Nonso Okafor And The Audacity To Serve

Both are public funds largely unaccounted for. Although some efforts are made at auditing how constituency funds are expended, but it is all fraud because these mostly nonexistent or over bloated expenditure, or both, are easily worked out smoothly.

The challenge is; constituency allowance has no specific project for the constituency tied to it, and so a lawmaker is therefore to take on any project at his own discretion. While this is largely no longer obtainable in the National Assembly, it is still obtainable in many state assemblies but may change with the recent approval of Legislative Financial Autonomy by President Buhari. The point is this; any lawmaker who has received his constituency allowance can use it for anything including for his or her personal purposes, without any consequence at all.

In actual fact, constituency allowances are seen as personal funds by the lawmakers it is given. Although there is a system in place to check how the fund is disbursed or used within the constituency, interestingly the rogue system is often after getting just enough cut from the lawmaker in question as reward for the job of covering up and helping him retire the money through fictitious projects or inflation of the cost of projects.

This is what most lawmakers do, from year to year. In essence, Nonso would have so easily retired his constituency allowance without spending that much on that house, which was built to taste and furnished.

Assuming for instance that he embezzled the money, the constituents won’t know as many are not aware of constituency allowance, how much it is or what it is meant for.

Therefore what Nonso has done is that he has shown that there is constituency allowance and that it is enough to build a house for indigent constituents and furnish same. May be he did not spend all the constituency allowance on the building, but this is surely a good place to start; a clear demonstration that public funds can be put into tangible public use.

A foremost takeaway is that even though a public servant may need money for his personal wellbeing in view of his personal financial state, and can very easily seal off the public fund without traces, he can also choose to serve the public with the integrity of his heart.

This contravenes the popular estimation that to stop embezzlement of public money, only wealthy and privileged people should be elected into public office. More remarkable is Nonso’s act of public accountability when we consider that he has one term in office because of Nnewi’s rotational agreement to the House of Assembly seat.

An undoubted fact remains that people do not expect public servants to take on their job responsibilities with their private emoluments. And no matter how generous or willing they may be to sharing their official entitlements, if only they will make concerted efforts to be accountable of public funds given to them, it’s enough.

Ordinarily, no public servant ought to be eulogized for doing his job with public money. But taking into account the established pattern in which public funds are embezzled with impunity and no form of accountability ever, Nonso’s audacity to serve against the run of play, is a stimulating action that has exposed years of misappropriation of constituency allowance. Now, there is visible hope of the possibility of a change of narrative in the use of constituency allowance much to the benefit of the people.