Category: Femi Orebe

I am sure that today, nobody needs tell President Buhari that there is no more time

Within the last decade or so, I must have deployed over a million words, on these pages, canvassing restructuring. I have not only  written my hands sore on the subject, I have, under the auspices of AGBAJO YORUBA AGBAIYE, a pan Yoruba cultural organisation then under the interim leadership of Lt. Gen Alani Akinrinade, actively participated in planning, and attending several summits at which restructuring was the main theme. Ditto at some  Afenifere Renewal Group retreats where the subject came under serious interrogation. Many of the events were reported on these pages.

That, incidentally, was long before the likes of President Goodluck Jonathan bought into restructuring after Afenifere goaded him into convoking the 2014 confab.

That was aeons before some people, even a whole geo political zone now shouting restructuring on rooftops, turned it to a weapon of political opposition, intent on using the non implementation of the recommendations of the 2014 opportunistic talkshop, which the convener himsef did nothing about, as a weapon in their effort to de-market President Muhammadu Buhari ahead of the 2019 Presidential election.

Amongst my several articles on restructuring are: “The increasing call for true federalism” 17 October, 2015 and, “That June 12 recognition may not be a hollow ritual” of 17 June, 2018. Of the two the more relevant for our purpose today is the latter. In the piece, I wrote, inter alia:

“But lest we get lost in the euphoria of the moment, ( I e June 12 recognition), it is time to let the president understand that rather than June 12 being the closure, it is just the beginning of telling truth to ourselves; the starting point of very vigorously confronting the many demons tearing into our whole being as Nigerians . The first of  the demons is the fact that Nigeria is presently nowhere near a federation, and that when we so describe it, we are merely repeating the type of lie the Nigerian constitution tells against itself when it arrogates its birth to : ‘we the people”.

The question then arises, what is a federation? To answer this million naira question, I will, very respectfully, press my two- time teacher, Professor (Senator) Banji Akintoye, into service.

Writing on the topic: ‘What is restructuring’, in his column in The Nation of 6 January, 2018, the respected historian and statesman, who we shall quote at great length, opines : “The basic idea of a federation is that the various distinct parts of a country should be made a federating unit. Each state should have the constitutional power to manage its unique problems and concerns, to develop its own resources for its people, to manage its own security, and to make its own kind of contributions to the well-being of the whole country. The central entity should manage common matters like the defence of the country, the relationship of the country with the rest of the world (or international relations), the country’s currency, the relations between the states of the country, and general principles like defence of human rights. That, in his words, was essentially, the federal arrangement which Nigeria’s founding fathers agreed upon in the 1950s.” Continuing, he wrote: “But since independence, our leading politicians, and our military leaders, have gradually destroyed this structure and replaced it with a structure in which the federal government is the controller of virtually all power and all resources as well as the power to develop all resources, and in which the states have no control over their resources and must, therefore, depend on federal allocations to exist at all”

“As a result, he writes, “the federal government is over-burdened, controls too much money, has become egregiously inefficient and corrupt and, essentially, is destroying Nigeria because the states have become impotent, cannot develop their resources, cannot fight poverty in their domains, and cannot make their contributions to the progress and prosperity of Nigeria. The cumulative effect of all these, he concluded,  is that Nigeria and Nigerians have become horribly poor, most public facilities (roads, electricity, water installations, public administration, etc.) have degraded, and are not working with the result that most of our  youths are unemployed and hopeless.

Professor Akintoye has clinically presented the critical situation Nigerian is in today and it is an Augean stable President Buhari must buckle up and clear ahead of the February 2019 Presidential elections, if he seriously desires victory. After enumerating the factors which could work against his victory in 2019, I wrote:”Happily, however, the president still has some time on his hands if only he will now rouse himself. He just must change tack, see every part of the country, especially the agonising Southeast, as equally deserving of equitable treatment. He must abandon his insularity and let other parts of the country also have dividends of democracy”.

I am sure that today, nobody needs tell President Buhari that there is no more time. He must, therefore, judiciously deploy the few months between now and January, 2019, a mere four months, to attend to the two issues Nigerians are mostly concerned with: the poverty roaming the land untamed, and restructuring.

Concerning the former, President Buhari has put in place well-structured social welfare /poverty reduction intervention programmes to which, for the first time ever in Nigeria, a whooping sum of N500B has been committed. When people complain about poverty in the country, they should endeavour to turn their inner mind to the likes of Obasanjo, Babangida, Danjuma and, of course, the rapacious PDP.

