Biodun Oyebanji, political scientist and governor of Ekiti State, believes that the debate on restructuring for the purpose of restoring true federalism should be on the front burner. Deputy Editor EMMANUEL Oladesu captures the governor’s thoughts on the imperative of devolution of power.
Many questions abound about the fate of Nigeria, its current defective structure, mode of inter-governmental relations and prospects of survival as a nation-state.
Should a highly heterogenous country battling with the unitarist danger not retrace itself to devolutionary process as agreed by it’s founding fathers ahead of independence?
Twenty four years after the last vestige of military hegemony, should Nigeria continue to masquerade as a federal entity, despite its over-centralisation of power, to the detriment of the component units?
Is the lopsided distribution of resources not counter-productive in a supposedly federal state?
To Biodun Oyebanji, political scientist and governor of Ekiti State, restructuring is the answer.
In a lecture titled: Reawakening the restructuring debate: Setting a national rebirth agenda,” in Akure, capital of Ondo State, the former Ekiti State University teacher said now that a progressive, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, is president, stakeholders should interrogate the issues around restructuring and a workable federalism for Nigeria.
“The call for restructuring is the call for a more perfect union that is just, fair, equitable and functional,”adding that it is “a holistic surgery for the healthy living of our country for a more effective, balanced, prosperous and peaceful nation that guarantees happiness for all.”
Oyebanji delved into history, emerging with an evidence of true federalism, which the nationalist politicians and pioneer leaders embraced, as reflected in the 1963 Constitution which provided for neat power relations between the Federal Government and federating units.
The arrangement, he recalled, suited Nigeria’s socio-cultural and historical reality.
However, the governor lamented that the curious Unification Decree 34 of 1966 by the military Head of State, Gen. Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, without a referendum, consultations, debates or expressed consent of the constituent regions, unilaterally altered the agreement.
Oyebanji explained the objective of restructuring he envisaged. He clarified that disintegration is not part of the agenda. Also, he said restructuring does not have to be a return to regional structure or merging of states. Rather, it should mean the renegotiation of political and socio-economic responsibilities and access to opportunities by the different layers of Government. It should also mean a more equitable power relations between the sub nationals and the federal government.
“We have to look at what the original architects of the nation imagined the security structure, transport system, road infrastructure, natural resources, tiers of government, water resources, agriculture, power relations and environment among others should look alike. Whereas, we cannot return wholesale to the past, we can definitely take some useful lessons from the past to birth a more perfect union,” Oyebanji stressed.
The governor noted the piecemeal redesign of the federal structure as reflected in the amendments to the 1999 Constitution. Some items have moved to the Concurrent List from the Exclusive List. These include: correctional services, railway, sea port and electricity. The governor said while this is a significant leap in the quest for a better federal system, there is still a long way to go.
Oyebanji said the security structure should reflect federalism. Under the current structure, governors are decorative chief security officers of their far-flung states. The commissioner of police takes orders, not from the state chief executives, but from the distant Inspector-General who resides in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory. (FCT). Apart from inadequate personnel, poor condition of service, inadequate resources to work with, corruption, lack of local intelligence, lack of passion and commitment on the part of most security personnel, there is disconnect with the locality in which the police are meant to serve.
The solution, in his view, is state police. Explaining his preference for multi-layer policing, he said:”The issue of enforcement of state laws which are best suited to be enforced by state or local police system is another reason I am in support of multilevel policing. I am of the firm belief that any government that is incapable of policing its area of jurisdiction upon which it legislates and superintends, is a lame duck because security and welfare are fundamental rights of the citizens guaranteed by the 1999 Constitution (as amended).”
He added:”It is absolutely ridiculous that a state will have a state Assembly that can legislate on concurrent and residual matters as ascribed by the constitution, can have a state judiciary to interpret its laws and administer justice within the state powers, but cannot have a police to enforce the law through its own police authority.
“More so, with the new amendment that now makes Correctional Services concurrent, it will mean that there should be state owned prisons and correctional centers which should be manned by state correctional officers. Will these officers be armed with just cudgels and batons?
“The greatest opposition to state police is the issue of arming them adequately to respond to attacks and for self-defense. It is obvious that the state correctional officers will have to be equipped with modern weapons like their federal counterparts to be effective and fit to discharge their duty.”
