The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ropo Sekoni

Is fuel subsidy ideologically inevitable?

For example, the federal government can use the money spent on fuel subsidy to pay for such services as free education, free meals for school children, free health for the poor, social welfare checks for the poor, and free adult education for the poor.

Ade Alabi was sick in a village near Ibadan during the first fuel scarcity this year. His neighbour had a car and was willing to take Ade to the nearest primary health centre. Unfortunately for Ade, the raging fuel scarcity at the time prevented his neighbour from having petrol to buy, even though he was ready to pay the prohibitive price of N150 per litre charged by Black Market sellers of petrol in the village. All efforts to take Ade to the hospital on his own okada proved futile. There was no rubber hose to transfer petrol from Ade’s okada into the car of his neighbour. Even though Ade had a brother who could ride okada, his brother was just as big as Ade. It was not possible to have both brothers on the okada with a third person to prop Ade up on the way to the clinic. While the entire village was thinking about how to get Ade to the hospital, the poor man slumped and died, leaving behind a wife and three children.

The story above illustrates the danger (to the poor in particular) inherent in the insistence of self-defined socialist ideologues (in and outside the trade unions) on the religiosity of keeping fuel subsidy on account of protecting the poor and workers from avoidable exploitation by a government that is hardly capitalist but palpably thievish.

Many cases being made in the traditional press and the social media in support of cancelation of fuel subsidy in the country. Some pundits base their position on evidence of corruption in the handling of the subsidy scheme, citing examples of revelation of irregularities in various reports of committees established to probe the country’s subsidy scheme. Examples of financial irregularity are drawn from Farouk Lawan Committee’s Probe in 2012. This report claims that N232 billion on subsidy was paid to marketers for PMS in 2011 for fuel that was not supplied. The same committee also established that, contrary to the claims of marketers that 60 million litres was imported for each day in 2011, only 31 million litres per day was accounted for.

Some commentators focus on the Nuhu Ribadu Probe in 2012 to argue for cessation of subsidy on the ground of lack of transparency. They draw attention to the report that NNPC deducted subsidy-related expenses before payment to the Federation Account in 2011. This group argues that NEITI’s audits from 1999 to 2011 also confirmed that NNPC deducted a total of N1.40 trillion for subsidy. Similarly, the Presidential Committee on Verification and Reconciliation of Fuel Subsidy (2012) is cited by anti-subsidy commentators to illustrate that 197 subsidy transactions worth N229 billion were illegitimate and that actual expenditure on subsidy was higher in the same year than appropriated sums for fuel subsidy.

Economic thinkers of the free market persuasion also argue that natural resources are finite and attract largely time-limited revenues, more so if such resources are sold in the international market where the exporting country has no control over price stability. This group posits that it is not rational for any government to prefer fuel subsidy for citizens across the social spectrum to promoting sustained inclusive economic development through investments that can have multiplier effects on sustainable empowerment schemes for the underprivileged. This group calls for an end to fuel subsidy which its spokespersons believe to be a non-sustainable way of allocating natural resource revenues.

On the other hand, trade union leaders and self-defined advocates of the poor argue passionately in favour of continuing with fuel subsidy. The trade union’s claim includes the need to view fuel subsidy as a non-negotiable poverty-alleviating policy. This school of thought calls on government to accept the need to make every Nigerian enjoy the fruits of a natural resource that under a unitary system of government is viewed to belong to the entire country, regardless of the damage the exploitation of such natural resource does to the economy and ecology of the communities in which such resources are located.

Another line of thinking within this group is that underpaid workers, poor, and unemployed citizens need fuel subsidy to mitigate the knock-on effect of their poverty. The same group also argues that it is unfair for the federal government to stop fuel subsidy until the government is able to create the type of transportation infrastructure that exists in more developed countries, where fuel subsidy is discouraged as a policy. They add that the government must repair existing refineries and construct more to bring the price of refined petrol for domestic consumption down to the point of making fuel subsidy unnecessary. The Jonathan government accepted the thinking of labour leaders by creating another bureaucracy, Sure-P, to pacify workers and labour leaders, after agreeing to peg the price of petrol at N97 per litre. Just like the subsidy scheme itself, it did not take a long time for Sure-P to become another trick to occlude financial mismanagement by the country’s venal political elite.

The position of trade union leaders and believers in social democracy appears unassailable. In a country where there are not many social assistance programmes for citizens at the bottom of the economic ladder, there should be nothing wrong with calls for special assistance to the unemployed and underpaid workers. In terms of fine ideological thinking, trade union leaders and their social democratic supporters are making respectable arguments. But the hard question that needs to be asked and answered by radical social and economic thinkers is whether fuel subsidy is the best way to assist the poor in our country.

Despite the social democratic credentials of this author for over half a century, I do not believe that there are no better ways to assist the poor than the current fuel subsidy that is as enmeshed in the culture of political and bureaucratic corruption as it can ever be in any human space. In a country in which political parties do not openly embrace any noticeable form of social democracy, just as in countries such as Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and Norway, where social democracy is a fact of life, there are hundreds of ways to assist the poor without having to attempt to pay some of the cost of fuel for them. In these social democratic systems, the line between the middle-class or middle-income and low-income groups is made clear when policies of social assistance are being crafted. It is not so in the case of Nigeria’s fuel subsidy scheme, which allows upper-middle class professionals to enjoy fuel subsidy that should have been reserved for the underprivileged.

The argument that fuel subsidy in Nigeria is to protect the poor is spurious. Out of the 145 vehicles per 1,000 citizens in Nigeria, 85 of them are cars belonging to middle-class members of the society. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is the car-owning middle-class citizens that benefit largely from fuel subsidy. If indeed fuel subsidy assists the low-income and the unemployed, it is not to the extent that it benefits the middle-class. Definitely, there are better ways to assist the poor and the under-paid.

For example, the federal government can use the money spent on fuel subsidy to pay for such services as free education, free meals for school children, free health for the poor, social welfare checks for the poor, and free adult education for the poor. In addition, poor citizens can be given social welfare support that they can use to pay for market price of petrol. Furthermore, trade unions can insist that the existing refineries be sold to workers for one dollar each so that workers’ cooperatives can manage the refineries. The federal government can put the matter of removal of subsidy to a referendum to determine what majority of citizens want, as opposed to what paid representatives of labour prefer. Without doubt, if Ade Alabi, referred to at the beginning of this piece and his relations, had been given a chance to vote Yes or No in a referendum on removal of fuel subsidy, all of them would have voted Yes, in hopes that the Ade Alabis of Nigeria can be taken to the hospital before it is too late.

President Buhari and his team should pluck the courage to address this albatross around the neck of the nation. They should take time to conduct rigorous research on the number of citizens who are poor and thus need social assistance. Even if such people need to get more than N5,000 a month, the federal government should plan to assist such people, so as to free the country from the chains of fuel subsidy barons in and outside government. In addition to initiating many direct social assistance programmes for the poor, the federal government should use the money from the federation account (currently used to pay subsidy charges) to assist the poor in ways that those assisted can use the social assistance funds to solve the problems most important to them.

December 6, 2015
Petroleum mode and pork barrel governance (3)
There is no better illustration of the political programme of waste and senseless consumption than the creation of 36 states and 774 local governments out of the four pre-coup regions under a federal system inherited by the first military government.
- Initiate action to amend our Constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties and responsibilities to states and local governments in order to entrench true Federalism and the Federal spirit;
- Restructure government for a leaner, more efficient and adequately compensated public service;
- Balance across regions by the creation of 6 new Regional Economic Development Agencies (REDAs) to act as champions of sub-regional competitiveness;
- Put in place a N300 billion regional growth fund (average of N50bn in each geo-political region) to be managed by the REDAs, encourage private sector enterprise and support to help places currently reliant on the public sector —FROM Buhari/APC MANIFESTO
Last week, we posited that military dictators in control of Nigeria between 1966 and 1999 responded to the rising flow of revenue from petroleum the way a toddler would respond to gifts from Santa Claus: excitement without an awareness of life beyond gift-giving at Christmas. Civilians brought to power through elections supervised by military dictators all continued the adoption of an expenditure culture that took the disconnected the polity from productive economy. From extravagant compensation of political officers and public servants to proliferation of government ministries and agencies, military dictators chose the style of lottery winners to spend national revenue with little attention to economic development of the country for citizens’ welfare. Civilian governments birthed by military dictators through dubious elections also mimicked their military mentors in sustaining a political economy driven principally by the country’s non-renewable money spinner.