That done on poverty alleviation, President Buhari must now tackle Power devolution frontally. I remain certain, however, that no Nigerian  President of Northern extraction would ever restructure Nigeria the way professor Akintoye defined it here, not Buhari, not Atiku; or they would instantly go into perdition amongst their own people who enjoy such outlandish advantages over the rest of us from the present inequitable status quo.

All I am calling President Buhari to do is fulfil his party’s promise to Nigerians on Power Devolution. Given the little time remaining, he should retrieve the recommendations of his party’s committee on Power Devolution which were approved by the party’s NEC. President Buhari must not, because of his excessive love for Northern Nigeria allow that report to die in the technical committee to which it was cleverly referred.

I laugh when candidate Atiku grandstands on restructuring. The Fulani that he is, he will never restructure Nigeria the way we in the Southwest have always defined it. It is a good thing that Igbos have asked him to define what he means by restructuring in addition to his signing a mandatory one term in a manner that should make it actionable should he, like President Good luck before him, try to be too smart.

Good thing is: Atiku has brought restructuring to the front burner by making it a campaign issue. President Buhari would toy with it only if he wants to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as I have already given him 52% of the Presidential election tally in February, 2019. Let him who have ears, hear.

Now that restructuring is fast becoming a tradeable commodity , as has become the norm at election cycles, I reproduce below my article of 14th October, 2017 in honour of His Eminence, Reuben Olorunfunmi Bashorun on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

I once called him the Exemplar in an article on these pages when he demonstrated that he was so different from the Lagos PDP goons amongst who he had, unfortunately, found himself. Even as the pioneer Chairman of the party in the state, Bashorun couldn’t help quitting the party. Reference to him in the column today is a consequence of the ongoing dialogue between ace columnist, Segun Ayobolu of The Nation, and the respected Hon Wale Oshun, Chairman, Afenifere Renewal Group which Chief Ayo Adebanjo, the highly regarded Afenifere chieftain, was reported to have described as the Afenifere Rebel Group at a recent public outing. It’s funny now to imagine that  our Afenifere elders  were all  there with us then at ARG’s maiden outing at the IITA, IBADAN RETREAT, where they ALL, without exception,  undertook to let bygone be bygone.

How time changes!

Let us capture the two disputants’ point of departure as to what they believe would have been Awo’s position on the recent Ibadan Summit. Hon Oshun in his piece contends that there are two main planks in Ayobolu’s article: first was the call for a return to parliamentary system of government which Awo is known to have shot down on basis of the limited ‘ladder’ theory, while the second deals with the call for a return to a regional structure of government which, in his view, he would have also jettisoned for the French system.

Arguing, pro or con, is not the intent of the column today. I shall therefore go straight to Chief Olorunfunmi Bashorun’s highly refreshing views on restructuring, as captured in a recent interview (The Sun, 6 October, 2017).

According to him, the first subject in his memorandum to the APC restructuring committee was on devolution of power which he describes as  transferring some of the functions on the Exclusive list to the Concurrent, to enable both  the state, and the local governments, have more responsibilities. He spoke of areas where the National Assembly should make relevant laws, an example being power generation and distribution. To this he adds: fingerprint identification and criminal records, labour and industrial relations, as well as determination of  minimum wage which  he says should be removed from the Exclusive list  as fixing N18,000 as minimum wage for workers  in Lagos  and states like Kebbi, Nasarawa, or  Ebonyi, is  grossly unrealistic. Tourism, and federal roads, he suggests, should also go to the concurrent list with the additional responsibilities being reflected in a new revenue sharing formula.

He emphatically holds that there should be nothing like going back to regionalism as it will unduly overload the system with new expenditure items like the office of the regional governor or administrator, one or two regional administrative houses, or bodies, with all their retinue of appointees. There will, of course, also be the judiciary arm of government with all its paraphernalia.  Much more troublesome he says, however, is the current statutory structure of states. For instance, he asks: in the Northwest, will the man from Sokoto or Kebbi, or the one from Zamfara like to go and report in Kaduna? We in Lagos, he says emphatically, will never go to Ibadan, nor would people of Ogun, Ekiti, or Ondo. In the East, he further asks, will those in Abakaliki now head to Enugu? In the North East, he continues, will they all head to Maiduguri, and those in North-central to Jos? Regionalism, he concludes, will just not work. Rather, the six geopolitical zones should be included in the constitution to serve as the unit of sharing national preferments.

