The Abia State Formula

Chidi Amuta

Nigeria’s democracy and its federalist architecture face two critical challenges. First is how to elect governors that are sufficiently literate and enlightened to understand the rudiments and responsibilities of governance. The second and perhaps more important challenge is how to get state governors to understand that democracy is only meaningful if it translates electoral mandate into the good of the people. Any state that has the luck of stumbling on a leadership that combines these two requirements must count itself lucky indeed. Today’s Abia State under Governor Alex Otti happens to be in this unique position.

Our federalism has since 1970 produced numerous experiments and sporadic successes on translating gubernatorial power into the good of the majority. We have had the Ogbemudia episode in old Bendel State; the Jakande populist development model in Lagos State; the Sam Mbakwe model in old Imo State and the Balarabe Musa populist grassroots democratic development model in Kaduna State. In various ways, these episodes illustrate the understanding of different state governors of how best to deliver development and popular participation to the majority of Nigerians in different states.

When the military under Buhari toppled the Shagari Second Republic in 1983, Nigeria was in deep economic crisis. The treasury was empty. Foreign exchange was scarce and was being rationed. Basic essentials were scarce and people had to queue up in endless lines to access rationed supplies. Soldiers flogged those on queues with horsewhips in the name of discipline. But neither long queues, horsewhips, nor detentions for minor foreign exchange infractions delivered any tangible benefits in terms of economic recovery. The frowning duo of Muhammadu Buhari and his friend Tunde Idiagbon were presiding over a strangulated centrally controlled economy.

This was the nation that Ibrahim Babangida rescued by toppling the autocratic duo in August 1985. Ways and means had to be found to deliver some goodness to ordinary Nigerians. Babangida liberalized the economy by tearing down the monopoly of a centralized government. He devalued the currency and freed the exchange rate from the monopoly of government. These measures alone did not solve the problem of a bad economy. Models of workable economic policy were being sought and touted by all manner of experts.

The old Imo State came up with something novel and realistic that seemed to work in the context of the paucity of resources at the time. Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu, an ex -World Bank economist with experiences in economic turnaround in Asia was the commissioner for Finance in the state. His formula was simple. The state should only expend the resources at its disposal to meet its recurrent obligations on a month by month basis. Salaries and recurrents were prorated to the resources available to the state from the federation account and internally generated revenues at any given time. Workers were content to receive whatever salaries the state could afford instead of going unpaid for months on end. The people’s capacity for self- reliance was challenged as they turned inwards to levy themselves to fund some development projects. A project like the Imo Airport which later became the Sam Mbakwe Airport were floated and mostly funded through communal self help effort by the awakened consciousness of the people at the grassroots. The totality of these economic measures came to be known as the “Imo Formula”, a totally home grown self -reliance and pro-rated economic formula that simply insisted that units in the economy should only limit their capital and recurrent obligations to available resources. No borrowing. No deficit budgeting. No external borrowing and no pretenses. Spend only what is available and limit the expectations of the people to what is realistic in the context of self-reliance. The tasks of economic recovery and development were popularized as a shared responsibility of the government and the people.

This formula attracted the attention of the Federal Military Government under President Ibrahim Babangida He quickly borrowed from Imo State the formula that had worked and began to free the state from the economic doldrums of the time. Kalu Idika Kalu was poached and appointed the Federal Minister for

Finance under who the nation’s home-grown Structural Adjustment Programme was developed and operated. Kalu I Kalu was to lead the drive for Babangida’s economic reform agenda which later domesticated the Structural Adjustment Programme.

Whatever success was achieved under that programme owed its origins to the ingenuity of the Imo Formula which encouraged the development of an indigenous Structural Adjustment Programme. The net result was the liberalization of the Nigerian economy, greater self -reliance, increased entrepreneurship, irreversible privatization and the migration of the economy from a centralised government controlled system to today’s private sector led economy even with its imperfections.

The current democratic dispensation has in the last three and half years yielded in Abia State what may be regarded as a formula for economic development and popular participation in governance. Governor Alex Otti has earned plaudits for commendable strides in translating democracy into meaningful goodness for a good number of the people.

Let me quickly add caveats and cautions. Abia is not yet a paradise. The state is still struggling under the burden of past neglect and sad governance. There are still workers whose accumulated arrears of emoluments have not yet been fully cleared. Poverty is still the lot of most people because of past denial of opportunities. Infrastructure renewal and construction has not yet reached all corners of the state. Many parts of the state are still locked away in medieval darkness and primitivity. But those still left behind have something to look up to. They are now hopeful that the goodness spreading all over the state will soon reach them.

