Nigeria's governors matter for the country's future, here's why

A few years ago, one of my post-grad lecturers, who often told stories of her life during lectures, said she would not have been able to attend school if not for the policies of former Lagos governor Lateef Jakande. Jakande was Lagos State governor in the Second Republic from 1979 to 1983. This article lays out his efforts at deepening access to primary, secondary and even tertiary education.

In her telling, her large family was poor. There would not have been the resources to send them all to school. Because of the access to education provided by Jakande, her life turned out differently. My lecturer never met her governor, but she—and tens of thousands of others—felt his impact on their lives through his commitment to education.

With the 2023 elections approaching, the tendency is for Nigerians to fixate on the presidency and who occupies it. The presidency is undoubtedly important, but the governors are just as important, and in some areas more so. My lecturer was never going to be afforded a decent primary and secondary education by Shehu Shagari, who was the president of Nigeria at the time. That was the job of her governor.

This article will go over two aspects of our day-to-day lives, which governors control—education and healthcare—to help you understand why governors matter. If you include the governorship contests in Ekiti and Osun states, there will be 33 governorship contests between now and the end of 2023. This presents an opportunity for Nigerians who want a better quality of life. Governors are just as important as the President in ensuring better living standards, but they do not come under sufficient scrutiny.

But, before we get there, let’s answer another question: what do governors need to deliver these services?

Money, money, money

The music has stopped for Governor Ademola Adeleke.

The recently inaugurated governor of Osun State who danced his way into national consciousness as a senator, is finding that governance plays at a different tune entirely. Shortly after taking office, Adeleke discovered that Osun State is in debt to the tune of ₦407 billion. As expected, this led to a blame game between the Oyetola (2018 - 2022) and Aregbesola (2010 - 2018) administrations about who bears the responsibility for the mountain of debt.

That blame game will be scant comfort to the new administration, who have to service the debt while delivering public services, despite revenue constraints. Indeed, Osun is ranked 35th out of 36 states in terms of debt sustainability by BudgIT, a civic organisation focusing on budget accessibility and transparency. This suggests that delivery of certain capital projects would be better under a public-private partnership (PPP) model.

State governments in Nigeria get money from two main sources: FAAC allocations and internally generated revenue (IGR). The FAAC allocations are distributed to the states by the federal government every month. Some states are more dependent on this government allocation than others. In fact, only 3 states - Lagos, Ogun and Akwa Ibom - have a FAAC dependency that is less than 50%. This is according to BudgIT’s State of States 2022 report.

Why is this important? It means that the states are not yet able to generate sufficient economic activity - and the revenues which come with it - within their borders. If the Federal Government is unable to deliver allocations at a certain level, that impact is immediately felt on the state government’s ability to fulfill its basic fiscal obligations like paying staff, pensions and keeping basic services running.

We saw this unfold when oil prices crashed in 2014/2015 and states had to run to the FG for salary support in 2015. Repayment for those loans are now being deducted from allocations, and it worsened the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on subnational finances.

In light of this, all voters must ask those who are running for governor what plans they have for making their states attractive to investment and attendant job creation. Here too, many states do not excel. Figures from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics indicate that Lagos alone regularly takes over 70% of the capital brought into the country. Other states should aim to eat into this share. However, it should be added that capital importation figures may refer to the point of entry rather than its final destination.

Being a governor should be about more than collecting FAAC allocations every month, hiring special advisers in droves and funding vanity projects. Nigeria needs more.

The Children Left Behind

One of the more dramatic examples of the failure of education in Nigeria happened in 2013 in Edo State, when a teacher could not read her name on a certificate handed to her by then governor, Adams Oshiomhole. The video went viral, showing that beyond just building schools, teacher quality has to be front and center of any education reform. However, this battle will be fought and won at state and local levels because apart from the FG run Unity Schools, the governors bear ultimate responsibility for primary education as well as secondary education.

In Kaduna, Governor Nasir El-Rufai took the bull by the horn on teacher quality. In 2018, 21,780 teachers were sacked for failing competency tests. They were replaced by 25,000 new hires. Another competency test for 30,000 teachers was done in December 2021. Some refused to sit the test and were let go, while 165 of the 27,000+ who did sit the test, scored below 40% and were also let go. The issue of teacher quality is central to improved education outcomes, as you cannot give what you do not have. Addressing it is often politically risky, as El-Rufai himself and Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti found out.

