The Presidency and Cost of Governance in Nigeria : A Case of Jonathan’s Administration

Abstract

It is a big surprise that the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, says he is prepared to prune the growing cost of running public affairs. All the newspapers have reported that he is set to confront the challenge headlong by scrapping some government bodies, merging others and restructuring many. The details are still being worked out. All that has been released so far is that the National Examinations Council, National Poverty Eradication Programme and the Universal Tertiary Matriculation Examination are the fist casualties of the plan. By the announced plan, it is clear that the president and his men either do not appreciate the magnitude of the problem or he is again playing games with a deadly disease afflicting the country. How does scrapping NECO and directing WAEC to absorb the workers amount to cutting cost? Or how would changing the name of NAPP amount to enhancing the value of governance? What is he doing to ensure that every kobo that goes into the national treasury counts? What is he doing to ensure that public policy is tailored towards alleviating the suffering of the people? The paper examines the Cost of Governance under Jonathan’s presidency. It explores cost of governance in a thematic form, using concrete instances to drive home its major theses. The paper concludes by positing that rising cost of governance is unnecessary waste of public funds in payment of entitlements, due to overbloated administrative cost, but it has, above all, given rise to the current unhealthy rivalry and widespread bitterness between the so-called clause of “senior ministers and junior or ministers of state.”