Governorship Election: State governors are so powerful, electing them is more important

The governor of my state loves to tag his annual budget proposals with high sounding, meaningless phrases like “Kinetic Crystallization” and “Qabalistic Densification”. He’s been at it since he was elected in 2015.

At every budget presentation session to lawmakers, he arrives with highfalutin promises to build superhighways no one needs and industrialize a state that would be better off if empowered to till the soil and grow crops. He has no clue whatsoever.

Take a trip to my state in the south of Nigeria and there is neither a sign of Kinetic crystallization nor Qabalistic Densification on the ground. My state governor is handed the biggest Appropriation Act in the federation to "crystallize and densify."

Some Governors of Nigeria discussing during a meeting at the Villa (Punch) ece-auto-gen

My governor also talks a good game, bamboozles his audience with high sounding grammar, but my state capital, once the cleanest and the most pristine in the federation, is now an international eyesore that stinks to the heavens.

My state governor is a fraud. But the bad news is that he is not alone.

Another governor in the Southwest has been unable to keep the streets clean, manage waste or traffic and keep the city organised since he lost a primary election.

Some state governors haven't paid salaries to civil servants in months. But they keep long convoys and harass other road users with expensive security detail to boot.

There are several states who would cease to exist as entities once there are starved of revenues from the center. State governors have become so unimaginative, they can no longer generate internal revenues or keep the peace without help from Abuja.

President Muhammadu Buhari meets with a delegation of Nigerian governors in Abuja House, London (Presidency) ece-auto-gen

State governors have had no debates about the natural resources underneath their soils or how to get the best out of their human resources by innovating through simple technology and education. They just wait for month-end to head to Abuja, cap in hand, like the beggars they have become.

Some state governors have shone through the filth however, innovating, empowering and developing their terrains. But in this category, they are few and far in between as well.

Which is why governorship elections should trump every other because state governors are handed huge monies in security votes annually and they take all these monies from the center and hand leftovers to local governments. Some states have conducted no local government elections, while successfully starving local governments of funds and killing the third tier of government in the federation.

Electing state governors is more important than electing a president or federal lawmakers because governors are the closest to the people. They are constitutionally in charge of primary education--the very foundation and crucible of knowledge and emancipation.

If Nigeria must make the step up on development indices, job creation and improving the economy, it has to do so from the bottom of the pyramid—where governors call the shots and decide which way and how wealth is distributed.

When states work, Nigeria would work. When governors begin to think creatively, the economy would improve. When state governors begin to lobby state legislators to pass commonsense legislation that would affect lives positively, this nation won’t be laughed off any longer as the poorest in the world.

Nigerian governors during FAAC (Federal Accounts Allocation Committee) meeting at the statehouse (Presidency) ece-auto-gen

A nation is only as strong as its federating units. But for decades, we have given state governors a free pass while channeling all energies to the center—further cementing our debilitating unitary mindset. We need to light up fires under the a** of state governors and get the best out of them. We won’t make progress any other way.

If you made up your mind not to vote in this weekend’s governorship election, you would be doing your nation and your family a huge disservice. There, I said it.

We have to begin to take more than a passing interest in state elections if we don’t want to end up with state governors who crystallize kinetically but are intrinsically dense.