Author: The Nation

By Biodun Jeyifo

“That distribution undo excess and each man have enough” – Shakespeare, King Lear

It is not as an act of prophetic insight that I declare in the title of this piece that sooner or later, Nigeria will be geopolitically and administratively restructured. Rather, it is an expression of a bitter but realistic acceptance of the logic of the misrule that makes life so terrible for the vast majority of Nigerian peoples at the present time and going back to the resumption of civilian “democracy” in 1999. By the light of this logic, we can see that about the only thing sustaining the bloated overconcentration and over-centralization of power in the country is the fact, first of all, that the oil is still flowing. If the oil stops flowing or if its control by the Nigerian rentier state is seriously challenged or disrupted, the concentration of power in Abuja will fade away in a matter of months, if not weeks.

Secondly, this logic includes the generally overlooked fact that restructuring of sorts is already taking place without the permission of the federal government. The most visible expression of this “restructuring” is the fac that throughout the length and breadth of the country, many communities are no longer looking to the federal government and its institutions for their security needs. As a matter of fact, there is a profound mistrust of the federal government and its clinging to power at the centre, given the widespread belief that its claim of “indivisible unity” has become a thinly disguised justification for blatant sectionalism and ethnic irredentism.

And then thirdly, “restructuring” of a very ominous kind is already taking place in the number of insurrectionary, secessionist and criminal movements and groups that are very successful in their challenge to the monopoly of power by our centralized state. Badly equipped, outgunned and demoralized, our armed and security forces, together with their command personnel, increasingly prove to be unable to provide and stabilize institutions vital to the maintenance of a modern centralized state. Yes, the army has not vanished into thin air – heavens forbid! – and the paramilitary formations of the Nigerian Police are still functioning, but who does not know that a large number of Nigerans fear these support units of the federal government as much as they fear the forces of Boko Haram and the marauding bandits and “herders”? We must face the facts, the truth, compatriots: restructuring is already happening, even if it is not the kind of restructuring that the liberal and conservative political and ideological forces of the intelligentsia have in mind when they propose that sooner or later, sooner than later, Nigeria must and will be restructured. Which is why, in the title of this piece, I make bold to declare that in the end, there will be restructuring in on form or another.

But then, I also mention redistribution in that same title. And in doing so, I come to the main idea of this piece: although most readers will almost automatically react negatively to the suggestion, the quest for redistribution is by a long shot more pervasive in our country than the quest for restructuring. Permit me to state this in another formulation: if you ask them, the vast majority of Nigerians will say that, yes, they want restructuring of power and authority to bring the benefits and assurances of governance closer to their communities, hometowns and neighborhoods, but above all else, they want the benefits of our oil wealth to be shared equally among all Nigerians, not cornered by our rulers, our elites, our emergency billionaires. They see that the looters of our common wealth come from all parts of the country without any exceptions. They want jobs; free or affordable and qualitative education for their children; subsidized, quality housing and well-equipped hospitals and clinics for themselves and their families. And they want national and state governments that put the interest of all Nigerians at the centre of governance. They also want a wage structure in which a livable minimum wage is enforced and also bears an equitable relationship to the salaries and emoluments of our legislators and public officeholders. In other words, they want the assets and resources of the nation to be held in trust for present and future generations of Nigerians. By the way, the Nigerian Constitution has clauses supporting all these expressions of the primacy of redistribution, even if the relevant clauses are, to use a legal jargon, “non-justiciable”. I shall come back to this issue in the closing paragraphs of this discussion. For now, permit me to go back to the suggestion that restructuring will not only happen sooner or later but is already happening.

It so happens, compatriots, that restructuring from below by non-state actors and forces is a prominent feature of the politics of all the failed states of our continent and other parts of the developing world. In all of them without exception, the refusal or failure of the central power to organize and actualize orderly, equitable and democratic restructuring is the cause of restructuring done by rogue elements and conservative, irredentist movements. For this reason, the view taken by Buhari’s administration that restructuring is risky if not actually dangerous is self-fulfilling. In nearly every state which refuses to restructure equitably and democratically, there is nearly always an outbreak of restructuring by other means – war, insurrections, uprisings, marauding non-state or anti-statist movements. This is part of the tragedy of the Buhari administration’s profound lack of understanding of what we might describe as the dialectics of restructuring: you can either work to achieve it peacefully and democratically or oppose it at the peril of letting it run its own chaotic and destructive course.