Gradually, a certain consensus has emerged in and about Abia State in the country. Simply put, there is an agreement that Governor Alex Otti has led an honest economic and social reform of governance in Abia State. The net result is a perceptible improvement in the life circumstances of the people of the state. The people are convinced that the Otti administration has heralded a noticeable change in the administration of the state in contrast to past administrations. What has emerged is a marked distinction in governance which has been marked by a rapid transformation of the lives and material circumstances of ordinary Abia people.

To the best of my knowledge, not so many of the other 35 states have matched the Otti example i in the last three and half years. To that extent, we might as well christen the Otti model as the Abia Formula. Simply put, the Abia Formula is as exemplary as what was then called the Imo Formula in the 1980s in its simple originality.

The Abia Formula has two elements. First, it has an economic policy component. It simply means the careful application of funds received from the federation account and internally generated revenues to the direct solution of the problems that directly afflict the people. It means the systematic reduction of the huge mounds of debts owed by the state government and a moratorium on further borrowing. It means the clearing of accumulated workers salaries and the payment of current salaries as and when due. So with pensions and gratuities. The elementary economic logic is that when you pay the people the monies that rightly belong to them, you put back economic power into their hands. People are empowered to resume the role of economic agents instead of remaining hopeless spectators in the life of their state. The wealth of a state is the economic power in the hands of the people.

The second component of the Abia Formula is the restoration of popular political sovereignty. Here again, it simply means the return of political sovereignty to the people so that they see the government as theirs. The return of power to the people means that the people now see the government they elected as theirs because its actions and policies revolve around them, their interests and daily needs. Each salary and benefits that is paid promptly, each school that is built or renovated, each hospital that provides healthcare and each senior citizen that is paid a benefit to take care of old age needs means a return of sovereignty to the people. It means a refreshing embrace of government by the people who elected it.

The restoration of popular sovereignty becomes very critical because it goes to the root of what was the problem in Abia before Otti. For 24 years, Abia had been under what we may call a “feudal democracy”.

A democratic constitution was being exploited to legitimize a feudal minority rule. Nearly everything revolved around an imperial governor. He pocketed the state House of Assembly, the judiciary and the civil service. The state budget was managed from the governor’s office or bedroom. He was surrounded by goons and commission agents that were only loyal to him. He warded whatever contracts he deemed fit and to whoever he wished. He paid whatever emoluments he deemed important and whenever he deemed it necessary. Under this arrangement, there was a

Government and a governor on the one hand and the people on the other hand. The people were only invoked as occasional entities in a manner of speaking whenever it was necessary to use their mandate to legitimize the illegalities of the feudal overlord.

Thus, the current economic empowerment of the people and the return of their interests to the centre of governance indicates a redefinition of democracy as the centrality of the interests of the people in the business of government. This is the simplest definition of what I call the Abia Formula.

This is unlike what became the Imo Formula which was mostly a policy of self -reliant economic management. The Abia Formula under Governor Alex Otti encompasses an economic management style that directly applies state resources to the needs of the people. The contentment of the people is the measure of the state’s prosperity and the effectiveness of government. Most importantly, the Abia Formula is primarily political. It has replaced the imperial feudal template of governance with a new people- oriented template. The driving force of government in today’s Abia is the people and their welfare and wishes.

Infrastructure development in the state is beyond just roads. New schools are going up in line with a more futuristic education policy, Healthcare is being increasingly delivered in modernized hospitals and health centres just as a new transportation hub has emerged with electric energy saving buses emanating from an ultra modern Bus Terminus in Umuahia and spanning out to major centres of commerce in the state. Work is ongoing at the Abia

Airport designed to service the passenger and cargo needs of the commercial corridors of the state especially the Aba industrial and commercial nexus. Hopefully, the airport will become operational in governor’s Otti’s anticipated second term in office.

The gains of the Abia Formula are immense. But they may create equally immense problems for the future of the state. The problem is principally political. The gains that have been made under Governor Otti will only lead to a lasting legacy if the present administration builds a corps of leadership that imbibes the leadership and management ethics of the incumbent leadership. I am afraid that the present political architecture of Abia State is too limited , fragile and untenable to guarantee a lasting legacy. In a multi -party democracy, you cannot build a governance revolution on the basis of one miserable episodic party. If the present tenuous Labour Party dominance evaporates, so also will the idealism of the Otti legacy. And Abia could end up in a worse ditch than it was in its 24 years of Babylonian captivity.