What Do Governments Do?

MANY may be wondering what governments do. They have every right to do so following various failings of governments, including basics like paying salaries they prescribed for their own workers.
The role of governments is more fundamental and our Constitution states it so lucidly and succinctly that it remains a wonder that our governments do not aspire to implement the provision.
According to Section 14 2b, “The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government”. Where governments abdicate these responsibilities, they question their very existence, since they would not realise they are in power for the benefit of the people.
Nigeria is passing through one of its most challenging phases, hardly any government seems to prime its programmes to the constitutional provision, which clearly underlines the importance of security and the well being of the people. Could things have been different if governments cared for the people? We think so.
Concerns about governments alienating themselves from the people are not new, and they are not related to governments in Nigeria alone.
John Caldwell Calhoun, former US Vice President, former Senator in a May 26, 1836 address expressed worries about government. “A power has arisen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.” The “Cohesive power of public plunder,” as the speech was later known, became a common reference for governments abandoning the people while pursuing the good of a few.
Could this explain why governments are more focussed on the next elections, though they are more than two years away, than in fulfilling promises their promises to make Nigeria safe and more prosperous?
Nigerians want to see governments do more with the billions of Naira voted annually for the benefit of the people. Key areas of concern remain security and basic infrastructure. When governments fail in their responsibilities to the people breach the Constitution.
What does sanctity of lives mean where governments cannot prevent illegal taking of lives? What is welfare when people are not being paid for work they have done? What is the importance of life when diseases are mauling our people to submission and nobody cares?
Ronald Reagan, former US President in his first Inaugural address (1981), said, “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem”. Prescient as this may seem, Nigerians want to see their governments solving their problems. When this starts, governments will get more support from the people whose votes got them into office. Democratic governance is a contract with the people.