Senator representing Kebbi central of North West Nigeria, Adamu Aliero has decried the heightening cost of governance in the country.
Gatekeepers News reports that Aliero particularly cited the culture of engaging too many Aids by principal government officials.
In his words: “We must admit that the cost of governance is quite high but unfortunately that is the nature of the system of government we adopted.” .. ”Presidential democracy”, he continued ”is very expensive. Some people, according to him are even of the opinion that we should go back to parliamentary democracy where members of parliament also serve as ministers… The retinue of Aids
attached to every ministry are too many; the same thing with governors where some appoint as many as 400 Aids…for what? he thundered.
”Under normal circumstances, according to the 4 terms Senator, ‘no State should have more than ten ministries, but you see some states are having up to 25”.
”To me”, he continued ”it is too large and cumbersome and it amounts to a waste of public funds:… what should be used for project and development; what is going to be used to give education, water resources, hospital, electricity, roads- all being diverted to funding these Aids that do not contribute much’… We were governors but we didn’t use to have these large retinue of officials: Senator Aliero, himself a former minister of FCT accused Ministers of hiring too many Aids than they are meant to. Ministers, he claims ”are limited to about 2 or 3 Aids, but you have had some ministers appointing up to 7 or 8 Aids and if you ask, they will tell you they are sourcing their money from NGOs;.. what kind of NGO? It is not true. It is the Ministry that is paying and I think the office of the SGF should look into this”.
He advised that ”Any minister that is exceeding the number of aids allocated to him should be asked to go… Such a minister is not working in tune with the vision of President Bola Tinubu’. Such a minister can go and set up his or her empire and hire as many as possible. So, you see, I am for reduced cost of governance because I believe that is the way to go. Indeed, with our meagre resources, we cannot afford to waste funds.
