Countdown to Restructuring Part Two

The Rudimentary of Restructuring, the Views of Leaders.

“Why can’t we have a system of government that will create what I will call the United States of Nigeria? Let me explain. We all know that we must structure. It is either we restructure, or we break up, you don’t have to be a prophet to know that. That is certain – restructure or we break up." The General Overseer, the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye - The Guardian October 04, 2020. 

So, what exactly is Restructuring and what is it about in real time? And why is it perceived by Northern traditional rulers and the majority of Northern political leaders as subversive manoeuvring by Southerners to dismantle Nigeria? There is nothing subversive or treasonable about the demand for Restructuring or True Federalism. We were there before the outbreak of the civil war. 

Restructuring as a political concept was made popular by the former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 when he demanded and launched a new era of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). His groundbreaking theory did not only lay the foundation for the dismantling of the monstrosity called the USSR (The Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic), but it also checked hunger and starvation. And it saved the second most powerful military nation on earth from self-annihilation. In 1991 it turned into 15 nations of an equal part. Today, the people in the old region are no longer trooping to Europe to seek political asylum, and no more Soviet Scientists and professors flocking to the United States of America to drive a taxi or do menial jobs. The benefits of Restructuring cannot be overemphasized.

When the Jonathan Administration organized a National Conference, in March 2014, I was not in Nigeria. But I participated actively, albeit virtually, by writing and publishing talking points, focusing on the Decentralization of power for the benefit of my state's delegates. Despite the disinterestedness of the APC Governors in the West, the conference made a tremendous stride, accomplishing its mandate. According to the BBC on August 26, 2014, the delegates "passed more than 600 resolutions and produced a 10,335-page report, which has been submitted to President Goodluck Jonathan, who promised to implement them."

Well, President Jonathan did not come back for the second term to implement it as he anticipated. His Successor, President Buhari, and his political party promised Nigeria during the 2015 Presidential campaign that they would organize a Sovereign National Conference, with a view to channelling a new direction for Nigeria. 

In furtherance of that promise, President Buhari set up a committee, headed by Governor El'Rufai. The committee submitted its report, but the President was not sold and nothing has changed. President Buhari, however, manifests his view on Restructuring in his January 01, 2018, New Year Day Address. According to the President “When all the aggregates of nationwide opinions are considered, my firm view is that our problems are more to do with process than structure." 

Without question, that was unequivocal, a dubious narrative, and an intellectual fraud on the part of the authors of the speech. Fellow Nigerians, there is more to the principle of restructuring, structurally and substantively, than simply being a "process." As you will see later, the view of his Minister of Works, Mr. Fashola, and those of his Minister of Transportation, Mr. Amaechi, as well as those of the Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nassar El'Rufar, will put a lie at the "process than structure" narrative that the President and his speech writers are marketing. 

The three gentlemen made a plausible case for True Federalism, and it beat my conscience why they had backslid or why they had not been able to convince their master and the cabal to implement the case they made stridently when President Jonathan was in government.

According to Mr Fashola (SAN), “The 36 state governors are demanding a truer federal system in terms of fiscal and political federalism. I associate myself with this demand in its entirety." 

“The realization of these demands on their own may not necessarily leapfrog us into El Dorado, but without them, the journey will be torturous. If they materialize, they liberate the possibilities that lie inherent in the diverse capacities that the Nigerian states and local governments are blessed with”,  “In that event, the Federal Government will not be without authority or responsibility but, in my view, it will be better able to coordinate the diversities for mutual prosperity”.

"Although the post-colonial era when Nigeria practised Parliamentary Democracy with three semi-autonomous regions was not without its problems, the economy was stable as each region kept the bulk of its resources and contributed to the central government to enable it to carry out its national responsibilities."

“The system was not without its problems. But we had stable electricity. We had more food – enough to eat and enough to export. Illiteracy levels were higher but there was evidence to show that it was being addressed. Our universities had more learning in them and acquired a respectable reputation”.

"Things began to fall apart for the country when the Military intervened in governance. “We quickly began to lose our lustre. The military came in and unified the regions and things have never been quite the same since.”

“Although we have a “Federal Government” the constitution was written by the Military. So we have state courts where judges are picked by the Federal Government. We have state legislators but no state police to enforce the laws they make. 

There are no state prisons, so we rely on Federal officers to police our states and keep convicted persons away from law-abiding citizens. We have Federal Traffic Safety Officers to issue Driver’s Licenses to drivers in the state and also seek to regulate municipal traffic inside the states.” 

Governor Fashola said the Federal Government, in order to maintain its financial hold on the federating states, keeps 52 per cent of the nation’s resources leaving the 36 federating states with 26 per cent while 774 local governments share only 20 per cent of the resource among them monthly."

“The debate, therefore, is not only about the cost of such a large government but also about its effectiveness." 

“These are the structural challenges of the Government that we must overcome. They sum up the demand for a truer federal union that is being demanded by the 36 state governors in terms of fiscal and political federalism.”

That was Mr. Fashola (SAN) in 2013, he diligently and constructively articulated the ills of our present federal system and why it must be rejected for True Federalism to thrive. So, why is he not making the same argument today? I have no clue. Thank God, we have his works handy and we can conveniently cite them - as we're doing now - to convince the doubting Thomases that the monstrosity at Abuja is not sustainable. 

Let's hear from the Minister of Transportation, the former Governor of River State. He was blunt and thought-provoking beyond expression. Speaking at the retreat organized by the Senate Committee on Constitution Review, SCCR, in Asaba, the Delta State Capital, Governor Amaechi said: “We want the Federal Government to reduce the responsibilities that they have as well as the resources that they have because I am first of all a Rivers citizen before I became a Nigerian.” 

Making one of the strongest arguments for the State Police that day, Amaechi said: “I used Rivers resources to train 300 policemen; these policemen were trained by the Israelis. We had an understanding with the police authorities in Abuja that they would remain in Rivers for some time after their training. But the moment a certain IGP came, just because he did not like a certain Amaechi, he posted the policemen out. But if we have State police, such a thing will never happen.” True Federalism: The plots of our governors - Vanguard, August 22, 2010.

There is nothing wrong with the views that Mr. Rotimi propounded here, but why is he reluctant now to speak up? Again, I have no clue.

Let's hear from Governor El'Rufai: “As a medium-term, structural measure, we must work to restore our federalism to the broad outlines embedded in the 1963 republican constitution, devolving more powers and responsibilities to the states and making the federal government less of a busy body. This would require that states like Bauchi whose annual internally-generated revenue is N7 billion should not run a government costing N58 billion because of monthly hand-outs from Abuja. Each state should learn to live within its means and seek to actively develop its comparative endowments. State governors will then be compelled to use their resources better and not point fingers at the federal government.” Between Terrorism and Corruption by El'Rufai - Sahara Reporters, May 10, 2012.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with federalism or the federal system of government. Ours became an aberration because the concept was abused, distorted, and manipulated by every administration at the national level since the end of the civil war and the crude oil windfall. However, after a repeated perusal of the opinions of Fashola, Amaechi, and El'Rufai on the subject, I'm still short of words to explain my perplexity over President Buhari's demurral in organizing a national conference and decentralising the system accordingly. In the words of Pastor Adeboye, "We all know that we must restructure. It is either we restructure, or we break up, you don’t have to be a prophet to know that." Please, watch out for part three. 

PART THREE

I was never a fan of or an advocate for a sovereign national conference; believing as always, that leadership, to a great extent, determines the attitude of the governed toward grafts, bribery, and corruption. And that if we have selfless or credible leaders from north to south and from east to west, all the calls for true federalism, confederacy, or total disintegration as robust as they are present, would ebb significantly. In other words, if we vote credible candidates into political office, we are on our way to the promised land. I was wrong. The Primaries and the process of selecting candidates at the party level are dominated by one man - the Governor or the President, as the case may be. It’s all about the incumbent, and who he wants to contest at the general election. In the words of President Obasanjo, ‘I do not know who is going to replace me, but I sure know who won’t’. And it happened.

