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Why Shekarau flew the probity flag to Argentina
By Sule Ya’u Sule
When President Olusegun Obansanjo invited Governor Ibrahim Shekarau to lead a powerful multi-layer public section team to Argentina to study the South American country’s debt management initiatives, it was clear to analysts that the President, reputed not to suffer embezzlers gladly, was making a statement on the governor’s solid reputation, built on probity and moral uprightness. It’s even more intriguing when you consider that Kano state is not in the league of most heavily indebted states nor does the governor belong to the ruling PDP. Were President Obasanjo a narrow minded party chauvinist, he would consider Mallam Shekarau least qualified to lead a government delegation under his watch since the man rode to power by crushing a PDP incumbent governor.
The sub-national debt management study tour of Argentina which lasted from 21 to 27 November 2004 was the brainchild of Nigeria’s Debt Management Office (DMO), which wanted relevant stakeholders with responsibility for domestic borrowing in Nigeria exposed to various institutional frameworks and arrangements obtained in their host country. The team’s brief included analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of various debt management strategies adopted by Argentina and see what models could be extracted and adopted for the Nigerian domestic scene.
The delegation visited the Argentine ministry of national economy where they exchanged experiences with the director in charge of the economy and national debt management of the provinces, Mrs Nora Fracaroli. A visit to the Salta province revealed a Nigerian state equivalent bubbling with economic activities in oil and export of electricity power to neighbouring countries. The Province’s governor, Mr Juan Carlos Romero who inspected a guard of honour mounted by the Salta Province Police Force alongside Governor Ibrahim Shekarau expressed his joy at receiving the Nigerians. The delegation would later inspect projects like the New Salta Hospital, the Judiciary Building and some new road projects all financed by the World Bank.
Debt management has assumed a life and death status in developing countries. The ballooning debt overhang is a festering moral sore confronting promoters of international capitalism. Apologists have argued that debt has its economic value if properly managed, and countries like Malaysia have proved this can be done under dedicated leadership committed to a regime of fiscal discipline and national capital development. However, the entire debt conundrum remains an intractable tangle, an indigestible morsel of contractions, which defies rationalization. Borrowed money should be repaid so the system can be sustained, no doubt but a study by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) revealed that sub-Saharan Africa received $294 billion as loans of various labels between 1970 and 2002, repaid $268b in principal and interest but still owes the Bretton Woods Institutions a whopping $210b. Put in proper perspective, very poor countries ravaged by hunger, disease, ignorance and poverty would, at the very least, repay $478 billion to very rich countries swimming in surplus and luxury for a loan of $268b much of which found their way back to western banks through direct stealing, over-invoicing, imports, profit repatriation and induced capital flight.
If you were looking for a worse case scenario in debt management, Argentina would be it. Alongside Brazil and Mexico, Argentina is a live laboratory for hard-driving reformers, structural monetarists, amortization bankers, economists, and all shades of experts who make a living designing how a nation could completely relegate the welfare of its people and concentrate all its resources and energies in repaying debts through unending fiscal permutations and restructuring. Argentina with a population of 39 million owes $180b. A self-declared moratorium on debt repayment in 2001, after a domestic economic meltdown rocked the international capitalist system to its very foundations and created dozens of institutes dedicated solely to nurturing new ideas necessary to knock the country back to shape. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), never short of brilliant post-crisis analyses wherever it s costly anti-people experiments backfire, spared long and hard with the country’s managers in a high-stakes blame-game.
The irony however is, Argentina is structurally in a better shape to tackle its debt crisis than say Nigeria with ‘only’ $32bilion. Argentina has an effective sub-national public debt management strategy, which Nigeria could learn from. Each of Argentina’s 23 provinces is involved in direct economic activity like agricultural exports and extractive industry activity unlike in Nigeria where states are nearly wholly dependent on allocations from the centre for their upkeep, thus unable to contribute positively toward debt reduction. There is serious attempt at openness and accountability in the management of Argentine resources to the pleasure of the country’s creditors.
It is this culture of transparency and accountability that sets the Ibrahim Shekarau administration apart from its peers. At inception, the governor outlined his zero-tolerance for graft, profiteering, mismanagement or any form of corruption associated with the “old order”. He follows up this tough position by scrutinizing every contract or disbursement of public funds in the state. A case in point is the Commission of Inquiry set up to investigate certain activities of the Kano state government from 1999 to 2003, which asked the former governor Engineer Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and some of his aides to refund various sums of money appropriated during their tenure. The need for this inquiry arose due to conflicting figure for payment by outgoing government officials and contractors as to how much government owed the latter. It will also be recalled that when the Shekarau administration discovered that the N10million distributed to local governments in the state to purchase relief materials for victims of flood disaster were misappropriated, the matter was thoroughly investigated and culprits were fished out and sanctioned. The chairman of Ungogo local government council, Alhaji Mohammed Falalu Umar was suspended from office when a commission of inquiry set up by the state government found out he spent N5million on petrol alone since coming to office in 2004.
Only recently the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) gave the state government a clean bill over a N4b fertilizer contract awarded at its inception but which the contractor defaulted in procuring. The state government cooperated fully with EFCC investigators not minding that the governor was covered by constitutional immunity from criminal investigation while in office.
To arrest moral decay and give the citizenry a new ethical start, Mallam Shekarau on September 11 launched the Kano state Ethical and Moral Re-Orientation Campaign. Today, a parastatal Agency has been created to pilot this new rebirth programme based on the governors’ belief that a solid moral foundation is inevitable if society must consolidate on material and social gains.
An Islamic moralist imbued with modernist vision, Mallam Shekarau’s human development paradigm has influenced the gradual uplift in the social and material conditions of Kano people through massive rehabilitation of infrastructures, poverty alleviation, women and youth empowerment and wealth creation schemes. Today Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau’s government prides itself as the first and probably only one in the entire federation, which has settled all outstanding arrears owed pensioners, retirees and other categories of public sector workers. Over one billion naira has been spent in settling these arrears inherited from past governments in Kano state since 1979. Also outstanding allowances owed teachers, health workers, bereaved families and staff arbitrarily removed from office by the Kwankwaso administration over political differences but whom Mallam Shekarau restored to office, have all been settled. As Mallam would humbly lecture his aides at every opportunity, holding back a man’s entitlement is not only wicked and ungodly but does not in any way enrich the state treasury.
It is therefore no surprise that President Obasanjo dispatched his Special Adviser on Ethics and Good Governance, the upright Barrister Kanu Agabi, SAN, to Kano, to pronounce Governor Shekarau Nigeria’s most transparent and people-oriented governor in the present dispensation. With the well-earned Presidential approval and several accolades justly earned from teachers, religious bodies, Non-Governmental Organizations and the civil society since coming to power over one and half years ago, you can see why choosing Mallam Shekarau to fly Nigeria’s probity flag to Argentina towers above any recognition this administration can confer.
Mallam Sule, is the Director of Press & Public Relations, Kano.
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