There is no better illustration of the political programme of waste and senseless consumption than the creation of 36 states and 774 local governments out of the four pre-coup regions under a federal system inherited by the first military government. Many folk commentators are already saying that President Buhari has been elected to come and deal with the nemesis of military distortion of Nigeria’s federal system and the creation of a wasteful centralist governance and over 100 sub-national administrative bureaucracies that function more as sites for distribution of pork or benefits of power than as units for development to enrich citizens’ lives. On the positive side, some opinion leaders believe that, given the mythology about Buhari’s strength of character and sincerity of purpose, the president stands a good chance of changing the country well enough to atone for the failure of military intervention in the polity.

Instructively, General Buhari’s election manifesto acknowledging that the 1999 Constitution needs to be revisited and renewed, with the hope of entrenching “true Federalism and the Federal spirit” signals the determination of his administration to go back to the drawing board on how to make Nigeria achieve its full potential. Making the entrenchment (or re-entrenchment?) of true federalism the first item in his 90-item menu of initiatives indicates the readiness on the part of the president and his ruling party to move from using the revenue from petroleum or any other finite resource for that matter to service facile unity and use such finite resources to nurture a country that can advance through economic development and unity of purpose.

Unlike many countries that used fossil energy to add significant value to the lives of citizens, such as Norway, Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria after 57 years of sale of petroleum, which could have been an economic rescuer of the country, today stands hobbled by the failure of past leaders (mostly military rulers) to use revenue from petroleum to advance the country with respect to the economy, polity, and even culture. The four regions that stood tall and proud as leaders in agriculture and light manufacturing in the 1960s are now about 100 subnational administrative units carrying bowls to a central government that waits nervously for the latest news about price of petroleum in the international market. Electricity, the sine quanon of modernity and modernisation, virtually disappeared in the country as citizens hear more about the fall and rise of megawatts rather than having electricity to run their factories or preserve their food. Instead of investing in infrastructure development and citizens’ convenience, military designers of post-colonial Nigeria used revenue from petroleum to ‘service’ political appointees and bureaucrats in 36 states and 774 local governments designed to beg for monthly running costs. While states and local governments are obliged to pay thousands of public workers virtually on sinecures, political leaders at all levels of governments plunder the country with impunity, on the strength of a constitutionally backed immunity for the top echelon of rulers.

At the time that President Buhari starts his administration, the states and local governments created to use the revenue from petroleum are not only unable to pay workers’ salaries and pensions on time, they are also crying out loud about their lack of capacity to pay N18,000 minimum wage. This is despite the fact that individuals on executive and legislative lines of duty across the nation receive outsize salaries and allowances; fly jets or helicopters to visit their constituencies; and are provided with policemen and women who lack access to modern healthcare and have to use prayer warriors in place of gynaecologists and paediatricians for their dependants. The more money flows into the country’s purse from oil, the more inequality festers in all manifestations. The tension generated by inequality has become obvious to rulers to the extent that they hire image makers to frame public discourse along the narrative of national unity for its own sake, rather than for any political, economic, or cultural purpose, the rationale for all modern democracies.

To advance the cause of national unity, development, and stability, none of the 90 items in Buhari’s manifesto should be adjudged superior to the other. Removing the flaws in the structure of government and constitution, already acknowledged in Buhari’s manifesto, is as crucial for peace, stability, development, and unity as the fight against corruption at the hands of a venal elite. As unenviable as the challenges before President Buhari in a country that has been degraded for decades by poor policies that include deliberate dismantling of Nigeria’s federal system may be, the bitter truth for Buhari to face is that past mistakes need to be rectified not excused. The current constitution is a graphic illustration of such mistakes.

It is instructive that President Buhari has vowed to engage all militant groups that threaten the survival of united Nigeria: Boko Haram and Indigenous People of Biafra, for example. But the president must not lose sight of the fact that not all nationalities or regions complaining about marginalisation and inefficient and ineffective governance are interested in seceding from Nigeria. Many nationalities and regions are calling for restoration of federalism, rather than mobilising for disintegration. As the president focuses on ending Boko Haram terrorism and recovering the country’s stolen funds from thieves of state, he should give attention to establishing an inclusive process of re-crafting a federal constitution.

Such process must not be mechanical as efforts in the past by both military and civilian rulers had been, even if establishing a constitutional review process has to take more time than the quick-fix that had characterised all the national conferences in the past. President Buhari needs to mobilise all regions to participate in the process of creating a people’s constitution through their duly elected representatives for the purpose of identifying needed changes to the polity and the fiscal culture. None of the national conferences in the past should be taken as having completed the thinking needed to restructure the country for peace, stability, and development while none of the ideas in previous conferences should be dismissed without proper consideration by those elected by their communities to participate in constitutional review. Citizens should be given a free hand to decide whether they want regional cluster of states that create development through fiscal autonomy or another federal bureaucracy (called in Buhari’s manifesto Regional Economic Development Agencies (REDA)) that is to administer development.

It will be simple-minded and over-sanguine to continue to look for revenue to continue the tradition of waste and extravagancy that led Nigeria to its current backwardness in spite of huge revenue from oil in the past. President Buhari should avoid one dimensionality in his diagnosis of the country’s problem. Corruption is certainly a cause of underdevelopment, so is the use of revenue to create and sustain fiefdoms for politicians an important factor in the country’s underdevelopment. Citizens appear to have seen through all the stratagems in the last fifty years to deceive and distract them from coming to terms with the determination of a band of rulers-military or civilian-to exploit and dominate them. This is the right moment to demilitarise the polity, and Buhari is in the best position to do this, having been a major player in the era of what Abubakar Umar once called the mistakes of military rule.
November 29, 2015
Petroleum mode and pork barrel governance (2)

Just as the new minister of power has set out to look for the root cause of decades of epileptic power supply in the country, so do the president and his team need to look for the root cause of the country’s under-development, in spite of half a century of over $500 billion revenue to the country from petroleum.

• Initiate action to amend our Constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties and responsibilities to states and local governments in order to entrench true Federalism and the Federal spirit;
• Prevent abuse of executive, legislative and public offices through greater accountability, transparency and strict enforcement of anti-corruption laws whilst strengthening the EFCC and ICPC;
• Amend the Constitution to remove immunity from prosecution for elected officers in criminal cases;
• Restructure government for a leaner, more efficient and adequately compensated public service;
• Balance across regions by the creation of 6 new Regional Economic Development Agencies (REDAs) to act as champions of sub-regional competitiveness;
• Put in place a N300 billion regional growth fund (average of N50bn in each geo-political region) to be managed by the REDAs, encourage private sector enterprise and support to help places currently reliant on the public sector;
• Initiate policies to ensure that Nigerians are free to live and work in any part of the country by removing state of origin, tribe, ethnic and religious affiliations and replace those with state of residence. –FROM Buhari/APC MANIFESTO

By way of summary, last week’s piece emphasised the negative impact of a false feeling of affluence from steady flow of revenue from petroleum on the structure, content, and style of governance in the country in the last 50 years. More specifically, we argued that the belief of military rulers that “money is not Nigeria’s problem but how to spend it” influenced military dictators between the civil war and the exit of military dictatorship in 1999 to create 36 mini-states and 774 local governments that turned the country into multiple sites of compulsive consumption and very little production. It also spawned a culture of profligacy in compensation of political office holders in a country where over 70% of the population live below poverty line, while also giving birth to innumerable agencies to do what other layers of government are constitutionally designed to do. We also added that citizens were alienated from government by being largely released from paying taxes, just as they were excluded by military dictators and their civilian successors from the process of creating the current constitution that is to drive governance under President Buhari, also a one-time military dictator.

Today’s focus is to elaborate on the thesis of last week: the need to take advantage of huge decline in revenue from petroleum to redesign the structure, content, and style of governance, including response by the government and citizens to the need to finally use the spirit and ideology of change promised by President Buhari and the All Progressives Congress to re-invent the country with the goal of enlarging the space of freedom; strengthening the architecture of security; enforcing transparency in governance; re-designing the architecture of governance; and transforming states into centers of productivity rather of parasitism on revenue from petroleum or other non-renewable mineral resources-solid or liquid.

In contrast to the regional model inherited from the British colonial master at independence, military dictators became too unrealistic about the abundance of petroleum, to the extent that they felt emboldened to re-conceptualise Nigeria. Instead of continuing the tradition of a system of three or four regions that compete in terms of economic activities and cooperate by ensuring the survival of the country as a political or territorial unit, military dictators misread the significance of petroleum by viewing it as the sole driver and sustainer of unity. Abundance of petroleum spawned a culture of profligacy; killed economic production in the states under military rule and after; encouraged military rulers to create mini-states as administrative units to guzzle the revenue from oil; and also created a political class addicted to exorbitant personal emoluments, despite having immense opportunities to rob the state. Sixteen years after the exit of military rulers, retired General Buhari and the APC realised that the country needed to be mended through changing the modus operandi of running the country.

Despite the existence of 36 states with sizable bureaucracy, oversize pay packets for political office holders, and easy access to unwholesome hands of political leaders in the country’s treasury, the social statistics remain depressing. 62 million Nigerians are illiterate; 70% of Nigerians live below poverty line; Nigeria has between 3,000 and 4,000 megawatts of electricity for 170 million citizens; Nigerian manufacturers have to run to Ghana and even Benin Republic to do light manufacturing; more women die at childbirth in the country than any other country in the sub-region; infant mortality in the country remains one of the highest in the world; over 160 million Nigerians are transported daily by mini buses and motor cycles; etc.

It was therefore not surprising that General Buhari and his party chose the path of change when they crafted the manifesto for the 2015 presidential and state elections. It is still not surprising that after winning the presidency, President Buhari and his party are singing, as enthusiastically as ever, about the imperative of change. Since the election, many pundits have blamed the failure of the country in the last five decades on poor quality of leadership or on the existence of ethnic and religious diversity. Others pontificate on the web about the reluctance of Nigerians to evolve into new post-colonial personas that choose cultural amnesia by demonising their cultural past. Such pundits blame the inability of citizens to undo the diversity that served them well in the years before independence and that has the potential of making them create one of the world’s most developed countries with cultural diversity.

Many public commentators have complained about lack of a grand vision conveyed in a grand narrative of Buhari presidency’s pre-figuring of the Nigeria he wants to leave behind at the end of his tenure. However, the manifesto with which he negotiated for votes is full of episodic narratives that can add up to a grand vision, if the objectives of such episodic stories are met sincerely and realistically. It is reassuring to note in the manifesto (part of which the bullets overleaf represent) that the president and his party did not just choose the path of escaping from the country’s cultural diversity into cultural homogeneity through individuals’ efforts to re-invent themselves culturally. In a list of what to do that include food self-sufficiency through agriculture and revenue generation through solid minerals, passing N5,000 from the national purse to 25 million poor citizens; free education, free meal in school, improvement of power and other infrastructure; fighting Boko Haram terrorism and political and bureaucratic corruption; the president clearly promised in the first line of his manifesto the need for a new design of the polity bequeathed by military dictators. He has pledged to use his presidency to: initiate action to amend our Constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties and responsibilities to states and local governments in order to entrench true Federalism and the Federal spirit. He and his party also seem to have recognised the need to return to regional economic planning and development: Balance across regions by the creation of 6 new Regional Economic Development Agencies (REDAs) to act as champions of sub-regional competitiveness.

Details of what to do “to entrench true Federalism and the Federal spirit,” are missing in the episodic narrative of change in the nation. But what to do to promote “regional economic planning and development” shows the impishness (birthed by the philosophy and sociology of spending petrodollars) of throwing money at problems by creating bureaucracies to administer, rather than solve problems. The pledge of Buhari and the APC to re-craft the 1999 Constitution with the aim of re-federalising the country needs be addressed with as much speed and enthusiasm as doing everything else on the manifesto.

Just as the new minister of power has set out to look for the root cause of decades of epileptic power supply in the country, so do the president and his team need to look for the root cause of the country’s under-development, in spite of half a century of over $500 billion revenue to the country from petroleum.

– To be continued

November 22, 2015
Now, the hard part

It is not for nothing that Nigerians’ have been in excitable mode since Muhammadu Buhari swore in dream team last week. Nigerians, no doubt, are an interesting lot. A week after, not only have they said everything that could be said under the sun about their new ministers, it seems there’s no ending to their inventiveness in their description of President Buhari’s amalgam Presidential and Westminster systems. One interesting one that I actually heard said was that we have moved from the era of a ‘super’ or a superintending minister to having a Prime Minister! The fellow would of course add – that if that says anything about the texture of change, it does not even appear as yet that we are done with innovations going by the team leader’s penchant to surprise! Nigerians we hail thee!

This obviously takes me back to the question I raised on this page few weeks back and which I considered pertinent. Here is what I wrote: “…For an administration that has been accused of lacking direction, the cabinet list did very little to assuage such concerns. At the individual level, there is no question that some of the nominees, having proven their mettles in different theatres of our national life can be counted among the very best perhaps anywhere in the world. I could even go as far as to describe the team as star-studded as far as pooling a team goes… At this time, the question must be – what does the team represent? In other words, where is the country headed?”

That piece was written before the portfolios were assigned. A week after, I must confess that the allocation of portfolios have actually deepened my puzzle – rather than resolve them. A Babatunde Raji Fashola in the Works and Housing ministry obviously makes eminent sense; why put him in a triple-barrelled ministry of Works, Housing and Power? To prove what? That the man is a superman or what? Agreed, the President, as the appointing authority, is obviously entitled to his assessment of his appointee, given that the individual in this instance actually delivered sterling performance as governor of the most complex state of Lagos. Capacity or not; if you ask me, I will simply say that President has merely pandered to instincts that could be a drag on team spirit. I hope I am proven wrong.

The real challenge will however come in the coming days. The challenges, I dare say, will call for new fresh new thinking. That’s not all. The wind of change must come with small, well-intended gestures that speak to the compassion of their change government. At this point, I don’t think anyone – least of all the so-called Dream Team – can afford to luxuriate in the illusions of the past. It simply will not work. With oil prices showing no signs of picking up, and the infrastructure in such terrible states of disrepair, the choices ahead can only be hard – and that is to put things mildly. Trust Nigerians to be on the watch in the coming days for positive gestures from the leaders and their appointees.

I have argued the point elsewhere that it is not as if Nigerians do not know or even appreciate the problems. They do. The point must be made that Nigerians are in fact wiser – and more fair-minded – than their government are willing to give them credit for. What they detest is the bad faith and insincerity of successive governments particularly when they slap a regime of austerity which demands sacrifice from them while living in luxury.

By the way, what is the Presidency still doing with a fleet of 11 Presidential planes? I thought we are in the era of change? Is also true that the nation has spent a whopping N6 billion on the expensive toys in the last six months? Think Nigerians aren’t watching? Someone’s gotta be kidding!

Permit me to strip the current reality of any further pretence. We are simply broke! It is bad enough that oil prices are still headed south; worse is that our sweet crude is no longer the darling of buyers! For a treasury hung on oil, that can only mean trouble! So I say, stop the bleeding! Now, let’s wrestle corruption to the ground.

What about the avenues for wastes? I cite a most recent one – the N413 billion paid out for oil subsidies! Is anyone still pretending that the current subsidy regime can be sustained? Let the person step out to show us the numbers! Like corruption, it’s either we kill this subsidy, or it would kill us!

Already, the monetary authorities are doing a yeoman job keeping undesirable imports at bay. But what about the customs that looks the other way when our markets are flooded with illicit imports? That is however only one half of the equation. The other half is how to get our factories revving back to life to fix the gap caused by restriction in imports. That again, demands a new paradigm – one that rewards work as against rent!

Really, what do our factories need? Pretty little, if you ask me. Credit is of course their lifeblood; cheap, long-term credit that is. Power is critical and so is transportation. None of these are rocket science, nor do they require angels to fix. It is as simple as saying that they need heavy government muscle to lift them; that way, they help conserve foreign exchange and to put young Nigerians to work!

As some say, we need fresh, or rather, thinking outside of the box. I say, the earlier better!

Let me talk about the state of our roads. Seems to me one area where government can make quick impact. I understand we have some 97,000 kilometres of federal roads – all of them traversing the 774 officially recognised local governments in the country. What would it cost the federal government to raise road gangs in all of the local governments – using the old Public Works Department (PWD) templates to fix the pot-holes – all under the supervision of ministry of works officials?

Think of how many jobs this would create! Seems to me a better way to utilise public funds than the proposed N5,000 handouts for the unemployed!

I conclude. Year 2016 is going to be a challenging one with the national treasury under intense strain. We can debate the shape and the direction, it seems to me that a new thinking has become imperative in the way public projects are funded. Over to you our Dream Team!

November 17, 2015
Petroleum mode and pork barrel governance (1)

It should be for President Buhari and the ruling party to recognise the need to empower states to be centres of production, rather than remain as sites for consumption of petroleum revenue that they have been for decades.

You are coming on board the ship of governance at an interesting time. So much has been said about the state of our economy. It is expected that we make the running of government at all levels as lean as possible, avoid waste and conserve resources. As ministers, you must be the vehicle that will administer the change.–President Mohammed Buhari at a special retreat for new ministers.

In the statement above, President Buhari was preaching the message of change to his new ministers. If the country is not to be seen as an example of the saying that “the more things change, the more they seem the same,” dispassionate deconstruction of the culture of governance in the last 50 years has to take place as soon as possible, especially within Buhari’s cabinet. Petroleum and the complacency that rises from a manna mentality about revenue from sale of petroleum have driven the design and working of government in our country for too long. There can be no better time to move away from the petroleum mode than one in which a major goal of the party in power is change, for the better.

While it is proper to punish cases of corruption under past governments, doing this may not be enough to right the wrongs of decades of governance philosophy and style in the country since the age when Nigeria was quoted across the globe as a country “where money was not a problem but how to spend it.” If we get fixated on corruption under Jonathan, we may miss the negative impact of how Nigeria was governed since the 1970s on what Nigeria is today. There is no doubt that corruption could have reached its apogee under the PDP and Jonathan, but Jonathan did not create a mode of governance that made corruption easy for men and women of small or low character who find their way to government. In addition, corruption under Jonathan does not narrate the whole story of Nigeria’s gyration without movement in several decades, nor of what appears to be a lack of stamina in the way the country has been governed in the last half century and how citizens have responded to failure of governance, despite its deleterious effect on society.

One place to look at for fuller explanation of the country’s problems, apart from corruption, is the response of leaders since the Biafra war to the role of petroleum in the governance of the country. It is salutary that President Buhari has called for a new way of governing the country “as if we have no oil.” But this new way may not be achieved if we are not critical of the culture of indulgence of political officer holders that has been a part of the politicalculture in our country since the coming of military dictatorship and the various constitutions authored at the instance of military dictators, including the 1999 Abacha-Abubakar Constitution.

Governing Nigeria has been for the ruling class having the ability to design how to share the funds flowing almost limitlessly from petroleum in a way that makes every state and local government dependent on monthly or quarterly allocation of funds from the federation. Under this philosophy of government, 37 states and 774 local governments were created to serve as units to spend the easy and growing funds from petroleum. Each military dictator apart from Buhari made sure he created states and local governments to increase the number of sites for consumption of the revenue from petroleum. Even under President Jonathan, the national conference of 2014 concluded that 19 states be added to the 36 or 37 already in existence, all in the name of enhancing national unity by bringing government close to the grassroots. Sharing, rather than baking the national bake, was the driving vision of rulers. Even now that slump in the price of petroleum has shown that money is a problem for the country, many Nigerians are still urging President Buhari to increase the number of states to 55, thus showing that the country is still in the petroleum or manna mode, even after it has become clear that salaries are not paid on time in all of the three tiers of government.

The military created all constitutions that have turned holding public office into a commercial venture and winning elections to the legislature or being appointed ministers into qualifications for special social welfare checks for legislators and ministers. Under the military, convoys for ministers and even local government chairmen became a part of the political culture. Convoys became a form of ‘festivalisation’ of power by those who find their way to the corridor of power. Buhari’s ministers should not need convoys at all, so the call for reduction of the size of convoys is anti-change. Convoys create spectacle of power more than they enhance security of those in them. Worse still, the Buhari government is acting, despite its rhetoric, as if the mountain of dollars that killed agriculture and even manufacturing in the country was still growing. How else is one to explain the insistence on having 36 ministers and 15 special advisers? If it is the number of ministers and advisers that make a government successful and a country grow economically, Nigeria should have been one of the richest and best governed countries in the last sixteen years. It is hard to find any other country with a higher number of ministers and advisers than Nigeria from 1999 till 2015, the beginning of the Change Era.

Old habits appear to be dying hard in the country. We still seem to be holding on to the view that government is a pork dispensing agency, ‘one that distributes funds, jobs, and other favours mostly to gain political advantage.’ Just before the end of Jonathan’s regime, Stephen Oronsaye was commissioned to rationalise or right-size the country’s governing units: ministries and agencies. The recommendations of Oronsaye, then considered the doyen of the civil service, were largely ignored after congratulating him for a job well done. Given the recent appointment of 36 ministers, there is no evidence that hundreds of agencies that had been recommended for rationalisation will not be packed with political appointees, not to talk of announcement of 15 special advisers already approved for the president. Consequently, Nigeria, despite the noticeable effect of huge loss of revenue on the economy, will still have more ministers, special advisers, and board chairs than any other country of its size. Its legislators still remain the highest paid lawmakers in Africa (if not in the world). For example, apart from emphasising a pork mentality, what value can a special adviser on education or any other subject add to governance that the minister cannot add? Why would ministers need to look for special assistants when their ministries have tens of underutilised experts?

The mentality in vogue in the days of oil boom is now outdated in an era of dwindling revenue from Nigeria’s economic mainstay, crude petroleum. Migrating from petroleum to agriculture and mining of solid minerals is not likely to happen overnight. It will take more than the four years of Buhari’s tenure for this to impact on the life of citizens. It, therefore, does not make economic or political sense to continue the culture of pork barrel governance at a time that our government should cut its coat according to its cloth. Even states that are receiving bailouts to pay workers’ salaries are still appointing as many commissioners and special advisers as they used to do in the days of high prices of petroleum. Lawmakers are still resisting any cut in their allowances at a time that some lawmakers are opposing payment of 5,000 naira to unemployed youths. Under the system of example of power, our country was pushed into poverty by policies of profligacy in terms of creation of subnational units of governance and extravagant incentivisation of political office holders. This is the right moment for Buhari to deploy the principle of the power of example to bring sense back to compensation of political office holders.

While it was easy for rulers to run governments as favour-dispensing agencies to friends, associates, colleagues, and constituencies when the main source of revenue was the manna from petroleum, it may not be that easy, once citizens (as workers or owners of companies) are made to pay for the cost of governance through taxation. Taxation increases citizens’ sovereignty and citizens’ power to call government to order. It is not realistic to expect that the design of government in the country since 1975, particularly the view of rulers that government is a source of pork for various constituencies and individuals can be sustained. The challenge is not just for ministers. It should be for President Buhari and the ruling party to recognise the need to empower states to be centres of production, rather than remain as sites for consumption of petroleum revenue that they have been for decades.

– To be continued

November 15, 2015
Still in Immunity Mode months into a change regime

Ogunye demonstrated in a jargon-free interpretation that the election of Senators Saraki and Ekweremadu as president and deputy president of Senate was based on forged rules and thus need to be declared null and void, if deliberations under existing leadership of the Senate are to have integrity.

Democracy is more than a political system; it is also a moral system. It is a political system which is characterized not by particular procedures, such as regular elections of government, but primarily by being based on certain fundamental moral principles. In a genuinely democratic society, the government’s policy must accord with those principles. And, furthermore, all social institutions must also be established and conducted within the same moral framework, which invariably includes equality, freedom, and respect for the rights of the individual.-A. V. Kelly

By immunity in this piece, I do not mean the formal protection against arrest and prosecution of president, vice president, governor and deputy governor which those who occupy these positions enjoy in our country and which makes leaders of the executive branch of government the most powerful and protected political office holders in the world. I mean the general lack of respect for laws, rules, and conventions among those accorded legal immunity by the constitution and those that are not covered by such protection. In other words, I am using immunity in the sense of an individual’s or group’s belief that he or she can do anything without being answerable to the principle of equality before the law.

It is intriguing that despite the fact that majority of Nigerians voted for General Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the belief that the new president and his party would be in a better position to right the wrongs of the past under the regime of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the culture of business as usual is still thriving two months into the Buhari presidency. For example, the recent lucid analysis by Jiti Ogunye of the conduct of lawmakers in the National Assembly, particularly in the Senate illustrates how the culture of immunity and disregard for laws, rules, and conventions reigned on June 9 in the hallowed chambers reserved for regulating the lives of the nation and its citizens through establishment of the ‘Dos and Don’ts’ that in normal situations sustain modern polity and civilisations. Ogunye demonstrated in a jargon-free interpretation that the election of Senators Saraki and Ekweremadu as president and deputy president of Senate was based on forged rules and thus need to be declared null and void, if deliberations under existing leadership of the Senate are to have integrity.

Even after the police have revealed in their own investigation that the rules cited by the Senate for its conduct on June 9 are products of forgery, senators in support of the outcome of the election still find it comfortable to warn the police and other security agencies against allowing themselves to be used to harass the Senate, senators, or their spouses. Put in other words, the senators are warning the police not to do their work: investigation and detection of crime and presentation of suspected criminals to the court of law for trial. Instead of showing qualms, senators involved in the election of officers in June now show bravado as they threaten law enforcement officials for attempting to perform their lawful duties. This attitude from 48 PDP senators and 35 APC senators signal disaster for change, if the other branches of government – the executive and judiciary – fail to act in defence and protection of the rule of law.

Stealing of the country’s patrimony, particularly crude oil in the millions still took place until July 3, according to President Buhari’s recent statement. This is an indication that the lawlessness that characterised the last government was still in vogue even after a new president had been sworn-in. The courage of politically connected oil thieves during the last administration to engage in illegal bunkering even months after their principals had vacated power shows how ingrained the culture of impunity has become. What this signals is that there are collaborators in all sectors of the polity, including the nation’s security system who are still ready to work with economic saboteurs even under the nose of an anti-corruption federal government.

Furthermore, using the media to deceive citizens through blatant lies that were a past-time of the administration in the last four or so years has not abated even two months into the new administration. For example, nobody in the country including those in power can say with certainty the exact location of the $15 million that was smuggled toward the end of Jonathan’s government to South Africa to ‘buy arms’ with which to fight the Boko Haram insurgency. As recent as last week, the South African High Commission was unable to confirm if the money had been returned to Nigeria. The South African envoy’s encouragement on July 23: “So, I advise you to check with the agency from where the money was released for the arms acquisition deal,” implies that the location of the money still remains unknown after several months of claim by the Jonathan administration that the funds had been returned to Nigeria.

As we write this piece, many citizens are rejoicing that the crisis in the House has been settled with Dogara’s acceptance of the list of APC nominees for offices other than that of the Speaker. People are forgetting fast the issue that the election of House Speaker and Deputy Speaker was conducted outside the framework of the laws that guide such elections in the House. Many of such enthusiasts are saying that we need peace in the House to be able to embark on the crusade of change. How realistic is the optimism that the crusade for positive change can be facilitated by House officers who finally agreed to a compromise after being given a deadline to ‘do the needful’?

It is not that actions and statements referred to in the paragraphs above had taken place in Nigeria that is a novelty in a country that had for decades become the poster child for political and bureaucratic corruption in the world. What is worrisome is that such unwholesome acts as conducting election in the federal legislature with forged rules; senators’ threatening of the police for planning to enforce the laws of the land; and solidarity messages from supporters of lawmakers purported to have used rules not known to the law smack of a growing tolerance for impunity under the nose of a regime of zero-tolerance for corruption.

It is not the capacity of President Buhari to fight corruption with sincerity and vigour that is likely to be a problem, given his own strength of character. What is scary is the capacity of a Senate led by leaders elected on the basis of forged rules to constitute a stumbling block to Buhari’s efforts to clean the Augean stables the president has inherited from the preceding administration. A Senate with 83 senators that passed a vote of confidence in someone elected about one month ago and with the temerity to warn the police not to ‘harass’ their members seems to have sufficient numbers to frustrate policies and bills designed by the president and his party to fight corruption. It is not out of place to think that the current senate leadership is in a position, if adequate care is not taken, to disrupt good governance by instigating crisis that can disrupt the change agenda.

The matter of election of senate leaders must not be left to compromise among party members, more so that police investigation has revealed that the election of such officers took place on the strength of forged Senate Rules. The executive and judiciary must not shirk in their own responsibilities on a matter that has been politically unsettling since June 9. This is the most appropriate time for the Buhari presidency to insist on equality before the law. If indeed there was forgery of Senate rules, those behind such forgery, regardless of their position in the polity and society, should be brought to book immediately.

Citizens who want their mandate on change to be put to good use need to stand firm and give support to the executive and the judiciary when they act to protect the country’s constitution, especially its commitment to the rule of law, without which democracy cannot deliver good governance. Citizens must not leave protection of the moral system that subtends all viable democratic systems in only the hands of office seeking lawmakers.

November 8, 2015
Change Matters

One good thing from the two groups that had used the internet to talk about Buhari’s government is that nobody had lost hope in his promise to change the country.

To many observers of public affairs, comments in non-traditional mainstream media have become the most fertile site for externalisation of the political subconscious of citizens. It may not be an exaggeration to say that the social media platform has become the mainstream media of the era, as it has become clear that more people in the third world have more access to the social media than they do to the mother of traditional mode of mass communication, the newspaper. The Buhari government and the party that he used to rise to the presidency need to pay closer attention to the social media than the government they have succeeded.

Those citizens who believe more in the new media than in traditional mainstream media are already expressing frustration via the digital device. Young people have already written to Buhari’s daughter to share their frustrations with her father, with the threat to form a parallel government of ‘leaders of tomorrow.’ Older ones are also complaining about the slowness of the president and his decision to make fighting corruption his sole preoccupation among many problems calling for the attention of a government elected to change the content, style, and, if possible, form of the government that had been in vogue in the country to no avail for the past sixteen years.

Adult expression of frustration includes the following: President Buhari is imitating or repeating some of the problems of the Jonathan government, instead of showing some creativity or innovativeness. Like the PDP, he had sent names of nominees to the Senate without indicating which portfolio for which they should be screened or considered, thus encouraging a RORO-type of screening by senators. He had chosen to be silent over investigation into the rules used to elect officers of the Senate while also choosing to pack sensitive security and electoral positions with people from his backyard, as if he had forgotten that there are six regions in the country. The president had been accused of travelling out of the country in a Jonathan-manner in an era of economic austerity. Rise in electricity supply which signalled change in June has been going down by the day. And Buhari’s presidency, according to his critics, has been lukewarm about indiscipline and lack of cohesion in his party, thus risking the stability of the party and his presidency in which citizens had invested heavy psychological and political capital, etc.

Fortunately, there are other bloggers who are pleading for patience, stressing that the president had just started his four-year tenure and should be allowed to look through the mountains of papers he had inherited from a corrupt and non-performing government. His own sympathisers have reminded querulous Nigerians that it took sixteen years for the mess on ground to be created. Some fans of APC have also drawn the nation’s attention to the progress President Buhari has made in the fight against terrorism, drawing special attention to the government’s ability to put faces to Boko Haram by publishing photographs of 100 hitherto unknowable fanatics of the terrorist movement. On junketing abroad, Buhari’s friends on the internet have not failed to remind his critics of the president’s encouraging narrative of his administration in the foreign countries he had visited including India, where he warned Indian manufacturers to stop dumping substandard goods in Nigeria. His government has also advised the IMF to stop crying louder than the bereaved on the issue of denying foreign exchange to importers of items that any country worth its name should provide locally. They also reminded their readers of Buhari’s resolve to identify and punish looters of the country’s treasury. One good thing from the two groups that had used the internet to talk about Buhari’s government is that nobody had lost hope in his promise to change the country.

However, it is worth reminding the president and his party that the tenure of this government of change has only 42 months left, to give citizens a changed political and economic reality. APC and President Buhari need to be reminded that most citizens who voted for him and his party, voted against sixteen years of deception of the ruling party he had replaced. Citizens are worried about the long-term impact of failure of the APC government at the centre. Citizens are afraid that such failure may leave the electorate with a Hobson’s choice in 2019.

President Buhari, one-time military dictator and now one of Africa’s leading lights in democratic governance, needs to be reminded about common errors of the governments before his. Sweet-talking citizens by being long on promise and short on fulfilment has stopped working with the masses, hence their decision to vote for Buhari and APC despite intimidation of leaders and supporters of APC before the 2015 election. One promise from the president’s policy table is the decision to provide one free meal a day for school children. Now that his ministerial lists have been approved by the Senate, school children will find any excuse hard to accept if they still have to remain hungry while in school as from January.

While many citizens seem indifferent to removal of petroleum subsidy, many others, especially Labor leaders who make a living by showing that they care for the working class, are clear about the need to subsidise price of petroleum in the country. Although there was some kind of fact-finding about subsidy during the administration of Jonathan, it is important for citizens to know the whole truth about this monster that is hardly affected by the forces of the market in a global market economy. Citizens need to know from an anti-corruption government why it has been difficult for the price of imported fuel to go down, months after the price of crude petroleum had collapsed in the world market. The good start his government has in respect of bringing back the country’s refineries should be consummated. If some of the refineries have to be sold, there is no reason why they cannot be sold to labour leaders and workers to manage for the benefit of citizens, instead of being sold to politically connected men and women. There also will be nothing wrong with organising a referendum to find out the preference of majority of citizens about subsidy, in relation to other forms of citizen assistance.

Education has been for years one of the major sites of national failure for decades. Periodically, governments in the past had made token donations at the sector to convince citizens that the governments meant well. But no improvement had come to this sector for quite some time, if results of WAEC and NECO, are anything to go by. Not too long ago, federal ministers of education and finance were unequivocal in characterising most of the graduates from our universities unemployable. This sector requires immediate attention under Buhari’s presidency, not just with periodic infusion of funds but first with a thorough study by experts and actual stakeholders of what has gone wrong with education in a country that had produced the largest number of college students in Africa.

A trademark of PDP governments in the last sixteen years has been secrecy. Citizens have been kept in the dark about how they were governed. Now that some APC leaders are boasting that some thieves of the State are returning stolen funds in order to avoid prosecution and punishment, President Buhari should tell citizens if this is true and how much has been recovered so far. Corruption amnesty, if it has been adopted as one of the ways to fight corruption, does not require that citizens are kept in the dark about the identity of those given amnesty and how the government plans to spend recovered stolen funds.

Finally, the issue of oversize salaries and allowances paid to political office holders, particularly legislators, seems to have been off the radar, despite the public announcement of voluntary reduction of salary of the president and his deputy. The initial enthusiasm of the RMFAC on reviewing salaries and allowances in relation to the purse of the government has suddenly died down in the same manner that the talk between the police and the ministry of justice about report of investigation of forgery of rules in the Senate has gone mute. Impatient critics should be pleased that by next week the Buhari government will be fully formed as ministers will be on their seats to give details of where the country is heading. Change does not come easily and not without serious effort on the part of change agents and those who hope to benefit from change.

November 1, 2015
Unity Summit: another theatrics in Yoruba politics 3

If those promoting the recommendations of Jonathan’s conference want the support of citizens in the Yoruba region, this will be a good time to start consultations with those whose lives are likely to be affected should such recommendations become the basis for a new federal constitution.

In the last twenty years, the Yoruba have gotten together under various auspices to examine the structure of the polity. The exercise leading to the production of the Yoruba Agenda is the most memorable of such efforts. The Yoruba Agenda contains ideas that can be reviewed and improved upon. There may be some things that are no longer applicable and need to be taken out at this Assembly. There may be other issues that need to be considered and added to the position taken by our traditional rulers, elders, professionals, and other patriots when the Yoruba Agenda was put together during the pro- democracy struggle of the 1990s. We need to brainstorm about how to make sure that “the architecture of governance”, to borrow a phrase from Chief EmekaAnyaoku, is designed to strengthen the unity of the country through a constitutional system that favours restoration of regional autonomy that made it possible for our region to create the largest pool of manpower in sub-Sahara Africa half a century ago. –General Alani Akinrinade, Rtd at the opening of the Yoruba Assembly in Ibadan on August 30, 2012.

In the last twenty years, the Yoruba have gotten together under various auspices to examine the structure of the polity. The exercise leading to the production of the Yoruba Agenda is the most memorable of such efforts. The Yoruba Agenda contains ideas that can be reviewed and improved upon. There may be some things that are no longer applicable and need to be taken out at this Assembly. There may be other issues that need to be considered and added to the position taken by our traditional rulers, elders, professionals, and other patriots when the Yoruba Agenda was put together during the pro- democracy struggle of the 1990s. We need to brainstorm about how to make sure that “the architecture of governance”, to borrow a phrase from Chief EmekaAnyaoku, is designed to strengthen the unity of the country through a constitutional system that favours restoration of regional autonomy that made it possible for our region to create the largest pool of manpower in sub-Sahara Africa half a century ago. –General Alani Akinrinade, Rtd at the opening of the Yoruba Assembly in Ibadan on August 30, 2012.

Over the 26 federal countries housing about 40% of the world’s population had used various methods to move from unitary to federal system. Nigeria was one of such countries. Representatives of the three regions that constituted Nigeria adopted through representatives a federal constitution, preparatory to obtaining independence from Britain in 1960. The country remained a functioning federal system until the emergence of military rule, under which the country lost its federal constitution and was moved gradually from federalism in 1975 to a quasi-federal system in 1999 through a constitution birthed and nurtured by the Abacha-Abubakar 1999 Constitution. The problem facing Nigeria today, according to some Yoruba activists, is how to move Nigeria from its current quasi-federal or quasi-unitary system back to the federal system upon which it became an independent country in 1960. The recent call by some Yoruba leaders and organisations in Ibadan for adoption of recommendations of the Jonathan national dialogue of 2014 is one of the most recent attempts to bring back to the nation’s conversation the issue of restoration of federalism. Today’s piece will conclude discussion of the need to re-start an inclusive process of mobilising citizens for a regional debate on a matter of such importance to all citizens in the region.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo established a method of making a multilingual and multicultural society adopt a federal political system that many countries had used before him and which many more borrowed from after him. He created a political party that had as part of its core goals, establishment and sustenance of Nigeria as a multicultural federation. Whether it was his Action Group or the Unity Party of Nigeria, Chief Awolowo was consistent in asking for a federal system that promotes equality of majority and minority nationalities. Chief Awolowo did not at any time believe that sustainable federalism could be achieved through a national dialogue that did not have any legal backing nor input from citizens or their representatives. He stated in his speeches and writings that only a duly negotiated federal constitution by representatives of the federating units could lead to a sustainable federal governance. Therefore, the elation of some of his followers at the sudden convocation of a national dialogue of invitees of President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014 would have been an anathema to Chief Awolowo if he were alive, not to talk of the religiosity of some of his former followers in recommendations of a conference of appointed delegates.

Long after the exit of Awolowo, the Yoruba region in 1993 took part in a protracted struggle against the imposition of military dictatorship on the country after the annulment of the presidential election won by Chief M.K.O. Abiola. Yoruba leaders-traditional and modern-took part in the construction of a list of demands, called the Yoruba Agenda, referred to in the quotation above from General Akinrinade’s address to the Yoruba Assembly in 2012. The major demands of NADECO during the four-year struggle were restoration of Abiola’s electoral mandate and re-federalisation of the country/negotiation for a federal constitution created by representatives of the people.

It is important for those canvassing for wholesale adoption of recommendations of the national dialogue of 2014 to remember the process of mobilising citizens and their cultural and political leaders during the pro-democracy struggle. Town meetings were held; traditional leaders, professional men and women; and civil society organisations in the Yoruba region were consulted and persuaded to take part in open debates before the document calling for return to a federal system was presented to the public. It is also worth noting that after the death of Abacha and ‘assassination’ of Abiola, many of the Afenifere leaders in NADECO called for participation in the political transition programme initiated by Abacha’s military ruler, General Abdusalam Abubakar. Some of the Afenifere leaders now calling for immediate and wholesale adoption of recommendations of the national dialogue of 2014 were vocal in making cases for an end to the struggle, promising that once democracy was restored (even without Abiola), the path to federalism would be assured.

The same narrow band of unelected leaders also pleaded in 2003 for wholesale support of President Obasanjo’s second term. Afenifere leaders discouraged their party from fielding a presidential candidate to contest against the candidate of the PDP, General Obasanjo. Obasanjo, like Jonathan, organised a political reform conference that did not involve citizens’ representatives and the recommendations of which are now in the archive. If those promoting the recommendations of Jonathan’s conference want the support of citizens in the Yoruba region, this will be a good time to start consultations with those whose lives are likely to be affected should such recommendations become the basis for a new federal constitution.

