It is a big surprise that the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, says he is prepared to prune thegrowing cost of running public affairs. All the newspapers have reported that he is set to confrontthe challenge headlong by scrapping some government bodies, merging others and restructuringmany. The details are still being worked out. All that has been released so far is that the NationalExaminations Council, National Poverty Eradication Programme and the Universal TertiaryMatriculation Examination are the fist casualties of the plan. By the announced plan, it is clear thatthe president and his men either do not appreciate the magnitude of the problem or he is againplaying games with a deadly disease afflicting the country. How does scrapping NECO anddirecting WAEC to absorb the workers amount to cutting cost? Or how would changing the nameof NAPP amount to enhancing the value of governance? What is he doing to ensure that everykobo that goes into the national treasury counts? What is he doing to ensure that public policy istailored towards alleviating the suffering of the people? The paper examines the Cost ofGovernance under Jonathan’s presidency. It explores cost of governance in a thematic form, usingconcrete instances to drive home its major theses. The paper concludes by positing that rising costof governance is unnecessary waste of public funds in payment of entitlements, due to overbloatedadministrative cost, but it has, above all, given rise to the current unhealthy rivalry andwidespread bitterness between the so-called clause of “senior ministers and junior or ministers ofstate.”