However, not addressing it will leave children behind. While the national conversation about education is dominated by ASUU and how universities will be funded, only an average of 29% of Nigerian children aged 7-14 possess basic literacy and numeracy skills. They will have to be taught these skills by good teachers.

The high number of functionally illiterate Nigerian children is linked directly to the number of children out of school. According to UNESCO, Nigeria has 20 million out of school children aged six to eighteen, equal to the population of Chile, Burkina Faso or Zambia. The figure by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) is 10 million, because their measure covers only children aged six to eleven.

UBEC, the body charged with improving access to basic education, is tasked with receiving block grants from the Federal Government and allocating same to the state governments as part of its functions. However, these state governments need to present counterpart funding to access the grants. In recent years, many have not done so. In 2020, fourteen states did not access their UBEC grants. In 2021 that number rose to thirty-one. This means that a lot of the money that could help with the recruitment of teachers, building of schools and provision of amenities for those schools, is not done or is done much slower.

The electorate owe it to themselves to ask their would-be governors how they will address the problem of out-of-school children in their respective states, by closing the gaps in the number of teachers and number of school buildings necessary to make that happen.

Nigeria’s governors need to be much more serious about human capital development.

Health is wealth

Lastly, let us look at health. The administration of Governor Olusegun Mimiko in Ondo (2009-2017) was a turning point for maternal mortality in the state. The 2008 National Demographic and Health Survey showed that the state had the highest maternal mortality in the country at 545 deaths per 1,000.  As governor – and a medical doctor – Mimiko confronted the emergency with gusto through the Abiye (Safe Motherhood) Initiative.

The initiative was built on three main principles: Tracking of the pregnant women from conception to delivery; opening the health care sector for universal and free access; and allocation of resources in the most efficient and equitable manner. The success of the initiative meant that Ondo was the only state to achieve 75% reduction in maternal mortality under the SDG framework. Many of the pregnant women whose lives were saved, and the children who were saved the anguish of growing up without a mother, will never meet the now former governor. But he has touched their lives. The programme proved so impactful that even the current governor had to expand it.

Primary and secondary healthcare delivery is under the purview of the state government and thus the governors. Ondo State under Mimiko is an example of how a governor who is alive to his responsibility of improving lives can do so.

One metric that will improve healthcare delivery in the states is the time to a functional health facility. In its assessment of multi-dimensional poverty, the Nigeria Poverty Map indicates that the health component of poverty contributes 34.4% to poverty in the country. Of that total, 12.6% is due to the time from a functional health facility.

One of the reasons for the relative absence of these facilities is low budgetary provision for healthcare. The 2001 Abuja declaration on health recommends at least 15% of national and subnational budgets be dedicated to healthcare, but the federal government has never met this target. The same is true for the states. In a report titled ‘The State of Primary Healthcare in Nigeria (2019-2021)’, only four states received a score of 3 out of 5 on the measure of adequate budgetary provision for healthcare, twenty-two received 1 out of 5 and eleven scored 2 out of 5. The report states that to achieve its gold standard of 5 out of 5, a state would need: a publicly available budget which captures all funding sources; a budget line for response to outbreaks; at least 15% of budget dedicated to health and total health expenditure which exceeds $85 per capita per annum.

Low allocations to health are a sign of the priority given to the sector, but there is also the issue of wasteful spending of the money that is available.

Charity begins at home

Turnout for governorship elections in 2019 was noticeably lower than the already low 36% for the presidential elections. For instance, only 17% turnout was recorded for the 2019 Lagos gubernatorial election, and a paltry 10% turnout for the Anambra gubernatorial elections in 2021. This reduced interest in governorship races is not ideal for Nigeria’s democracy. It is essential that there is greater engagement with the process at state level, not just because of the powers the governors already have, but because of the powers that will be added in the coming years. The character and competence of these individuals matter greatly.

They say that all politics is local. So rather than look to Abuja for the dividends of democracy in the first instance, we are better off checking out the government houses in Adamawa, Abia and Akwa Ibom.