PART THREE

In hindsight, given the nature of our electoral history, I firmly believe and hold that we will not be able to elect selfless visionary leaders capable of bringing to fruition our dreams of a great and egalitarian society, because of the dictatorship of a very privileged few, supported by the bourgeois class they created via the spoils of office. That brings us to the thesis of this short essay: Decentralization, without Disintegration: Unraveling and overcoming the oligarchic trends in our body politic, without jeopardizing our age-old social and cultural integration.

For a start, you cannot separate the leadership crisis from the manipulation of our federal system and from the resultant structural problems. They are one and the same. The manipulation or distortion of our federal system gave birth to the structural problems, and the structural problems, in turn, create fertile ground for nurturing the opportunists we are having at the national level as well as in most of the states and local government councils - leading to a culture of low expectations.  Apology to Professor Ndibe. Undoing that is a task before the delegates. Because maintaining the status quo is the shortest distance to anarchy, disintegration, or a revolution.

Ours is the only country where an Awo, Aguda, Kontagora, Idiagbon, Eme Awa, Aboyade, Adedeji, Alele Williams, Yusuf Maitama Sule, Faleye, Kalu Idika Kalu, Donald Duke, and Ayagi cannot become President. For instance, for an Idiagbon military coup to be legitimate, a Buhari had to be brought in from retirement to satisfy the interest of the so-called Sokoto-Kano Caliphate. Were it not for that historic blonder, there would not have been an IBB aborted experimentation with democracy an Abacha fiasco an Obasanjo dictatorship, or the dying Musa Ya'Adua. It is that simple! It is the structural deformity that defines the state of our federalism, and by extension, the quality of our leadership.

Undoing the Anomaly:

At this juncture, I would like to point out that at this very moment, there are in existence, some elements of a confederacy system of government in operation in the present-day Northern region of Nigeria. Given that as true, one would then ask: why the resistance to calling for true federalism or resource control? Why the 'no-go areas'? Why the brouhaha about federating units and the federal system? How about the unilateral promulgation and imposition of Sharia Law in most parts of the Northern region? Did Sharia Law receive the approval of the sitting President or the votes of the National Assembly? No. It is the same with the introduction of Native Police.

Truth is that the call for true federalism and semi-autonomous status that most progressives are demanding is already in operation in the Northern part of Nigeria, except of course, in the area of revenue generation where there is still 100% reliance on Federal Government - thanks to the monthly free oil money from the federal government. In other words, if elements of semi-autonomy are presently in full swing in most Northern States of the country, it is legitimate on the part of the delegates at the conference to vote and endorse semi-autonomous status for the various states. And the same should apply to resource control.

Therefore, I challenge every concerned delegate at the conference to be firm in purpose and seize this great opportunity to impress upon every participating delegate, no matter the geographical, religious, or political background, that the present unitary model is not sustainable. Our federal model was distorted by the same people, some of whom are now holding forth at the Arewa Consultative Forum, crying about marginalization. At this point in time, every Nigerian wants a true federal system, where each component unit or region is imbued with attributes of a semi-autonomous entity, defined as a federating unit or region - a constituent of a whole – of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It's all about the decentralization of the national government. 

I would like to end this piece by quoting, once again, the great work of Professor Wole Soyinka in the concluding paragraph of the same essay referenced in the opening section of this piece. ”Nigeria has proved too large and inefficient for the centralized identification and management of such human skills and material resources, the centre has become self-aggrandizing, bloated, parasitic, and alienated. Now is the time to put into practice that ancient saying: Small is beautiful. We must return to the earlier days of creative rivalry that pronounces that vanishing past an interrupted project of promise, creativity, and productivity. Then, it may be possible for your generation to say contentedly, even while the harvest is still distant but the soil is cleanly prepared, the seeds implanted and germinating: Mission? Accomplished!”

03/25/2014