Akpabio’s pension profligacy

Jerry Uwah

Godswill Obot Akpabio is a very generous man.  Since he became governor of Akwa Ibom State, those who are close to him have had reasons to smile. In the first quarter of 2013, the governor’s sense of generosity sailed perilously close to squander mania.
Like an Ibibio parable would have it, Akpabio has a penchant for donating salt to people and eating his meals without it.  The governor has donated so much from the public till to undeserving recipients to the neglect of the abject poverty in rural Akwa Ibom. That diabolical sense of generosity earned him the euphemism “Donatus”.

In close succession, he donated N230 million to the PDP Governors’ Forum, doled out N10 million to the Golden Eaglets for beating Mali in an insignificant African Under-17 Championship qualifier in Calabar and paid a princely N6 million for the meals of six ‘hungry’ PDP south-south chairmen.  Asked why he doled out what amounted to N1 million per meal per person, the governor argued gratuitously that the party men were hungry and could consequently decamp to other parties.
Even more unpardonable was the donation of two Toyota Land Cruiser Prado sport utility vehicles to Innocent (TuFace) Idibia and his wife Annie.  The governor topped up the stupendous squander mania with a cash donation of N3 million and a promise to sponsor 20 members of the couple’s families to the white wedding in Dubai.

As historians commence work on the epilogue of his administration, it has suddenly dawned on the governor that it is now the turn of the state to reciprocate his stupendous profligacy.
Akpabio forwarded to the state house of assembly an executive bill on a princely pension package that may cost the state close to N2 billion annually to fund the four men currently qualified for the scheme.
From all indications, Akpabio’s reign of terror has cowed the state house of assembly into something of a rubber stamp.  The house simply rubber-stamped the bill and begged the governor to sign it into law.
Even the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) could not rally the masses to rescue the impoverished state from the burden of a governor’s cash-guzzling pension package.

Unyime Usoro, the state NLC chairman who promised to organise a protest that would halt the passage of the bill, was nowhere to be found on the day the house shamelessly negotiated away the welfare of the impoverished people of the state and rubber-stamped a bill that would keep health care delivery, water supply and good rural roads light years away from the poor.
Unyime, the NLC chairman’s first name means “consent” or “acceptance”.  From the look of things, someone probably negotiated the NLC’s tacit “consent” for the indecent bill.

With the weaklings in the legislature cowed into passing the bill, the NLC was the last line of defence against the obnoxious legislation.  Now that the last line of defence has been overrun by the enemy, the people of Akwa Ibom State should strike back by ensuring that those who passed the bill are not returned to the house in 2015.
Civil rights organizations should put up a last ditch battle designed to convince Akpabio that his pension package is too expensive for a state with a one-handed economy.

The irony of the whole legal looting of the treasury is that Akpabio, as governor of Akwa Ibom State, is just a rent collector.  The state survives solely on revenue from oil which is boosted by the 13 per cent derivation formula which former governor Victor Atta labored for, but could not benefit from.

The internally generated revenue (IGR) of Akwa Ibom state is abysmally low.  Between 2010 and 2012 the state generated a paltry N35.6 billion as IGR.  That is an average of N988.8 million per month. The state’s monthly IGR cannot fund Akpabio’s profligate pension bill.
If Akpabio’s indecent bill becomes law, in the next 20 years, he and his successors would be collecting more than the annual budget of three local governments in Zamfara State.

Akpabio may be doing well in the provision of urban infrastructure, but the state he wants to fund the flamboyant pension package, maintains a horrendous 27.5 per cent poverty rate, the third highest in the South-south zone.  At 25.8 per cent, Akwa Ibom has the second highest unemployment rate in the zone.  These are scaring statistics that should inform prudent use of scarce resources rather than a pension package that would over-feed one family and deprive millions of basic necessities of life.

The irony of the myopic income distribution system engendered by Akpabio’s ill-conceived pension package is that those to benefit from the extravagance would eventually die of over-feeding.  Millions who have been deprived of the use of the diverted funds would also die from disease and starvation.  At the end of the day, everyone would be a loser.  The current spate of insecurity in the country is enough evidence that those who are legally or illegally depriving the toiling populace of decent living are riding on the back of a tiger.  They may end up in the tiger’s stomach some day.