Category: Ropo Sekoni

What should have ended as a Nigerian problem has been given a Yoruba flavour by residual forces in Afenifere who have made burnishing the image of the recent conference their responsibility. Of all the nationalities with representatives at the conference, it is largely the Yoruba (through a select group of its elders at the conference) that has since the end of the conference made the conference look like a Yoruba issue.

Historically, the Yoruba have been in the forefront of the struggle for functional and sustainable federalism in the country. This was made possible by the insight and vision of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who was prescient enough to know that no multinational state is likely to avoid political instability and economic stagnation without adopting a federal system of government that allows each nationality to refine its culture while cooperating with other nationalities in the union to build a formidable nation-wide economy and polity.

More recently, NADECO leaders made convocation of a sovereign national conference to de-militarise and re-federalise Nigeria an integral part of the struggle for restoration of the mandate given to Chief MKO Abiola at the end of the 1993 presidential election which was later annulled by General Ibrahim Babangida. In a sense, if the Yoruba appear to cry more than the bereaved with respect to the recent national conference, Yoruba elders (particularly residual Afenifere forces) who complain about opposition to the Yoruba demand for a return to regionalism are not completely out of order for feeling the failure of the national conference more than any other nationality involved, including the Niger Delta nationalities whose resources are still denied to them as much as they have been before the conference.

Now that the euphoria and the remorse over the recent conference seem to be dying down, it is appropriate to use this page to have a dialogue with Yoruba people across age and class about some of the things that need to be done if a majority of Yoruba people in Nigeria want to have a national conference that can bring federalism back to the country. If it was not clear before, it has now become clear that the Yoruba region was not adequately prepared for the last conference. Such lapse should be avoided next time.

First, at a time that Yoruba political and cultural leaders should have been busy consulting and mobilising the Yoruba population, they were pre-occupied with two initiatives that turned out to be counterproductive. The first wrong initiative was that those in charge of political control of the Yoruba region based their assessment of President Jonathan’s sudden decision to organise a national dialogue on what he stood to gain from doing so, with very little consideration for what the Yoruba could do to take advantage of President Jonathan’s sudden conversion from “nothing-is-wrong with the 1999 Constitution” to the imperative tore-launch Nigeria a few months to another presidential election. Even though APC’s view that the conference was a distraction that was not likely to yield any progress in the struggle for federalism finally turned out to be prescient, the party could have encouraged its leadership in the Yoruba region to assist citizens to prepare for the conference, rather than leaving the space of mobilisation to a handful of Yoruba elders who, for obvious reasons, preferred the top-down approach of working with PDP leaders to direct consultation with Yoruba people. The choice by Yoruba elders not to mobilise the population was not necessarily for lack of electoral value on their part. It must have to do with the rapport the group had gained with the presidency during the planning stage of the conference.

Secondly, Yoruba elders who virtually took over the initiative of the Yoruba Assembly hitherto under the leadership of General Alani Akinrinade by establishing a top-down initiative first in Ijebu and later in Ibadan, left the people behind in their negotiations (on behalf of Yoruba people) for a Southern Position with selected leaders from the Southeast and South-south. By giving the impression of a consensual southern position on how to re-federalise Nigeria, such Yoruba leaders also gave the impression that the Yoruba saw the conference as a platform to antagonize the North, to the extent that the support of North-central states for devolution at the 2005 conference virtually disappeared in 2014. There is no better way to illustrate this than the tone and content of the position paper of the North (as a monolith) at the conference.

In addition, by choosing to negotiate on behalf of Yoruba people without any mandate, Yoruba elders in favour of the conference ignored the people of Lagos Island in particular and Lagos State in general in the bid for regionalism. Assuming that most of Lagos State: Badagry, Epe, Ikeja, and Ikorodu were part of old Western Region, they forgot that Lagos Island had a separate status of its own for almost 80 years and might need to be assured that joining the Yoruba region would not be to their disadvantage. Even places like Badagry, Epe, Ikeja, and Ikorodu have been with Lagos State for too long for any serious group negotiating for a new federal system to take their consent for granted on matters of self-determination.

But reducing the failure of the conference to achieve more than cosmetic re-federalisation to lack of cooperation between residual Afenifere forces (now in PDP) and APC leaders misses the big point about lack of preparation on the part of the Yoruba for the last conference. Asking for federalism in a country that has been unitary for over 30 years requires more than reconciling two ideologically opposed groups, PDP and APC. If Yoruba people sincerely desire a federal system that is based on regionalism, there is a need for a better strategy than just scheming with Igbos and Ijaws in the name of southern solidarity. It is important to realise that what is good for Igbos and Ijaws with respect to federalism may not necessarily be good for the Yoruba, and vice versa.

