IMPACT OF GOVERNANCE TO ECONOMIC GROWTH/DECLINE

In several national, regional and international conferences and symposia, which one has been exposed to, with intention to inculcate good governance, economic expansion trajectory and sustainable growth, there has always been mentioned that there is need for complementarities and interdependence of the three pillars to ensure sustained progress, economic growth and advancement.

The pillars that need complementarities at all times are; political policies that demonstrate political will which give birth to the implementation of investor friendly and flexible policies that would ensure easy to make business culture.

The other pillar is having economic and balanced investor policies with excessive job creation and poverty alleviation strategies.
They should be tied with the social pillar that promotes human rights, equality before the law and great care towards the vulnerable groups and compliant to the international sustainable goals, as well as being sensitive to the economic advice of the Breton wood institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB).

Indeed for a country to advance progressively with its people in a balanced sustainable way; people need to eat, all children need to go to school irrespective of their social status or that of their parents or guardians, students at tertiary should be guaranteed efficient, quality, affordable education that ensures competitively qualified human capital.

It is a must that all public health centres should have all drugs; there should be deliberate infrastructure development in the rural communities, to ensure that the development gaps between the rural and urban is bridged. One day, while I was doing some research, based on the United Nation’s Sustainable goals, with a view of checking where we stand as a country. I found that in as far as the Constitution of the country is concerned, the country has done a lot, literary in the Constitution has all attributes that seek to respond to the sustainable development goals, particularly under Chapter Three of the Constitution on the Bill of Rights, Section 32 on Workers’ Rights Section 58 on the political objectives, Section 63 on duties of the citizen and Sections 59 and 60 on economic rights and social rights respectively.

The Constitution also state unequivocally that the country is committed to the respect all international treaties to which she is signatory, as enshrined in section 236. These cited sections cover all fundamental rights, rights of the child, rights to education, rights of women, workers’ rights, and citizens’ rights, social economic and political rights.

It is important to mention that the Constitution alone is the good start; it resembles that the international treaties to which we are signatory to have been domesticated, but this form of domestication alone without operationalising them through statute and also practice on the ground means nothing if the citizens cannot access those rights in statute and in practice.

In as far as implementation of the sustainable goals, we are not doing well at all as a country, due to a number of factors; politically there is more rhetoric and less action. From where I’m sitting, there is no complementarities between the three arms of government.  In short, there is no separation of powers because there is skewed prioritisation and distribution of wealth and as such, poverty is exacerbated by a number of factors which include but not limited to that we have over 60 per cent working people earning below poverty datum line, we have over 30 per cent of the population relying from the donor aid food, we have high rate of unemployment, we have acute shortage of drugs in public health centres and we recently had food shortage in schools.

The above mentioned deficiencies on the sustainable goals demonstrate that we are not doing well in the first four sustainable goals which are; poverty, hunger, health and quality education irrespective of the fact that we have good constitutional clauses pertaining all the above.
The wrong budgetary prioritisation is caused by lack of political will on the part of Cabinet, who are initiators and implementers of the budget, as each time they passionately ignore and undermine oversight and good counsel from the legislative arm of government who are people’s representatives. This is direct demonstration of lack of POLITICAL WILL.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: