FAAC, discontinue those trips
M EMBERS of the Federal Allocation and Accounts Committee (FAAC) are spending a total of about N82 million to visit five countries around the globe. According to press reports, they are to study how revenue is generated and distributed in Australia, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Canada.
The FAAC is a rather large body comprising revenue earners such as the NNPC and the Nigerian Customs Service, and revenue-sharers and spenders such as the CBN, NNDC, even state commissioners of finance. Apparently, in order to ensure that everyone has a chance, this study trip will be done in five groups with each person receiving estacodes as much as US$ 36,000.
Generally speaking, the desire to learn from the experience of other lands how to run a politically democratic, economically productive and systemically efficient polity is, on the face of it, a sensible move. It is especially desirable in respect of revenue-related issues " be it generation or derivation, control, allocation and disbursement " that have, for reasons of self and/or group interest, remained a hard problem for every Nigerian government since colonial days.
But, since 1999, a trend can be discerned whereby people in government seem to have assumed a democratic licence to, at public expense, travel to foreign lands, ostensibly to study one thing or another. Indeed, once upon a time, the wives of Ekiti State legislators wanted to go abroad to learn goodness-knows-what. Just how laughable can our leaders get
Perhaps out of courtesy, officials of the host countries will gladly "teach" their guests what they know from their peculiar experience. But, they must wonder just why these Nigerians will not sit down at home, think through and design effective solutions to the peculiarly Nigerian challenges they face. We make bold to say that there will be no new knowledge to gain from these study trips.
What does the FAAC hope to see in Canada, a country of only 32 million or so people that generates 566 billion kWh of electricity to power a US$ 681 billion GDP multi-product economy, a US$176 billion manufacturing sector and is also a leading exporter of food products Or Brazil with a GDP of US$528.9 billion, an agricultural output of about US$ 50 billion and an energy output of more than 260 billion kWh The point here is that, fundamentally, the best way to "generate revenue" is, on the one hand, by government implementing policies that enable the citizens to maximally and honestly create wealth . Then government can, by an efficient method, collect a fair share of this wealth to run its business in a transparent manner.
And how is revenue best distributed It is given that the only justification for the existence of government is to uplift the quality of life of the citizenry. Public revenue must be allocated and expended to serve purely public interest with fairness as the watchword. Now, does any serious-minded person need tutoring on these things It must be observed here that the habit of our leaders and policy makers to seek solutions from other lands to peculiarly Nigerian problems point to two flaws : first, a refusal to engage in the hard and creative thinking that their jobs and positions demand, and second, a lack of confidence in their intrinsic capabilities to solve problems. Obviously, these are not the stuff of leaders.
There must be far less expensive ways to study the operations of other countries than five-group trips that cost this country and its foreign exchange-starved economy the dollar equivalent of N82 million, besides a yet-to-be-costed loss of man-hours of the high-level public officials. For example, detailed information on how Argentina, Canada, distant Australia " or any other country " raise and allocate public revenue must be available in and obtainable from the economic departments of the local embassies of these countries. Another way is to commission a number of university teachers to prepare a comparative study of Nigeria and selected countries on the relevant subject.
Still another option, since we are a country of seminarians, is to hold a seminar complete with a keynote speaker, guest speakers, resource persons, rapporteurs, etc on the subject of interest FAAC should avail itself of any or all of these avenues to conduct its study. We advise that these trips be discontinued.
