Like I wrote last week, the royal mess in the Federal Ministry of Health is not really about Prof Adenike Grange. It is more about the fundamental flaws and failure of the Nigerian civil service. How, for instance, do we explain the unspent funds syndrome? I was mulling over this when a reader sent a text telling me not to restrict my thoughts to what has happened in our public service to only 1999 till date.

That jolted me. If the Federal Health Ministry had N300m unspent funds in December 2007, how much did they have in 1999, 2000 till 2006? Let us assume that they have an arrangement whereby they always have N300m every year as unspent funds, in eight years, that would come up to N2.4bn. If it is only the last ‘instalment’ of N300m we are all screaming and foaming in the mouth over, that leaves N2.1bn out there in the coffers of smart government officials. Now, if we go back a bit, in the past 10 years, using N300m as the regular figure, The Federal Ministry of Health alone has had N3bn unspent funds. Only one Federal Ministry has spent N3bn unspent funds! Or were they returning it without us knowing? If no ministry was returning unspent funds and one ministry had ‘shared’ N3bn in 10 years, how much have we lost to smart evil servants through all the other ministries? Ten ministries sharing N3bn in 10 years will give us how many trillions? Sorry, my mathematics is nothing to write home about. Just add or multiply and let whatever figures you arrive at determine who you curse or pray for.

Wait a minute, if the Health ministry had a leftover of N300m, how much do you think the Federal Ministry of Works hid or shared? How many Federal ministries do we have altogether now? And if the state ministries are part of this evil sharing, how much have Nigerians lost? Go on, punch the calculator.

Do you still think, Nigeria’s problem is leadership, as in elected officers? Me, I think we have too many bad followers. Like the Israelites pushed Moses into a rage that ensured he did not make it to the promised land , so are civil servants. As much as Madam Grange must take the blame for that end of the sleaze, I see a picture of one man trying to make sense and keep his head when a thousand bees are buzzing round his head and another thousand dogs barking at his feet. That is a man under siege, don’t you think? I do not actually see 10 Ministry directors being sacked for doing what is right and telling one political appointee, one minister, to spend funds on what they are meant for.

If I know anything, I know for a fact that no Director-General or Minister wants to be in the bad books of the Directors in his ministry. The bureaucrats are much too powerful to be toyed with. No Minister can succeed without them. They actually run the Ministries. If your Permanent Secretary wants you to fail, you have a serious problem on your hands. Top civil servants are like gods that must be appeased so that there will be peace.

Once they utter the statement ‘Sir, that is the way we have been doing it’, a Minister needs more than one backbone to stand up to them. However it is also at this point that I admit that spineless people should not, never again, be made ministers or heads of parastatals. Those bureaucrats will fillet even the most brilliant man for dinner, let alone a timid minister.
Now we know why our roads are perpetually bad, why the hospitals do not have drugs and why public schools have no roofs.

Unspent funds my foot! I believe there is a well managed and sustained conspiracy to keep back something for the boys at the end of every year. What’s a few million Nigerian children learning their alphabets and doing their arithmetic under a big iroko tree? It won’t hurt if a few hundred Nigerians die on Benin-Ore road on their way home for Christmas? As long as the big boys have a merry Christmas, who cares about the rest of us?

A former minister told me recently that he strongly believes that our rulers have a blood bank somewhere and I believe him. I have also written about it before. Or haven’t you asked yourself why we have so many avoidable deaths both on the roads and in the air? Is this country so broke that we cannot afford world standard aviation equipment? Are we so poor that we cannot fix roads or that it is simply a case of public officers using the blood of Nigerians to do whatever it is they do with human blood? But if they spend their allocation on good projects, what will be left for the sharing season? It could not possibly be because they do not know what to do or they have no funds to do it. So, how come there are funds waiting to be returned at the end of every year when there is work to be done? Can you now see why the crime civil servants are most wanted for is not just pilfering or mismanagement of funds? Their actions and inactions are causing us lives? Is that murder or manslaughter?

And the lawmakers who accepted the leftovers knew what they are doing, never mind all the self-righteous indignation. Some people are just shameless. Of course, there is nothing wrong with end-of-the-year gifts and parties, but trivia should not cripple essentials. The Yoruba proverb : agbepolaja o j’ale bii eni to gba sile is more than succinct. The man who stole the palm oil is a lesser thief than the man who receives stolen goods.

Very soon most of the Senate and House Committees will embark on an orgy of probes. They are all wondering why Ndudi Elumelu should be the only one in the limelight. They are going to leave their primary assignment of lawmaking and go after past, emphasis on past, projects and public officers instead of working on bills that would ensure that public thieves are, for instance, executed publicly.

The implication is the present crop of legislators will spend four years probing the affairs of the last four years while the serving governors, D-Gs and minister will steadily loot and remit a percentage to some unscrupulous men in the three arms zone and then in 2011, the next batch of lawmakers will continue the probing exercise.
Our consolation for now is that even if the arms of the law are too short to apprehend lawmakers, fewer Directors in the ministry will join the December looting.