On local governments, he queries the rationale behind states having to go to Abuja for confirmation, otherwise called listing, after creating Local Government Areas.  He holds that under the extant constitution, there are already provisions for the administration of local governments under the supervision of the respective state Houses of Assembly. In his opinion, if we want the local government system to function properly, states should create them according to extant constitutional provisions. He is emphatic about there being nothing like local government autonomy as this relates only to federal allocations which  go into the ‘Joint Account and Allocation committee for distribution,. This, he says, is where the appropriate laws should kick in, if it is discovered that any state governor has tampered with the funds. Such governors, he says, should be tried, and jailed, once they leave office, and lost their immunity. Concluding, he suggests that local governments should fully return to states and that federal allocations should be distributed strictly  among the federating units on the basis of equality of states, and population. State Houses of Assembly should monitor local government funds, and where tampered with by the executive,  the appropriate laws should become  applicable .

In his view, Restructuring should enable states to cut their cloth according to their size as it will be unreasonable, for instance, to expect a local government chairman in Gombe State to earn the same salary as his Lagos State counterpart, or its governor earn the same salary as that of Lagos state whose IGR per month is in the region of N30B. He believes that it is most unreasonable of the Revenue Allocation Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission to have so approved.

Chief Bashorun concludes on a very novel idea which will, if implemented, not only correct the gross imbalance in wealth distribution in the country, but could very well stop the monthly pilgrimage to Abuja by state governments, complete with their begging bowls. It is his considered view that with the huge amounts of money, which a former senator puts at about  N4B, which oil block owners allegedly  make daily in the country, the federal  government should embark on a complete redistribution of oil blocks such that one  goes to each of the 36 states of the federation and  the FCT . Specific functions, he suggests, should be prescribed for the revenue accruing from this, and there should be a supervisory agency, domiciled in the office of the Vice President, to monitor and oversee compliance. Continuing, he suggests that 10 per cent of the revenue generated should go to the local governments to facilitate increased economic activities at that level.

I believe that this hard-headed suggestion deserves serious consideration, especially by the Nigerian Governors’ Forum which should be able to do the necessary leg work to see it to fruition. I believe it is doable, with appropriate discussions with the present owners, especially the international oil companies which might, understandably, be uncooperative but,  with diplomacy, and considerable quid pro quo, this should not be impossible for a sovereign nation to accomplish. Also, if the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) is passed, inclusive of a compulsory proportional payment to the oil bearing communities, states should have no more  problem with the oil bearing communities which should  go a long way in ensuring that states no longer have to wait for bailout funds from the federal government.

I believe that Chief Bashorun has said enough here to make the Southwest take another look at the decisions reached on restructuring at the Ibadan Summit.

Concluding, while wishing His Eminence many happy returns, I will like to suggest that, as we head to the make,  or mar,  2019 Presidential election, it is certainly not too late in the day for President Muhammadu Buhari to take advantage of the low hanging fruits contained in these seminal suggestions by His Eminence, Olorunfunmi Bashorun.

 

Everything, they surmise, must therefore be done to create panic amongst the electorate in order to have PDP back in power.

Determined not to waste any time whatever in its avowed intent to unseat President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 Presidential election, PDP and its foreign collaborators have ‘set forth at dawn’. In a pincer movement, some of their agent provocateurs, this time two powerful imperialist organisations, namely,  the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and the British Multinational Bank, HSBC,  have  launched a frenetic attack on President  Buhari with the former, like a prophet of doom, asserting, categorically,  that he will not win the  2019 presidential election while the other took the more subtle, but no less damning  route of claiming that his victory in the election would plunge Nigeria into far  greater economic  chaos.

But first, what is a pincer movement? Put simply, a pincer movement or double envelopment is a military manoeuvre in which forces simultaneously attack both flanks of an enemy formation. It typically occurs when opposing forces advance towards the centre of an army that responds by moving its outside forces to the enemy’s flanks to surround it. At the same time, a second layer of pincers may attack on the more distant flanks to keep reinforcements away from the target units.

That both the Nigerian political opposition and these institutional monsters made their move early, long before the election beckons, should not be a surprise to any keen observer of the Nigerian political economy since 2015 when Buhari has become very bad business for these enemies of Nigeria. It is standard imperialistic move. Projecting dire economic consequences for a country should the more patriotic political party win in an oncoming election has always been their style. Another method they have used  with  great success in the past was to collapse the price of the main revenue resource of the country as students of history would remember  happened  to cocoa prices ahead of their ousting the Osagyefo, Dr Kwameh Nkrumah, from office, in  a military and police coup d’état on February 24, 1966.

In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post of Monday, July 20, 2015 shortly before his meeting with President Obama, President Buhari  had given notice that he would go after the 150 billion dollars which public officials have stolen from Nigeria in the 10 years preceding his administration. This loot, as is well known, is warehoused in these big international banks which thrive on such illegal funds. Also, the fact that Buhari has, back home, retrieved over a trillion naira from their customers, ipso facto, depleting their bulging balances was obviously bad business, something his victory in 2019 would make completely intolerable, and there fire, unbearable. Everything, they surmise, must therefore be done to create panic amongst the electorate in order to have PDP back in power.

Back home in Nigeria,  several  of these same people, some with corruption charges  against them, are now running round the country hoping  to be the PDP candidate,  contest the election, win – which God forbid – and return Nigeria  to business as usual. Indeed, court documents and the Panama Papers have shown, conclusively, even if our corrupt courts would hold otherwise, how some of them illegally laundered huge sums of money out of the country since as far back as over a decade ago, with which they acquired undeclared, eye popping properties all over the world while another allegedly wired millions of dollars to an American university during the same period. It, therefore, should not be a surprise that their foreign collaborators have risen early to attempt to dampen the chances of a Buhari re election by creating fear amongst the citizenry.

But they will labour in vain.

PDP didn’t just start these dangerous moves. Investigations tangentially related to the alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US Presidential election have shown that they also toyed with the idea of ruining candidate Buhari’s electoral chances through a company called Cambridge Analytica which they contracted to generate damaging campaign materials against candidate Buhari in the 2015 presidential election.

For accurate reporting, let us press The Pulse of 22 March, 2018 into action. Its report: “A London firm called Cambridge Analytica was hired by the Goodluck Jonathan campaign just before the 2015 election with a simple mandate-sway the Nigerian election by digging dirt on opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari. All the dirt in the world. Buhari’s medical records were also fair game. The firm was handed a princely £2m for its troubles – as also revealed by both Guardian UK and the Observer.

“Cambridge Analytica, it was reported, was paid an estimated £2m to orchestrate a ferocious campaign against his rival, the opposition leader Muhammadu Buhari.

“It was the kind of campaign that was our bread and butter,” said one of the operatives, while confirming that they “were employed by a billionaire who was panicking at the idea of a change of the Good luck Jonathan government.”

This is typical PDP and its collaborators. This time around it is influential organisations like the IEU and HSBC that are taking over from where Cambridge Analytica left.

In clear knowledge of their wiles, it would be recalled that President Buhari has already warned Nigerians, and the entire world, about the humongous amounts money PDP people have stolen and are now prepared to deploy towards the 2019 Presidential election. He said this in an address at the 2018 Democracy Day Lecture held at the International Conference Centre in Abuja. His words: “the opposition in the country has stupendous resources at its disposal in preparation for the 2019 elections; resources  which even the ruling All Progressives Congress , APC, will not be able to match adding that they were, in fact, already sponsoring mischief against his government in a bid to discredit him and make him unpopular”.

Such mischief, Nigerians have already seen, for instance, in Benue State with horrendous consequences. It has been reported, for instance, that “as part of the sleaze in Benue State, the EFCC uncovered how the state government allegedly pays N20 million into the account of a Boko Haram suspect, Aliyu Yaminu, who is nicknamed Tershaku. According to the EFCC: “Between December 20, 2017 and April 6, 2018, the Joint Account Allocation Committee (JAC) has been remitting N20million to the account of Al-Tershaku Global Security Limited allegedly owned by Tershaku. JAC, the report said, posted N80 million to this account as at the time of Tershaku’s arrest. This is aside suspicious cash lodgements by Tershaku himself into the company’s account.”  Tershaku is suspected to be the head of the Benue State government’s militia which has killed thousands in an effort by political opponents to make that part of Nigeria ungovernable, thus de- marketing Buhari ahead of 2019.

Given PDP’s synergy with these foreign demolition agents, it could not have been more euphoric than in its reaction to the EIU and the HSBC reports when it exuded: “the independent reports that President Buhari stands no chance in the general elections and that his winning portends grave danger for our nation, is completely in tandem with the stand of majority of Nigerians, irrespective of their current political party affiliations, ethnicity or creed.”

You will not but marvel that PDP, considering its record in office during its 16-year stranglehold over the country, could ever have the temerity to level these charges against the present administration.

In its own reaction, the APC said the reports are nothing more than the usual doomsday prophesies from these same sources, and their acolytes, many of which have failed in the past.

Wrote the party:  The Presidency wishes to make clear to all Nigerians, and particularly the global banking giant HSBC that what killed Nigeria’s economy in the past was the unbridled looting of state resources by leaders who were, actively supported by HSBC.  Their tantrum is, therefore, an expression of frustration over the measures put in place by the administration which have abolished grand corruption, the type on which the bank thrives in many countries. Continuing, the party said HSBC laundered more than USD 100,000,000 for the late General Sani Abacha in

Whether from London, England, Livingston, Scotland or from here in Houston TX, I have always ensured I touched base with my highly valued readers when out visiting my kids on holidays. But this trip almost didn’t happen. What with this:

General Information

FARE NGN832,700///////

That was the quote I got for a return ticket to the United States, but I saw it coming. The family had a wedding involving my wife’s sister’s son, TJ, a University of Houston-trained engineer, scheduled for late August and my wife, Atinuke, had left weeks earlier but with us having a crucial, must win election coming up in Ekiti, I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to make it so all her entreaties that I also bought my ticket when we got hers in June made no impact.  I ended up paying exactly a hundred thousand naira less – a more than a princely sum for me.

So to the U S I hopped mid August arriving two days before the wedding engagement which was a cultural show stopper.  The family of our ‘wife’, a dazzling Benin lady, saw to it that the best of Benin culture was on display and when you add the usual Yoruba marriage accoutrements, especially with the groom’s  mother, Yeye Bukola Badipe, coming from the SOURCE, i e Ile-Ife, one can only  begin to imagine what  was on display. The wedding went on for 4 whole days  from Thursday, through Sunday ending  finally with a ‘Thank You’  bash  at the home of Engineer Muyiwa Fagbola, the groom’s mother’s immediate junior brother, to whom, being male, their eldest sister, Atinuke, has since conferred the Fagbola Olori Ebi title.

Wedding over, there was more than enough to engage my attention in the rollicking U S politics  which I remember a MSNBC reporter once describe, a few years ago, as a permanent war of sorts.

With a President like Donald Trump there couldn’t have been, and there was absolutely no dull moment. Only that this time around, the Muller investigation into the suspected Russian collusion in the 2016 U. S presidential election, over which several Trump associates, the likes of Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates and Paul Manafort have been indicted or jailed, almost got consigned to the background. What with  the announcement, and subsequent release, of Bob Woodward’s scathing book,  ‘FEAR – Trump In The White House’, coming on the heels of Omarosa Manigault Newman’s UNHINGED – copies of which I have since bought and, the real  deal , the anonymous op-ed letter written by a senior White House official, and published by the New York Times.

Bob Woodward, unarguably America’s most authoritative investigative journalist , drawing from “hundreds of hours of interviews with first hand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents had,  in this tell-all book,  exposed a White House in  ‘nervous breakdown’,  corroborating  Omarosa who had written about Trump : “He rambled. He spoke gibberish. He contradicted himself from one sentence to the next”.  The anonymous op-ed was, however, more scathing and troubling, claiming that “many of the senior officials in his administration are now working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations, because “we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic. That is why, the article continued, “many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office”.

Watching the farcical congressional confirmation hearing for Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court was, for me, more distressing.  With the abject partisanship on display in a senate the free world looks up to, you  would not  but be reminded of the allegorical Lady Justice illustrating the moral force in judicial systems. Her attributes, well known all over the world, are a blindfold, a balance, and a sword, all intended to demonstrate neutrality.  How, for Christ’s sake, is this putrid process of approving or rejecting the appointment of a judge for the apex court supposed to guarantee justice?

For me, this is unfathomable.

In the instant case, Judge Kavanaugh who was  alleged to have lied at the congressional hearing for his current job, not only had  thousands of pages of his record withheld  by President Trump, he could possibly not have been more evasive in answering questions like:

How does he view the role of a judge and judicial independence?

What does he mean by referring to Roe v. Wade as “settled law after he had written that it could be reversed by the Supreme Court?” (the Supreme Court had  on January 22, 1973 ruled (7 – 2) that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional).

Can a president be forced to respond to a subpoena?

Can a president pardon himself?

Others are:

His involvement in Bush-era detainee interrogation programmes? And whether he deliberately lied to congress when he denied any involvement but e-mails revealed he participated.

Voting has been scheduled for next week with democrats and several progressive groups like the abortion rights advocates hoping that Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski will vote no.

As you read this, 47% of Americans say Trump should be impeached while the latest poll has him at 36%, an all-time low for a president heading into a midterm election in which 50% say they will vote Democratic and 37% Republican.  The Republicans had better not lose the two chambers in November or President Trump could be history.

President Trump asked for this. He has, unreflectingly, carried on with some of the wrongheaded causes to which Steve Bannon drove his 2016 flailing campaign when he took over from Paul Manafort. In particular his immigration policy which Bannon literally fashioned when he counselled: “we’re going to stop mass illegal immigration and start to limit legal migration to get our sovereignty back”.

Today, in fidelity to that advice, President Trump has about 450 immigrant children, from a high of about 2,500, forcibly separated from their parents; something that has earned him worldwide condemnation. This past week, however, an agreement was reached giving the children and their parents a second chance to apply for asylum on the grounds that they might face persecution, or torture, if they return to their countries.

But mindlessly carrying on unpopular policies to assuage his base, complete with tons of lies now calculated at over 5000, President Trump has completely re configured  both domestic and the international order.

It must be conceded though that he has significantly improved the American economy with more jobs, increased wages, and a substantially higher GDP with its current growth rate at 4.2 up from 3.1 the previous year.

Unfortunately, his obtuse, and absolutely un presidential gaffes, have become his albatross. He has taken the United States out of several world organisations, the latest being the International Court of Justice at The Hague which followed U. S withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Iran Nuclear Deal jointly reached July 14, 2015 by the U. S, U.K, France, Germany, Russia, China, the European Union and Iran. President Trump has severally shredded multilateralism, in the process even threatening NATO.

Finally, the  ongoing Special Counsel investigation  which  is a law enforcement and counterintelligence investigation into any Russian government efforts to interfere in the 2016 Presidential election, including an investigation of any possible links and/or coordination between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government, “and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation,” is still riveting. As indicated above, several allies of President Trump have been indicted, even jailed, and close observers believe that he would be lucky to complete his term of four years. The investigation which began May 17, 2017, is being conducted by the Department of Justice office of the Special Counsel, headed by Robert Mueller, a former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

 

Forget the campaign rhetorics, no Hausa-Fulani can honestly restructure Nigeria.

Countless times, Nigeria has convoked national conferences aimed at restructuring the country but with hardly anything to show for them even after we had burnt billions of naira. We need not delay, cataloguing them, or how miserably they all failed. But has anybody ever thought of the unspoken reason/s they all failed?

Tarry a little, we will get there.

Rather than rehash a story of failure, especially now that there are, at least, three distinct versions of restructuring, albeit one being a political scam, let us critically interrogate the subject so we can make some progress. There’s no gainsaying the fact that restructuring will supremely benefit our country.

First, there is the traditional, Afenifere concept, which used to be pristine and genuine. But no more as that was until the Jonathan conference of 2014. Let me  take you to  my article: “Between  authentic Yoruba demands  and what these  elders are hawking  around”  of Sunday, 7 June, 2015,  in which I wrote, inter alia, concerning THE YORUBA AGENDA which once  encapsulated the Yoruba understanding of restructuring: “It  contains some specific, and, immutable demands which you would  expect these elders ensured were incorporated in the  conference recommendations. But for where? Among these are: a self-governing region which will mobilise the energy of the Yoruba for development and ignite their collective resolve for cultural renaissance, educational resurgence and social stability; a Yoruba nation with its own constitution, functioning as one out of the country’s six regional governments which will, in turn, form the federating units in a federation operating both federal and regional constitutions. The new federation will be expected to undergo structural changes which will touch on, among others, the scope and limits of the powers of the federating units; the form of government, revenue allocation and fiscal federalism which will ensure that each region can develop at its own pace, resource control, police and policing and a judiciary which will have a federal Supreme Court for strictly constitutional cases and at the regional level, the apex court will be the Court of Appeal. Indeed, under these Yoruba demands, membership of the National Judicial Council shall be so representative that excessive power would no longer be concentrated in the hands of the Chief Justice of the Federation.”

