Nigeria emerged from the major economic boom in its history poorer, a leading development economist and Director, Lagos Business School, Prof. Pat Utomi, has said.
Utomi said this in a lead presentation at the National Forum for Fiscal Responsibility Commissions, which opened in Abuja on Monday.
Setting agenda for the incoming administration of President-elect, MuhammaduBuhari, Utomi said the government should never use borrowed funds to fund recurrent expenditure.
He regretted that some governors were able to hire private jets to travel from their states to Abuja, while they could not pay the salaries of their workers who were already poorly paid.
Utomi said unlike what happened in the country during the First Republic when regional leaders competed on the basis of development, the present subnational leaders, especially state governors, had abandoned their responsibilities and became overlords.
He berated the country’s leaders, especially at the subnational level, for abandoning governance and making their people poorer rather than following in the footsteps of their predecessors in the First Republic, who engaged in healthy competition for the development of their different regions.
Utomi said, “We have come out of a boom very poor and this is very sad. People who are already poorly paid don’t get their money at the end of the month. This is irresponsibility and has to stop. A governor that has not paid salaries can still chatter a jet to fly to Abuja. You need to arrest that kind of governor.
“Institutions broke down in the states completely. Most governors managed to put the legislators in their pockets. The governors became overlords.
“The proceeds from ‘ghost workers’ could turn around the fortune of education in the states. Jobs were not created for the teeming youths. No significant infrastructure was built yet salaries were being owed for eight months in some states.”
Answering questions from participants, Utomi said rather than regret the creation of the 36 states, clusters of states needed to collaborate in order to develop regional infrastructure and build megalopolis.
He said, “If independent countries in Europe could form the European Union, what is difficult for clusters of states collaborating to form megalopolis? The Lagos mega city project was poorly conceived. I would have loved to see a Lagos-Ibadan megalopolis.
“The South-East governors refuse to collaborate to make that region the development centre it should be. How about a Port Harcourt-Aba megalopolis? How about a megalopolis along Onitsha-Agbor?”
The Senior Resident Representatives, International Monetary Fund, Mr. Gene Leon, said it was important to bring all agencies of government into fiscal responsibility to avoid them being turned into leakage pipes for government funds.
