile, people come to have the erroneous belief that amenities and development projects are meant for the state capital alone. Any development project sited outside the state capital is regarded as an aberration. Leaders groomed in this school of thought exist today in Nigeria and may emerge in many governments after the next elections. It is such leaders that abandon viable or sustainable, social projects sited outside the state capital by their predecessor/s.

There is also the belief that the drive to get kick-backs from fresh contracts prompts some government executives to abandon projects started by their predecessors. Often a project is abandoned, remodelled, relocated and fresh contracts awarded for it.

However the short-comings of the out-going administration, it has charted some sound economic policies for the nation; this is manifested by the relative stability of the Naira's exchange rate with other currencies. For now, the fear of the unlimited reach of the numerous anti-corruption and financial crimes agencies in Nigeria has become the begining of wisdom for Nigeria's public officers and their external collaborators. On the international market front, the out-going administration did successfully undertake some internationally- acclaimed, capital market reforms but there are some elements of apprehension on the foreign scene that any slight, wrong shift in economic policies, or bad politics, by the federal government may torpedo such successes.

Also, within the past eight years, we have seen many state and local governments embark on grassroots development and equitable distribution of development projects in their areas of jurisdiction. These are the gains of democracy that must be sustained.

We must therefore introduce measures now to check-mate leaders who for indecent motives, may have the tendency to abandon viable or sustainable social projects/programmes/policies started by their predecessor/s.

The Projects/Programmes Continuity Commission

The Projects/Programmes Continuity Commission has to be established by an Act of the National Assembly.

The Commission has to have its headquarters in Abuja and a zonal office in a chosen city in each of the six geopolitical zones of the country, as well as having public complaints boxes in all the states and local governments' headquarters.

The Commission has to intervene whenever it observes or receives petition from members of the public that any government is about to embark on the exercise of wasting public funds through outright abandonment or deliberate stiffling of viable or sustainable, beneficial projects/programmes/policies started by its predecessor/s.

The law establishing the Commission must empower it to adopt stipulated measures aimed at restraining any government from embarking on the wasteful exercise of abandoning or stiffling such projects/programmes/policies as enunciated above.

Whenever any government is seen set to abandon an established programme or policy, or an uncompleted project, or is deliberately stiffling the commissioning or running of a completed project, it is the duty of the Commission in conjunction with the affected government, and perhaps, an appropriate committee of the National Assembly as well as the National Council of States (where the project belongs to a state or local government) or the Federal Executive Council (where it is a federal project) to determine the viability/social sustainability or otherwise of the project, programme or policy that is affected.

When the viability/social sustainability of a project/programme/policy is established by the Commission, it persuades the affected government not to abandon or stiffle it. Where persuasion fails, the Commission may resort to the law courts to enforce its decision on the matter upon the affected government.

The National Assembly has to devise a means to attenuate or circumvent the states and federal governments' immunity clause to enable the Continuity Commission enforce its decisions.