The road to restructuring or ruin

Nigeria is on the path to a restructuring of the Nigerian state to re-establish the principles of federalism as our founding fathers freely decided in the negotiations that led to independence. That federal ideal was subverted by the military as they sought to transform Nigeria into a unitary state which now threatens to undermine Nigeria’s unity and stability.

The required restructuring will involve devolution of powers back to the states or regions and drastic reduction of the matters contained in the exclusive legislative list in our constitution (which are restricted to the federal government) with more matters returning to the concurrent list (where federal and state/regional powers coexist) and residual powers reserved for the states. It would involve re-establishing fiscal federalism including modifying the revenue allocation formula in favour of states and local governments consistent with devolution of powers, and restoring state powers over sales tax (or VAT), inland waterways except the few that traverse two or more states, solid minerals and other matters best suited to state control. Matters like electricity transmission, ports and harbours and railways should become concurrent matters in which both state and federal authorities can co-exist.

The absurdity in which state legislatures can create crimes but state governments which have primary responsibility for law and order within their states do not have any mechanism for enforcing their laws should be rectified with the legalization of state police forces. Large communities such as universities and polytechnics and residential estates, may be even local governments, may also be permitted to establish their own policing and enforcement agencies subject to appropriate regulation and control, in line with global best practices. States which wish may be allowed to form cooperative associations of states, economic zones or even regional governments and enjoy economies of scale in policy, planning, investment and governance.

My interpretation of all the calls for secession in “Biafra”; the calls for Sharia in the North-West and North-East; the grumbles in the Middle-Belt of Nigeria which is getting more intense and may boil over sooner or later; the unrest and militancy in the Niger-Delta; and the unceasing calls for “true federalism” in Western Nigeria is that the status quo is unsustainable and is about to collapse. The vision of a unitary Nigeria in which a minority establish a permanent hegemony over the nation has failed and produced only a corrupt, unproductive, unstable and disunited nation. It has produced “Boko Haram” in the North-East; sabotage and militancy in the Niger-Delta; widespread poverty, illiteracy and tens of millions of children outside schools in the North-West and North-East; murderous conflicts between Fulani herdsmen and farmers and indigenes across the whole country and particularly in the North-Central; disgruntlement in the South-West; and growing calls for secession and independence in the South-East. In the whole of Nigeria, all that unitarism has generated is poverty, unemployment, inequality and crises. There can be no justification for proceeding further on this path to ruin!

The only debate left now is how far our federal restructuring will go! Do we go back to the confederal ideas agreed at Aburi in 1966? Do we re-establish federalism as agreed in the pre-independence negotiations and enshrined in the 1960 and 1963 constitutions? Do we reinstate the regions or allow a loose, voluntary association of states? Do we retain the presidential system of government or re-consider a parliamentary democracy at the state and federal levels? These are to my mind the only substantive questions we have to resolve but as to the fact that we must reform and reconfigure the Nigerian nation based on a federal template, there can no longer be any doubt!

There are of course those “unitarians”, the prebendal politicians and hegemonists and their agents and “contractors” who benefit from the current failing system and would like to see its perpetuation. To these ones, there is nothing wrong with Nigeria, contrary to the evidence of our eyes and ears. In fact these ones seek a further entrenchment of the unitary model and their primary strategy for achieving this is through the subterfuge they call “local government autonomy”. In reality what they want is local governments as a third tier of government independent of the states which will drive the final nail in the coffin of the federal idea in Nigeria! It is a strategy of “divide and rule…and conquer” which will enable the federal hegemonistsfinally destroy the concept of regions or states as federating units in Nigeria. An ancillary utilitarian benefit of this approach, from their point of view, allows them, through movements of population to control any local government anywhere in the country. This strategy like every other idea the unitarians or unitarists have attempted will fail.

The other strategy is to divide and subvert the emergent consensus for restructuring and federalism especially in Southern Nigeria and the Middle-Belt but also by leading politicians in the north, by inciting Yorubas against Igbos and vice versa; inciting South against North; Niger-Delta against Yoruba and Igbo; “Bendel” (Edo and Delta states) against their Southern neighbours; the South against the Middle-Belt etc. They will try to divide Yorubas on the basis of religion, partisan politics or state of origin and other historical divisions; they will use financial inducements in the South-East and South-South; and divide the North-Central using religion. If all else fails, they may actually encourage a military coup. All these strategies will only worsen Nigeria’s condition but will not aid the perpetuation of a successful hegemony.

Nigeria’s only sensible and viable course of action is to channel the current agitation and crises into a constructive conversation about how to restructure Nigeria based on the principles of federalism that retains the benefits of our union while recognizing our diversity. The objective must be to achieve a strong federal constitution with devolution of powers, fiscal federalism and state police at the minimum before the 2019 elections. The alternative may be ruinous!

Opeyemi Agbaje