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Vice president Yemi Osinbajo has raised a very critical issue that has been frustrating the process of continuity in governance in Nigeria.

Speaking last week in his keynote address at the Leadership Newspapers Awards and Conference 2017, with the theme, ‘Towards financially viable state governments,’ in Abuja, he disclosed that “One of the challenges with governance in Nigeria today remains the penchant for dismantling or dismissing everything inherited”.

He said “Our problem, of course, in our country is not in new ideas or starting projects, it is the lack of rigour and discipline to complete projects and to maintain them”.

However, to buttress his analogy, Vice President who had served as the Commissioner for Justice and Attorney General of Lagos State, cited the example of Lagos State, which he said was possibly the most successful sub national economy because of the continuity in the implementation of a plan.

He said each successive governor in the state had followed the plan in financial and land reforms as well as infrastructure development laid out by the Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s administration.

At the federal level, he averred that “Even though the Treasury Single Account was not our idea, we recognised its value and realised that the real challenge was the lacklustre implementation that it had suffered over the years.

“And so, President Buhari issued his first Presidential Order mandating full compliance with the TSA. The closure of more than 20,000 commercial bank accounts that followed has resulted in monthly savings of N4bn that would have gone on bank charges alone. That’s more resources for us to use for the benefit of Nigerians.

“The Lagos-Kano standard gauge, Warri-Aladja rail and Second Niger Bridge have always been in the pipeline. We have taken the concrete steps required to complete them. We raised the counterpart funding in the cases of those requiring loans, and made sure the contractors are getting the job done.”

Continuing, Osinbajo noted that “Financial viability is not just about earning more, it’s also as much about doing more with less, which is our mantra at the federal level; making the little we have go as far as possible”.

“How? By embracing fiscal prudence, debt management, controlling overheads, and so on.”

In his further submission, Osinbajo argued that state governments must think, plan and act as countries, saying “This, was necessary because 10 of the country’s states with the highest Gross Domestic Products had higher GDPs than over 15 African countries”.

“Thinking like a country means planning like one. And I think that one of the most important things for states to do is to begin to think and plan like countries do. And we cannot wait for constitutional reforms that may be required for further devolution (of power) to the states.

“We must act whether or not there is this reform. In many cases, states have control of some of the resources that can make a tremendous difference in the way that they operate.”

Osinbajo recalled that the six-year period of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo as Premier of the then Western Region from 1954 to 1960 was often cited as one of the most progressive of any government in the developing world.

He made it clear, saying “Financial viability was achieved mostly from taxes and revenues from agriculture, especially cocoa, and some from mineral resources”.