60% entourage cut: State governors must follow Tinubu’s example

Nigeria continues to face challenges of good governance. The shortfalls in infrastructure deficits have recorded debt of backward push for the economy and the gross impact on development have been catastrophic.

Recently, the push for capital projects to revamp the economy from the mire of dwindling fortune has been challenged greatly by revenue shortfalls. It has become dawn on the Country that the revenue available to execute capital projects viable to rescue the economy is too far limited. The question of how to reserve and accumulate funds to execute these projects have posed divergent perspectives. However, the necessity of the need has kept on calling for submissions on ways on how the government can still gather and preserve funds for such projects.

Recently, as revenue accruals record shortfalls, particularly from oil which has been the mainstay of the economy, the call for the government to look inwards have been resounding, especially on the need to cut cost of governance which have been noted to be heavy on the budget year-on-year. The records of unnecessary spendings have been noted with drawings which have been found to bear irrational allocations expressing wastages.

Such calls have included the need for public officials to downsize their entourage to trips, travels, and visits, among other official items which draw heavily on the budget. The expression of such wastage, spending on items and fixtures that can be avoided, finds expression at various levels of public offices at different layers of the government. The calls have been against wasteful spending which speaks more of self interest than good governance.

Very recently, as outcries over the cost of  running governance in the country grew, President Bola Tinubu in order to cut costs directed that all the entourage to state and International events be drastically reduced by 60 percent.

The President also directed that on every local trip of the government, the security details will be drafted from the host state. Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents in Abuja recently.

According to the new directive, the President will now travel with only 20 officials unlike the earlier number of over 50 people. Also, the Vice President will now travel with five officials, the First Lady and the wife of the Vice President also five officials respectively. For local trips, the number of the entourage of the President has been reduced to 25, the Vice President 15, the First Lady and the wife of the Vice 10.

The presidential spokesman had said that the essence of the reduction was to bring total sanity and prudence in the management of resources.

He also had said that henceforth, ministers’ delegation for foreign trips will be a maximum of four officials, while the heads of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) will travel with the maximum of two officials.

On local trips, the President directed that there will not be a huge security entourage that would attract huge bills in form of duty travel allowance. The presidential spokesman had warned that any official that flouts the directive will be doing that at his or her own peril.

The president’s directive is a step in the right light. More is expected. It is pertinent that all other levels of government from States to Local Governments begin to follow suit. This is just as it is important for the legislature, both at the federal and state, to align with such a move to downsize their costs and do away with all unnecessary allocations and spendings that speak to personal interest against good governance. Not doing so will amount to selfish posture, at a time when the masses are constrained by the strains of economic hardship which high cost of governance have contributed to.