In many of the countries that had moved from unitary to federal system: Canada, Spain, Germany, and the latest poster-child of devolution, the United Kingdom, the process of demanding shared power and sovereignty had been inclusive. Citizens and their representatives had created and nurtured the process of struggling for federalism. Ethiopia is perhaps the only country that became a federal country by military fiat. And this was after a civil war. No country has been able to shake off an undesirable unitary constitution through press conferences and communiques or by holding on to a document from a conference of appointed delegates.

If the Yoruba region wants Nigeria to return to a sustainable federal system, its elected and unelected leaders need to stop fighting a civil war over the outcome of Jonathan’s conference. If the party in power in the region does not appear to be sufficiently serious about re-federalising the country, nothing should stop federalists in groups and movements from identifying with any federalist party as it was done in Scotland. But the PDP which President Jonathan led and which did not support him with a covering legislation for the 2014 conference is not a pro-federalism party. Many Yoruba public affairs observers still view the leaders at the recent Ibadan conference as members or supporters of the Jonathan version of PDP.

Using a political party as a vehicle for struggling for change cannot be avoided or replaced by quarterly or daily communiques. In 2012, a Yoruba Assembly was called in Ibadan at which citizens, civil society organisations in the Yoruba region, and elected representatives in the region agreed to start a Yoruba Constitutional Commission. Most of those calling for a Jonathanian model of federalism or nothing chose to stay away from what was a regional conversation on the type of federal system the Yoruba put before the central government. It is rather too late in the day for individuals to claim they are leaders, if such individuals have not been chosen by citizens, regardless of how brave and honest such self-appointed leaders might be.

Returning the country to a federal system is important, not only for the Yoruba region but also for Nigeria’s political and economic health. But there is a need for a more inclusive conversation than the one being conducted by Jonathan’s invitees to the 2014 conference. There is nothing wrong with Afenifere calling for federalism. What is not right is narrowing such call to adoption of recommendations of the 2014 conference of delegates handpicked by Jonathan. This is a right time to call another Yoruba Assembly to bring federalists from various political parties and movements together to fashion out how to engage elected representatives of Yoruba people. Such an assembly can mandate elected representatives of the Yoruba region in state and federal legislatures to table Yoruba demands for a people’s constitution to replace the current military constitution that was designed for administering a quasi-federal Nigeria when revenue from petroleum appeared infinite to military dictators.

October 25, 2015
Unity Summit: another theatrics in Yoruba politics (2)
Even in the Yoruba region with the first free primary education scheme in sub-Saharan Africa, about 6% of children of primary age are not in school while more than 10% of those who attended primary school are not enrolled in secondary schools

I predict that every multilingual or multinational country with a unitary constitution must either eventually have a federal constitution based on principles which I have enunciated, or disintegrate, or be perennially afflicted with disharmony and instability.—Awolowo in The Peoples’ Republic.

To ensure effective governance of the United Arab Emirates after its establishment in 1971, the rulers of the seven emirates that comprise the Federation agreed to draw up a provisional Constitution specifying the power allocated to the new federal institutions. As in many federal structures around the world, certain powers remained the prerogative of each of the individual emirates, which already had their own governing institutions prior to the establishment of the Federation.www.uaeinteract.com/government/political_system.asp

Today’s piece will begin to address some of the questions raised at the end of last week’s column:

If the groups at the summit are in opposition to most of the governments in the Yoruba region, at what point are they going to call for rapprochement with elected governments of Yoruba states not in attendance at the summit? Do Yoruba citizens have a stake in the kind of federalism the Ibadan summit has called for? If so, what process does the summit have in place for mobilising citizens in the region for the fight for immediate re-federalisation or secession from the Nigerian union? But the focus of addressing some of these points today will be to demonstrate to those that organised last week’s Yoruba Unity Summit that the problem of dwindling federalism in the country is a long-term one that requires a long-term, rather than, a quick-fix solution.

This column is not opposed to the call for federalism at the Ibadan summit of selected Yoruba socio-cultural organisations. The evidence for change of vision about how to make Nigeria achieve its huge potential is striking. For almost half a century, the country has failed to improve on the quality of life of most of its citizens while it has grown at the hands of military dictators into a centralised state system that denies subnational levels the autonomy required for innovativeness in such areas as economy, security, education, healthcare, and even infrastructure. Compared to when the country was governed as a fully federal state in the years before the fragmentation of the country into mini states, the Nigeria of today is in many respects incapable of raising the standard of living of most of its citizens. In the era of competitive federalism in the years before the civil war, it was possible for each of the four regions to apply the principle of competitive advantage to its development, despite ideological differences among the three regions. They each achieved this by raising from revenue principally from agriculture: cotton/peanut farming in the North; Palm produce in the East; Palm and Rubber production in the Midwest; and Cocoa from the West.

In a recent World Bank report, Nigeria was ranked the third among the world’s ten countries with extreme poor citizens. Over 70% of its population live on N200 or less per day. 7% of the 1.2 billion people living below poverty line in the world are Nigerians. The Southwest in particular has lost the advantages of the head start in education that it gained in the years before independence and the civil war. Some of the causes of endemic poverty in Nigeria, according to the World Bank, include harmful economic and political systems, national conflict and violence, weak government effectiveness and efficiency, human rights abuses, weak respect for rule of law, and weak control of corruption. It has been observed that about 40% of primary-school age children are out of school. Even in the Yoruba region with the first free primary education scheme in sub-Saharan Africa, about 6% of children of primary age are not in school while more than 10% of those who attended primary school are not enrolled in secondary schools. It must be painful for those who participated directly or indirectly in promoting the importance of education under the government of Awolowo to look away from the decline in education, healthcare, security of life and property, and even lack of modest infrastructure in a region that was the actual pace setter in the years before the onslaught of military dictatorship.

It is, therefore, not surprising that those at the Ibadan conference cried out for immediate intervention to end the system of centralisation that had been driven principally by military dictators and the belief by former military rulers that the Manna economy made possible by petroleum could support creation of tens of mini states that largely live on handouts from the federation account funded mostly by resources from petroleum. Just recently, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, leader of Northern Elders Forum, reminisced nostalgically in a newspaper interview about the positive impact of federal system of government in the past had on development in the country. He acknowledged the country’s cultural diversity and quoted Sir Ahmadu Bello on the need to construct a governing system that is driven by understanding of cultural differences rather than planning to obliterate such differences. Similarly, a leader of Northern Leaders Group in the Northeast even called for a national conference at which the North, particularly the Northeast would table its special needs. Those at the Ibadan summit are not alone in their call for a new political design of the country. This is in contrast to the new mantra being promoted by political office holders across the three levels that ethnic and religious differences are the source of Nigeria’s underdevelopment.

Making their call for reinvention of the country at the coming to power of a former military ruler who campaigned on the platform of change and whom citizens voted for because they are hungry for change is good timing. The menu of policies for change is still being constructed by President Buhari as he shops for ministers to help him change the country. It is true that weak control of corruption has been cited by the World Bank for Nigeria’s decline, despite the country’s access to easy funds from petroleum for over five decades. It is also true that the new president has focused his attention on weakening the culture of corruption. But so is it true that the World Bank has fingered harmful economic and political systems as one of many causes. The balkanisation of the former four regions into 36 mini states at the beck and call of the central government by military rulers is an illustration of harmful economic and political systems.

It may be myopic to just heap all the blame of the country’s underdevelopment on corruption. Since 1966, no government – military or civilian – has come to power without promising to end corruption. What appears to have been missing is coming to terms with some of the direct and indirect causes of corruption. It is conceivable that the transformation of Nigeria since 1975 into a country of unviable states in the guise of ensuring territorial unity is a major cause of corruption in the country. The competition among states had stopped for a long time being over revenue generation but over ostentatious use of funds passed to them from Abuja. If old men and women brought up on the cultural diet of achievement orientation in the decades before 1975 feel outraged by the visible decline in the Yoruba region to the extent of crying out for help, this should not surprise or alarm anybody who is interested in development of parts of the country and by extension the country as a whole. The right demand was made at Ibadan. What was overlooked at Ibadan is recognition of the complexity of restoration of federalism at the hands of a former military dictator who assisted in re-designing Nigeria away from a federal system.

