By Niyi Akinnaso
Throughout human history, calls for the reorganization of the polity have taken various forms. In many cases, the agitations for reorganization are framed in terms of demands for certain concessions, certain rights, and the ability to do certain things within the agitators’ geographical space. In federal systems, such demands are couched in terms of devolution of powers to the federating units. The goal is to strengthen the federating units so they could exercise greater control over their own destiny, including managing their own resources, controlling their own police, and depending less and less on the central government, except for certain activities, such as national defence and foreign affairs.
In more extreme cases, the demands take the form of separatist agitation by which the agitators seek to constitute an autonomous entity. This is often a last resort by minorities locked in pluralist states, who feel cheated or neglected, such as Catalans in Spain; Moros in the Philippines; Tamils in Sri Lanka; and the Igbo and Ijaw in Nigeria. Such separatist agitations often result from failure by the central government to take the calls for reorganization seriously enough in the first place.
However the agitation is expressed, it is often rooted in people’s experiences or fears of marginalization, oppression, cheating, or deprivation of access to desirable political goods, especially goods to which they feel entitled.
Both restructuring and separatist agitations are going on simultaneously in Nigeria today, against the backdrop of lingering social, political, and economic problems. Youth unemployment is at an all time high. So is the poverty index. Inflation is rising. So is the cost of living. The education and healthcare industries are in disarray. There is more decay than repair in infrastructure (roads, bridges, public buildings, water and power supply).
The agitations are exacerbated by rampant insecurity, the scale of which the nation has never experienced. Boko Haram is pummelling the Northeast. Bandits are maiming and killing in the Northwest. Fulani herders are rampaging farmlands and whole villages in other parts of the country. Everybody is feeling the heat. Farmers are afraid to go to their farms. Prowling kidnappers and armed robbers have made highways unsafe for travellers. Workers are scared to commute to work. People feel unsafe even in their own homes.
It has become apparent that the federal government alone cannot solve these problems. Yet, the states have neither the powers not the resources to act.
It is within the above contexts that the Governors of the 17 Southern states came together recently to agree on the way forward, echoing popular demands by their respective constituents. They issued a communique in which they agreed on 12 key issues, including (1) the decision to ban open grazing of cattle in any of their states, being the source of agony and low agricultural productivity in their states; (2) the call to the Federal Government to review appointments to Federal agencies in line with the Federal Character principle; and, most importantly, (3) the need to restructure the country in order to achieve true federalism, including the devolution of powers, the establishment of state police, and the review of the revenue allocation formula in favour of the federating units.
This last issue on restructuring really is the main focus of the Governors’ recommendations. Others are supportive political or diplomatic additions.
Not unexpectedly, the opposition to their recommendations has come largely from the North, including a jaundiced statement credited to the presidency; an uninformed reading of the constitution by Attorney General Abubakar Malami; and the questioning by some Northern politicians of the audacity of the Southern Governors to speak on behalf of their own people.
While attacking the position of the Southern Governors, none of the Northern critics offered alternative solutions to the national problems highlighted by the Governors. Columnists, who castigated the Southern Governors, either for offering well known solutions or for not going far enough, missed the symbolism of a joint position on 12 issues by 17 of the country’s 36 state Governors from three different political parties (9 PDP, 7 APC, 1 APGA), representing three of the country’s six geopolitical zones and about half of the country’s population.
It is reasonable, however, to ask of the Southern Governors, What next? There are several additional steps they must take. First, they must all speak henceforth with one voice on the issues they agreed on, both in public and in private. They have so far done so, and they must continue.
Second, They must mobilize their constituents-monarchs, religious leaders, opinion leaders, party leaders, and sociocultural organizations to sing the same song with them. Again, fortunately, Afenifere, Ohaneze, and APC leaders in the Southwest have thrown in their support.
Third, it is particularly necessary for all their House Assembly members as well as their representatives at the National Assembly to work arduously on their agenda. In particular, the states should follow the lead of Ebonyi, Ekiti, Ondo, and Oyo in passing anti-grazing laws in order to provide necessary constitutional backing for their declaration.
Fourth, the Southern Governors must work with their representatives in the NASS to pursue their agenda for whatever it is worth, should any of them ever come to the floor of either chamber. For whatever it is worth, the Governors jointly should prepare memoranda on relevant items on their agenda that each of them will submit to the Constitution Review Committee of the NASS, when it sits in their zone.
In pursuance of this objective, they should seek the support of like-minded Governors in the North, especially in the North-Central, to have their NASS members support the Southern Governors’ agenda. It is worth emphasizing that the 17 Southern states have as many as 51 Senators in a 109-member chamber. If they are unanimous in their voice, all they need to win on any bill is 5 additional Senators or more. Similarly, they have 169 members in a 360-member House of Representatives. They need additional 12 members or more to win.
There are, however, reasons to doubt the usefulness of additional national dialogue as suggested by the Governors. The nation’s recent history shows that the government has never acted on the resolutions of previous dialogues, not even the ones organized by the political party in power.
What is needed is an engineered path to restructuring, the like of which the Southern Governors have initiated. They must stand by their resolution and continue to work out the details through necessary constitutional channels.
