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Challenges before Nigeria’s Governors Forum

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Oyewale Oyelola

The Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) after more than two years of polarisation over chairmanship position selected Zamfara State Governor, Abdul-Aziz Yari Abubakar as the new chairman.

Abubakar’s election was a unanimous decision of governors across the 36 states of the federation. It would be recalled that the re-election of former Rivers state governor, Rotimi Amaechi as NGF chairman in 2013 led to emergence of Jonah Jang as factional chairman. Amaechi polled 19 votes while Governor Jang of plateau state (PDP backed candidate) had 15 votes.

People’s Democratic Party Governors Forum (PDPGF) Chairman, Godswill Akpabio,  later presented Jonah Jang to then President Goodluck Jonathan as NGF chairman and Dr Segun Mimiko as Vice Chairman. The rest is now history.

Although, many Nigerians still believe that governors forum is just like social club for governors with no constitutional backing.

However, the vision statement of the forum incorporated in 1969 shows that the founders meant well for Nigeria.

NGF vision states:  “An effective, proactive, inclusive, non-partisan forum which actively fosters, promotes and sustains democratic values, good governance and sustainable development in Nigeria.”

Therefore, the new leadership of the forum must drive NGF in line with its laudable vision statement.

Governor Yari Abubakar should work with PDPGF Chairman, Dr Olusegun Mimiko and Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) Chairman, Owelle Rochas Okorocha,  to ensure members bring sustainable development to the country.

The forum in order to promote good governance must jettison  party politics and analyse issues  critically  before taking any decision.  NGF must   always check the excesses of Federal Government like Rotimi Amaechi led forum did from 2011-2015, as the immediate  past president,  Goodluck Jonathan,  admitted that NGF was acting as pressure group with Amaechi as Chairman.

Many Nigerians applauded the forum for dragging PDP led federal government to court over Sovereign Wealth Fund and Excess Crude Oil Account,  despite the fact that PDP has 23 governors at that time.

Furthermore, Abubakar-led forum must be proactive on matters of public policy. The forum should not wait until issue degenerate before taking action.  The issue of non-payment of workers’ salaries by many state governors clearly shows that governors were reactionary in handling the situation.

Some states owed workers more than eight months salaries before President Muhammadu Buhari ordered CBN to release about N700 billion bailout funds.

The forum would also be effective, if they equipped members with strategic financial management skills and educate them on acceptable process of handling federal government project in their states.

Time Nigeria investigations revealed that many state governors embark on rehabilitation of federal roads without getting approval from Federal Ministry of Works. Therefore, they find it difficult to get refund.  It’s wise for governors to avoid doing projects to show off or impress the masses without due process.

Former Minister of Education, Dr Oby Ezekwezeli,  recently advised governors to reduce cost of governance, block leakages, ensure creative management of resources and look inward to increase  internally generated revenue.

NGF could set up Think-Tank on economic development and use their membership of National Economic Council to promote agenda  which must be beneficial to the citizenry.

Individual governors  should serve as their brother’s keeper by interacting with others to offer solutions to problems in other states. Nobody is an island  of knowledge.

   

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Time Nigeria is a general interest Magazine with its headquarters in Abuja, the nation’s Capital.
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This is not a story about a reluctant investor. It is a story about capital that wants to move, cannot find enough places willing and able to receive it in a form it can underwrite, and quietly waits instead. Multiply that fund by the hundreds of pension schemes, sovereign wealth vehicles, commercial banks and infrastructure funds now carrying dedicated allocations for emerging-market infrastructure, and a pattern emerges that rarely makes it into a headline: the world is not short of capital for infrastructure. It has capital in historic abundance, sitting adjacent to a historic infrastructure gap, unable to cross the distance between the two. 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The first condition is met, overwhelmingly, across nearly every category of capital that matters to infrastructure. The second is met by only a small fraction of the projects competing for it. The result is a market that looks, from the outside, like a financing gap, and functions, from the inside, like a conversion problem: an abundance of capital on one side, an abundance of infrastructure need on the other, and an underbuilt set of mechanisms in between capable of turning one into the other at any meaningful scale. Where the Conversion Breaks  The break does not happen at the ends of the process. It happens in the middle, in the unglamorous sequence of work that turns a plausible concept into an instrument a fiduciary can sign. A promising transmission project needs a feasibility study rigorous enough to survive institutional scrutiny rather than optimistic enough to attract early interest. It needs offtake arrangements that hold up under real counterparty and currency risk, not the counterparty risk assumed in a base case. It needs environmental and social documentation calibrated to the standards of the institutions being asked to fund it, not the standards of the jurisdiction hosting it. It needs a legal and commercial structure that allocates risk in ways a commercial lender, not only a development financier, will accept. It needs a sponsor capable of executing what has been proposed, not merely capable of proposing it. 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The African Dimension  Africa makes this dynamic unusually visible, and consequently offers an unusually clear opportunity to correct it. The continent’s infrastructure financing need, by any measure, is vast. Less understood is that the shortfall is disproportionately one of preparation rather than capital. Nigerian gas-to-power, off-grid solar and mini-grid developers have each demonstrated that individual projects can clear the bankability bar; what has not emerged is systemic pipeline scale, a steady stream of comparably prepared projects large enough to absorb the capital already circling the sector. The pattern repeats, with local variation, from grid infrastructure in East Africa to transport corridors in West Africa. Interested capital is rarely the scarce input. Investment-ready projects are. 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