Re-federalising Nigeria is not as simple as Jonathan’s conference of 2014 that the Ibadan summit anchored its demand on. Insisting on the recommendations of Jonathan’s conference can be politically counterproductive. Jonathan’s party, the PDP, was not even in support of the conference. It was Jonathan that accepted to be goaded by many of the individuals now peddling his conference as the way out of the present political paralysis as a way of negotiating for votes. Individuals and groups that want restoration of federalism need to accept that the presidential elections of 2015 are over. The best way to move beyond obsession with Jonathan’s promise to restore federalism in a post-election period is to adopt a supra-partisan approach to ending the current unitary system that is designed for sharing of national cake, as distinct from baking the cake in all forms and in high quantities that can go round. Awolowo and other federalists and autonomists in other parts of the world had provided effective models for both partisan and supra-partisan methods of struggling for federalism. There is no evidence for such approach in the announcements of those hobbled by the Jonathan conference. We will discuss different approaches that had worked in other places next Sunday.
- To be continued
October 18, 2015
Unity Summit: another theatrics in Yoruba politics (1)

“Yoruba may pull out of Nigerian Union, Gen. Adebayo, others speak at Ibadan summit” -Irohin Oodua, October 9, 2015

“Ekiti is my priority. I call on all the House of Representatives members and senators that went to Abuja from here, some people petitioned the National Assembly stating how Fayemi sank Ekiti into heavy debts, I have told the members not to do that,…” he said. “It is God that judges people, not us. You must support him there. They should not go to the Senate and oppose Kayode Fayemi, no, they must never do that. An Ekiti man is an Ekiti man. I appeal to everybody, you must support him.“– Fayose, October 9, 2015

The Yoruba have never been found wanting in relation to raising or complicating Nigeria’s political discourse. Chief Obafemi Awolowo wrote years before Nigeria’s independence that the best way to organise Nigeria and make it prosper and peaceful is to construct a fully federal union to house all its diverse nationalities. Rain or shine, Awolowo stood till the end of his life by his theory that the best model for a multi-national state is federalism. Awolowo’s vision is as much in circulation today as it has ever been. During the Biafran war, the Yoruba was pivotal to the mantra of “to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done.”

After the civil war, the Yoruba also called incessantly for establishment of a social democratic model of government in Nigeria. During the Jonathan presidency, some Yoruba politicians and activists joined Jonathan to convene and populate an election-eve national dialogue on how to re-invent Nigeria while other Yoruba shouted about Jonathan’s marginalisation of the Yoruba region. Many Yoruba people took active part in the recent enthronement of a federal government that, in the words of President Buhari during his commiseration with the children of Mama H.I.D. Awolowo, is committed to realise the kind of government preferred by Chief Awolowo for all Nigerians.

Whatever anybody wants to say about the Yoruba, no one can say that it is a nationality with citizens who are bereft of ideas in terms of making the Nigerian federation viable through a democratic process. While other regions of the country were pushing the country in the direction of unfettered feudalism or mindless unitarism from the period of colonialism to the end of military dictatorship, most Yoruba politicians and intellectuals chose to make strong cases for restoration of federalism in the country. The news report by Irohin Oodua on a summit of some Yoruba nationalist groups in Ibadan last Thursday illustrates one of the few efforts by some opinion leaders in the region to confuse Yoruba people about how to make Nigeria work and thrive for all its diverse nationalities.

As expected, the meeting of experienced Yoruba politicians and activists has brought back to focus many of the challenges facing the Yoruba in the context of the Nigerian federation: the harassment of Awolowo in the administration of Alhaji Tafawa Balewa’s Northern People’s Congress; the annulment and detention till the end of his life of Chief M.K.O. Abiola for winning the presidential election under the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida; recurrent harassment of Yoruba farmers by Bororo Fulani herdsmen; and the recent abduction of one of the most senior Yoruba men to serve the Nigerian federation, Chief Olu Falae, by unidentified Fulani herdsmen, to name a few. Also as expected, the communique at the end of the meeting had some gaps and silences that can cause confusion for Yoruba men and women that did not collaborate with Jonathan’s PDP government. For example, no mention was made of the marginalisation of Yoruba people during the regime of the immediate past president of the country, Goodluck Jonathan.

It is worth mentioning that the summit focused on the recent abduction of recent Falae, a worthy son of the Yoruba region and one of the unforgettable brain boxes for the federal government in the past and a former presidential candidate. It is also reassuring that the summit has called on the federal government to do the right thing: “Summit asks the federal government to ensure immediate arrest and prosecution of the abductors of Chief Falae and all perpetrators of the violent crimes which have been reported at different police stations in Yoruba land arising from cattle rearing activities.”What is capable of confusing average citizens in the Yoruba region is the decision of the summit to conflate recommendations of the 2014 Jonathan conference and the demand of Yoruba people since 1966 for a sustainable federal system:”Realising that the crisis that we are witnessing presently over the actions of the Fulani herdsmen is a function of the refusal of Nigeria to practice true federalism which would guarantee significant autonomy to the constituent units, Summit demands an immediate restructuring of Nigeria with the implementation of the report of 2014 National Conference as a starting point”.

Without doubt, the crises that the Yoruba have faced in their development efforts are serious enough to require meeting of opinion leaders of any political affiliation. But the crises enumerated at the summit may not constitute a sufficient condition for pulling out of the union, should the new federal government fail to re-federalise Nigeria in consonance with the recommendations of the Jonathan conference. If re-federalisation Nigeria is high on the agenda of the many Jonathan conference veterans at the summit, this may be a good time for them to start a sincere dialogue with the Yoruba nation by placing their recommendations side by side with other suggestions from non-delegates for consideration by the people. This will be an effective way to mobilise Yoruba people on the issue of re-federalisation of the union. Should Yoruba people not have a voice in what kind of federalism they want? Must they be pulled into a federal system that may not include fiscal federalism but just devolution of administrative services and further balkanisation of the six states in the Yoruba region?

Every Yoruba patriot, indeed, every lover of justice, should be incensed by the abduction of Chief Falae. No self-respecting nation should keep quiet over the humiliation of its vertical minds, of which Chief Falae has been of its few poster children. But it may be counterproductive to lump the matter of abduction of Chief Falae by suspected Fulani nomads and the implementation of recommendations of Jonathan’s conference together. In his own remarks since his release, Chief Falae himself has called for justice, without tying his travails to non-implementation of Jonathan’s conference in which he served as leader of Yoruba delegates.

To bring the first in the series on theatrics in Yoruba politics to a close (for lack of space), let us raise a few issues that need to be addressed by the groups at the summit and other Yoruba opinion leaders and groups that did not participate at the summit.

At present, the Yoruba region seems to be saddled with two forms of leadership: elected leaders at the end of the 2015 presidential and state elections and unelected leaders produced largely by various groups that attended the Thursday summit and many others that chose to stay away or were not even invited to the summit. Which group was the summit addressing: those whose party won in the elections of 2015 or those who lost? When the summit made the following brave statement: “If we do not see any step in this direction within a reasonable time, the Yoruba may reconsider their place in a union that cannot protect them and would not allow them to protect themselves and use all legitimate and peaceful means to attain self-determination,” on whose behalf or authority did the summit give the deadline? At what point are members of the socio-cultural groups at the summit going to join other Yoruba federalist groups, such as the Yoruba Assembly, Afenifere Renewal Group, Atayese, and hundreds of self-determination groups in the region to present re-federalisation as a non-partisan or supra-partisan project in the Yoruba region?

If the groups at the summit are in opposition to most of the governments in the Yoruba region, at what point are they going to call for rapprochement with elected governments of Yoruba states not in attendance at the summit? Do Yoruba citizens have a stake in the kind of federalism the Ibadan summit has called for? If so, what process does the summit have in place for mobilizing citizens in the region for the fight for immediate re-federalisation or secession from the Nigerian union? These are graver issues than any group’s obsession with recommendations from the 2014 Jonathan conference. From the experience of other countries: the United States of America, United Arab Emirate, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ethiopia, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and South Africa, federalism is not achieved via periodic meetings of veterans of one conference at which federalism was discussed. Federalism results from a long-term process of consultation and negotiation between citizens and their democratically elected leaders.

To be continued

October 11, 2015