I should of course state here with as much emphasis as possible that I am not posing restructuring against redistribution in this piece. And I do admit that most liberal and progressive proponents of restructuring in Nigeria also bring redistribution into their demands and programs for restructuring. The real issue on which the Nigerian Left, conceived as an amalgam of many ideological and political currents and forces, should enter into serous debates with them is the fact that if pressed on the matter, most liberal proponents of restructuring will say let’s have restructuring first and then attend to redistribution later, after we have achieved restructuring. This is fundamentally wrong and is, at any rate, impracticable. Or more properly put, only if war and insurrection have taken over the struggle for restructuring will the toiling masses of Nigerians everywhere in the country agree that they should hold off on redistribution while the struggle for restructuring is fought and brought to a victorious end.

At any rate, it is very crucial to recognize that restructuring has already begun in Nigeria, without any ideological or programmatic fanfare. It is chaotic, it is inchoate, it is fractious and nation-wrecking. It is not the restructuring that liberal and progressive proponents of restructuring have in mind. I stated earlier that this kind of “restructuring” is rampant in all the failed states of the African continent and that this ought to serve as a warning, a cautionary tale for us in Nigeria. I now add that as a matter of fact, this phenomenon of a “restructuring” that does  not shout its name but is extraordinary in its militancy is rampant all over the contemporary world in all the continents, all the regions. As I write these words, the United States, the heartland of global capitalism and the birthplace of the modern democratic republic, is being shaken to its foundations by an atavistic restructuring of its democratic polity by one of the two ruling class political parties, the Republican Party. If this “restructuring” succeeds, a political party which has clearly emerged as a minority party based openly and militantly on white supremacy, will become a majority party with the possibility of indefinite grip on power at the center of the American political order.

In moving to the concluding paragraphs of this discussion, I now come to the observation I made earlier to the effect that the Nigerian Constitution itself makes equitable redistribution of the wealth and assets of the nation a desired end but making it “non-justiciable”. The term means, simply, not enforceable by law. In other words, while the Constitution says that all the good things in life, all the economic and social benefits that can come from the nation’s wealth should be extended to all Nigerians as a right, it nevertheless cannot for the present time be enforced by law; it can only be vigorously pursued until conditions are ripe for its enforcement by law. It is not for me to tell the story of how progressive and radical members of the Constitution drafting committee that produced the Constitution fought vigorously to make these particular clauses of the Constitution “justiciable”. What is necessary for me to narrate here is how such a clause came up for passionate debate among the drafting committee in the first place. How was this possible, you might ask? Well, simply this: the progressive members of the Committee listened, listened attentively to the masses of Nigerians who were clamoring for social justice on the basis of the redistribution of the wealth of the nation.

In his famous, canonical tome on capitalism, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith memorably declared that the poverty of the nation is closely linked with, is indeed indivisible from the wealth of the nation. This is from a book that is regarded all over the world as the “bible” of capitalism. What did Adam Smith have in mind in making this startling declaration? Simply, this: there is no creation of wealth without the creation of poverty; and if this is so, capitalists must never ignore, must never take for granted the poverty that is created when wealth is magnified through surplus accumulation. In all progressive forms of capitalism, this declaration, this mantra is observed almost like a holy injunction, especially in the welfarist and social democratic states of the world. With this thought in my mind, I ask members of the younger generation to pay special attention to what I am making of the present Nigerian Constitution: it is a welfarist, social democratic Constitution, in intent if not in justiciability.

The present kingpins of the Nigerian ruling class, especially as constituted in the APC and the PDP, have strayed far from the origins of our present “democratic” order in that Constitution. They have widened the gap between the wealth and the poverty of the nation into a chasm. And they have refused to see any link, any productive relationship between restructuring and redistribution. And most alarming of all, they have completely misrecognized the fact that while they have been doing all that they can to silence and frustrate the calls for democratic and egalitarian restructuring, restructuring has already made great inroads into the country’s political bloodstream, not as an invigorating element but as nation-wrecking poison. Thanks to the “restructuring” successes of insurgents, secessionists and criminal marauders, many communities in the nation are beginning to turn against one another in various states of declared and undeclared belligerence. As stated in the title of this piece, restructuring will come, has indeed already begun to come, in one way or another. But restructuring without redistribution? It is a specter that is too frightening to contemplate.

• Biodun Jeyifo, bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu