The personnel costs of all government institutions (in Nigeria) have been at their lowest as a result of the lockdown.
And for state governments, the allocations from Abuja didn’t stop. This implies that a lot of money have been saved from ministries, departments, and agencies not being fully operational.
This also means that the governments have not spent money on travels, and the usually dubious estacodes that come with such extravagant and unnecessary foreign trips. Not that I don’t expect billions being cited by our politicians as the cost of some imaginary contract with Zoom.
Any state government that sets out to tell the people that they are too broke to manage their affairs, should at least give them a breakdown of the resources they have saved as a result of reduced personnel costs and zero foreign trips and public functions.
Most of these states rushing to tell the people that the pandemic is tempting them to file for bankruptcy, were recording unimpressive internally generated revenues in the healthiest time and economy, and yet their credit alerts from Abuja didn’t cease during the lockdown.
We owe the people we serve consistent accountability, and it’s utterly unfair to demand sacrifice from them without accounting for how you’ve managed their resources. Everything looks suspicious in the dark.