Oyebanji maintained that a government can only be said to be autonomous and functional when it can enforce its laws, adding that “the concept of outsourcing state law enforcement in the hand of the unmotivated federal police formation is totally ridiculous.”
“The tired argument that the state government could misused the police is not only nauseating and preposterous, the Amotekun experience has proved this lazy speculation as unfounded and retrogressive,” he fumed.
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Amotekun has remained a miracle. It has checkmated rural banditry, kidnapping, farmers/herders crisis and murder in Southwest. But, the point being made by Oyebanji is that “there has been no proven allegation against Amotekun Corps relating to arms misused, bribery, intimidation, illegal raids, and political attacks.”
Amotekun has been a source of security confidence, and natives have assisted them with intelligence gathering. Also, Amotekeun, the Army and the Police have continued to work together in special operations where the local understanding of the terrain by Amotekun has led to massive successes for the police and the army.
Oyebanji said the outfits across the six Southwest states will be more effective and responsive if they are formalised into the state police structure through a constitutional amendment. “They would have been more effective, if they are also armed like other sister security agencies,” he added.
The political scientist also reflected on the call for devolution of power. He pointed out that there have been calls for devolution of power without emphasizing devolution of resources. He said:”As more responsibilities, which should ordinarily belong to the states and local government, get returned to them, the necessary financial resources to meet them should be effected through a just and fair revenue allocation formula.”
Besides, Oyebanji believes that some funds which are presently domiciled in the Federal Government ought to be directly channeled to the States. An example is the Ecological Fund and the Universal Basic Education Fund.
On Ecological fund, he said:”This fund is administered by the Office of the Secretary to the Government of Federation. Yet, apart from the FCT, FG does not have a land of its own where it can apply this fund. So, the states which bear the direct consequences of environmental degradation will have to pray to receive the favour of the FG to access the fund.”
On UBEC Fund, the governor said:”Whereas the Federal Government does not run basic education, the fund that is created to help promote basic education in Nigeria is administered by the Universal Basic Education Commission.
“If this fund has been deliberately channeled as a special fund for Basic Education Development Fund for the states, it would have worked better as the overhead cost of running the commission would have been eliminated and more resources would have been available to the State.
“The bottlenecks of counterpart-fund matching and the endless redtapism in approval of projects have become counterproductive to the purpose for which the fund was put in place. The states would have better served if the fund is set out as a dedicated fund for basic education and paid directly to the states.”
Oyebanji said for Nigerian federalism to address imbalance and inequity in economic opportunities, there is the need for a new national industrial master plan for the country beyond the economic free trade zone system. He explained that the uneven distribution of wealth in Nigeria is traceable to the unfair localization of industries by the Federal Government for political reasons.
To maintain a clean break from the oast, he called for a federation that will create new industrial hubs in the states that have been disadvantaged, based on their comparative advantage and competitiveness, and special industrial estate development funds should be made available to the disadvantaged state to develop industrial hub infrastructure that can make them attractive to investors. This, in his view, will stem the dangerous rural-urban drift that is putting pressure on certain states where all the industrial potential of the countries are located and structural unemployment that plague our country can be brought to a halt.
Oyebanji also revisited the issue of environment, wondering why its regulation should be within the purview of the Federal Government. “Why should one need to obtain Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA certification) from Abuja before he can undergo construction or build bridges in Ondo State?,he queried.
He has other complaints: “You have got to wait for months before you can even get the team to visit for preliminary study and maybe another year before the result is out. Meanwhile, our people would be waiting to see road construction begin as soon as announcement of state approval goes out. Even for industries to install huge equipment, they are expected to get EIA from a federal government agency. Why should a State wait endlessly for the National Bureau of Statistics to re-base or calculate her GDP?”
Is local government a third tier in Nigeria? The political scientist said no. He objected to the listing of the councils in the Constitution, saying that “issues about local authority, municipal and council administration were purely in the hands of the federating units…. in response to the different socio-cultural plurality of the country.”
Oyebanji stressed:” Ideally, local government is not a federating unit; it is an administrative extension of the state and should not be fixed as it should be able to response to urban expansions, new developments and new realities.
“But, somehow, the Federal Government has been controlling local council through some incongruous and disruptive interventions. To move forward, we need to take away issues of local government administration from the suffocating grip of the Federal Government.”
Now that Tinubu is in the saddle, the governor said: “The call for true federalism that serves our people better and brings more equity and fairness that guarantee peace should begin to occupy the attention of the progressives.”