But Mr Femi Falana, SAN, who, like them was a delegate at the conference would later testify as follows in an interview he granted The Nation newspaper and published on Thursday, 5 March  2015: ”Frankly speaking, the Yoruba agenda was anchored on regional autonomy, restructuring, parliamentary system or Westminster model, fiscal federalism or resource control, unicameral legislature, a ceremonial president and a prime minister with full executive powers, a special status for Lagos State, state police and deletion of the Land Use Act from the Constitution. Those were the items which constituted the core Yoruba Agenda. The items were defeated in to-to at the confab. Of course, the establishment of State Police scaled through on the basis of the role of the civilian joint task force in the fight against insurgency in the Northeast. I challenge the authors of the Yoruba Agenda to point to other items that were adopted by the Confab.”  Falana further said that although the appropriate bills for statutory amendments and constitutional review which require the promulgation of over 50 new laws and amendment of about 80 existing legislations were prepared and submitted to the government but the president did absolutely nothing in the past six months besides setting up the Adoke committee to study the report. But mum was the word on the part of Afenifere until 2015 when they, not Jonathan or PDP, laboured to make anything regarding the confab a campaign issue. So I only laugh now when I see people harangue Buhari about the 2014 conference implementation.

I  have, therefore, long  conclude that Afenifere merely opportunistically queued  behind President Goodluck Jonathan, intent on routing former Lagos State governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu,  as a means of  escaping from the political Siberia to which he has condemned them in a region where the people had, for nearly half a century, swore by their names, politically speaking.  It was for that single reason, that though enemies of corruption, they thought nothing of supporting the candidate of the most corrupt ever political party in the history of Nigeria.

Second,  is  what I  shall  call the  sham restructuring which  the redoubtable Fulani politician, and former Vice President,  Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, is canvassing  as  if he, a Fulani,  can  honestly  disdain, or abandon,  a status quo that has for generations conferred on his  tribe, unspeakable  but  out rightly  unfair advantages, over the rest of the country.

The Third concept of restructuring  is  what Vice President Yemi Osinbajo recently dubbed  geographical restructuring which,  though, looks  commonsensical, largely mirrors President Muhammadu Buhari’s  unstated, but well known, views on the subject. It speaks copiously to governance in the country;  a system which will substantially reduce corruption and ensure that  resources are  judiciously  deployed for the betterment of Nigerians…

What this article is about,  therefore, is a hard headed interrogation of restructuring,  however defined, especially given  the fact  that too many  things in our country  are unfairly skewed in favour of the North; advantages which, short of  a  civil war, we cannot  reasonably expect them  to surrender  except  through  a  gradualist, mutually agreed manner, simply because they have immorally resulted in a collective sense of entitlement  on the part of our Northern compatriots..

I am in no  doubt that some short sighted people would claim that I am  out  here playing the devil’s advocate but that would be fartherest from the truth as, not even Yorubas,  unarguably the most  considerate Nigerian ethnic group,  would  easily surrender these totally unearned  advantages.

Thanks to the  CENTRE FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE IN NIGERIA  we have a data that abundantly proves  that the North holds the ace and that  to have any modicum of restructuring, what Nigeria needs is not  threat, sabre rattling, petty conspiracies  or  any empty grandstanding, but genuine negotiation  which  will  include  authentic representatives  of  all ethnic nationalities, not politicians who are  fraudulently  selected to serve some selfish ends.

Let us therefore take a critical look at the Nigerian reality.

1. Number of states in the North is 19 + FCT as against 17 in the South.

2.The number of legislators, (bearing in mind the fact that President Buhari has said the matter of restructuring should be referred to the National Assembly and the council of state in both of which  the North predominates).

3. The amount of funds that go North monthly as federal allocation to both state and Local Governments – see details below, vis a vis what comes to the South.
4. The fact that northern candidates gain admission into unity schools and universities with barely a quarter of the scores required of candidates from the South.
5. The revenue sharing formula which is so skewed in favour of the North it has been impossible to change since.

 

• Continued on www.staging.thenationonlineng.net