Guardian

GOING by the sheer amount of ink, broadcast airtime and valuable man-hours that have been dissipated in analysing the outcome of the recent chairmanship election of the Nigerian Governor’s Forum, close watchers of the polity will no doubt be asking how an entity, which has no foundation in the nation’s constitution emerge to stamp a pervasive presence in the nation’s political space. So powerful is the forum now that the Presidency, which itself cuts the picture of a limitless power machine, has shown more than passing interest in who eventually leads it. That 36 governors who are supposedly products of democratic processes involving millions of voters in their states could not agree on the simple and straight forward outcome of their election raises fundamental questions about the origins, antecedents and ultimately, the purpose of the organisation.

Questions are therefore being raised about how and why, a body that should have ordinarily served the purpose of comparing notes, is now wielding a discomfiting amount of influence, both for the power mongers in Abuja and in the polity as a whole.

A close scrutiny of the origins of the Nigeria Governors Forum is bound to show that just like the nation’s unwieldy presidential system, the idea of governor’s fraternising was borrowed from the United States. In other words, the NGF comes across as one of those ideas that were poorly from the United States.

A brief excursion to the US will bring to the fore the truism of this assertion, and help in understanding what a forum convened with the interest of the Nigerian people at heart would have been doing. The National Governors Association as the United States calls it’s gathering of state helmsmen is a bipartisan organisation of the nation’s governors. It was formed in 1908 to promote visionary state leadership; share best practices and speaks with a collective voice on national policy. Because it serves as a collective voice on public policy, the NGA in the US is regarded as one of Washington, D.C.’s most respected public policy organisations. Its members are the governors of the 55 states, territories and commonwealths.

According to the association’s website, “the NGA provides governors and their senior staff members with services that range from representing states on Capitol Hill and before the Administration on key federal issues to developing and implementing innovative solutions to public policy challenges through the NGA Center for Best Practices.

“NGA also provides management and technical assistance to both new and incumbent governors. Through NGA, governors identify priority issues and deal collectively with matters of public policy and governance at the state and national levels.”

Interestingly, the Nigeria Governors Forum in its mission statement subscribes to the goal of devoting the platform to policy advocacy. However, the reality that most Nigerians are used to is that of the forum being constantly deployed for the advancement of the personal political objectives of the governors. As such, while the NGF says it is for providing a common platform for collaboration amongst state helmsmen on matters of public policy; to promote good governance, sharing of good practice and enhance cooperation at the state level and with other arms of government and society, the reality on the ground looks totally different.

One of the very action that pointed at the fact that the Governors Forum was not a group convened with the interests of Nigerians at heart surfaced in 2009, when a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was reportedly signed with Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government by four state governors - Bukola Saraki of Kwara, Isa Yuguda of Bauchi, Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom and Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State - Governors’ Forum, to train Nigeria’s state chief executives on governance. The public outcry that greeted that proposal, not only stopped what would have been another wasteful jamboree, but also put the searchlight on what the governors actually sought to do with their fraternity.

So rather than project the image of an association founded to serve the real interests of the people, and a platform for state chief executives to compare notes on the challenges of governance, share experiences and generate broad-minded solutions that would uplift their states and strengthen the nation, the Governors’ Forum began to emerge not only as a lobby group of sorts, but as an institution. It was a ploy to make a body that is patently unconstitutional an institutional part of the nation’s democracy.

In no time, the governors began to appropriate political space. They needed something akin to lebensraum, so they used the advantage of their numbers to harass the centre. The obstinate manner in which the forum engaged with other relevant stakeholders in the polity almost buried many laudable ideas. When the idea of a Sovereign Wealth Fund was muted to serve as a vehicle for saving some of the nation’s wealth in order not to fritter it away carelessly, the governors drew their swords. For them, the money should be shared and spent. The N18, 000 minimum wage, which was passed by federal authorities in 2011 did not have the blessings of the governors, many of them complained bitterly of not having the revenue to pay their people that paltry sum.

Similarly, a time came for the governors to support the people during the subsidy protests, they never did. That was a period when the Nigerian people needed their state chief executives to stand behind them and support the movement for a transparent and equitable oil and gas sector, but as usual, the state helmsmen buried their heads in the sands and waited for the storm to blow over. Today, many of them are superintending over the sharing of the subsidy largesse that was obtained from what is akin to the blood of Nigerians. Today, a multi-billion-naira secretariat of the Forum, plays host to a full-fledged secretariat and a director-general presides over the bureaucracy. Where did the money come from? Obviously from funds belonging to ordinary Nigerians in what is supposedly a commonwealth of all Nigerians.

This makes it apparent why the ordinary Nigerian will surely not give a hoot if the forum tears itself apart in its ongoing internecine war. After all, the forum has never stood on the side of the people, but for the interest of 36 powerful musketeers.