First, Yoruba citizens who genuinely want a federal Nigeria need to create a third force that is distinct from the two major political parties that currently house most Yoruba voters: APC and PDP. The third force should not be a political party but a political movement that is devoted to the struggle for re-federalisation of Nigeria, just as NADECO struggled against military dictatorship without kowtowing to NRC or SDP. From the start, the movement should be a bottom-up initiative. It should be an organisation that spends its energy on mobilising Yoruba citizens on the subject of what type of Nigerian Union the region wants to be a part of. It must be a movement that has every sub-ethnic group of the Yoruba in its leadership cadre, with such members not having immediate interest in political power under the present dispensation of unitary Nigeria.

Part of the tasks before the movement is aggressive re-education of every region of Nigeria on the benefits of federalism. No section should be treated as irredeemably glued to keeping Nigeria as it is. There is no doubt that the North is favoured by the present and unitary arrangement, but it is not true that most northerners are benefiting from the way Nigeria is structured today. It will be the responsibility of the movement to re-educate individual northerners, easterners, and south-southerners on how federalism can improve their opportunities in life, especially in Africa that is being modernised more by globalisation than by efforts of individual nations.

There is so much for Yoruba federalists to learn from the Scotland experience. Even if the Scotland vote turns out to be No, the point has been made that the political structure of the United Kingdom can no longer be the same. This has been borne out by the promise by the British Prime Minister and leaders of other major parties in the UK during the last days of campaign for and against Independence vote for Scotland that more powers will be devolved to Scotland and other nations within the United Kingdom in the event of a No vote. It took Scotland over 300 years to reach this point. Yoruba citizens and their leaders who are sincerely committed to the cause of regionalism need to know that there need not be shortcuts to any place worth going. Many Yoruba leaders took the shortcut to reach their goals at the last conference. We should now stop crying over spilt milk and look ahead to another conference, if regionalism is our goal in a federal union.

The decision to appoint delegates (instead of allowing communities to elect their own representatives) also prevented delegates from being enriched conceptually by constituents

We observed last week on this page that the recent national conference has missed the opportunity to create new principles towards a constitution capable of re-structuring the country into a functional and sustainable federal democracy. And the reason for the failure cannot be put mainly at the foot of the delegates, as many of the lessons emanating from the conference pertain more to pre-conference activities than to what delegates did or did not do at the conference.

The conference lacked the kind of conceptual preparation needed to make delegates achieve more than they had. On matters that pertain to administration and governance, delegates were able to make many important game-changing suggestions. It is thus not surprising that President Jonathan has quickly chosen to set up an Implementation Committee to look at the Conference report. There is no doubt that there are many recommendations that deserve to be implemented regarding how to improve the way ministries and agencies are administered.

But on issues that are unmistakably political, such as resource sovereignty and establishing new relationships between two principal levels of government in a federal system, many things were done too hurriedly and haphazardly on the part of the convener and planners of the conference. The timing of the conference (less than one year before the general election) and the decision to pay delegates from the federal purse must have created budgetary constraints that put a lot of pressure on delegates to complete their deliberations, without having the opportunity to consult citizens at large. If the national assembly has been working at amending the 1999 Constitution for the past three years, then it must have been unrealistic in the context of the culture of project management in Nigeria to expect a national conference to do a thorough job within four months. Correspondingly, watching the budget on allowances to delegates would not have arisen if their communities had been allowed to send them to the conference on community errands to be compensated for in whatever way the communities deem appropriate.

The decision to appoint delegates (instead of allowing communities to elect their own representatives) also prevented delegates from being enriched conceptually by constituents. Citizens generally saw the conference as government’s attempt to implement a top-down initiative about a project that citizens believe requires inevitably a bottom-up approach. Citizens were not mobilised as matters were left in the hands of leaders appointed for them by the convener. Even though many of the delegates from various parts of the country would have had no problem getting elected to represent their communities at the conference, the fact of the matter is that there was no such bond or contract between communities and delegates. Delegates went to the conference without the authority of communities and were thus not bound to consult before accepting any resolution about how citizens at the community level would prefer Nigeria to be structured.

The decision to ignore citizens’ calls for a referendum during town meetings organised by the Okurounmu Committee put a nail on the coffin of the option to create a two-way flow between delegates and citizens. The same template: “Only government leaders and their appointees know best what is good for citizens” was used to prepare for the conference. By rejecting the option of referendum, the president knowingly or unknowingly gave the impression that the conference was not about citizens’ desire, thus creating a gulf between delegates and communities. In modern times, referendum appears to be a sine qua non of constitution making.

For example, any effort to re-invent Canada, the United Kingdom, and Spain involved letting the people express themselves through a referendum. It does not follow that allowing a referendum would lead to disintegration. Canadians had voted in the past to reject calls for independence for Quebec.  Apart from respecting people’s choice, referendum allows government leaders to know how citizens feel about their country. Spain is at present pushing its neo-centralist approach to prevent Catalonia from having a referendum on the basis of the country’s constitutional position that secession is illegal. Repressing people’s desires on the basis of what the constitution allows does not always give such constitutions long life. In addition, allowing the people of Catalonia to organise a referendum does not automatically mean they will choose independence. The world is now too modern for central governments to prevent citizens from airing their views on important issues. It is the recognition by Britain’s central government of the value of people’s choice that has allowed it to encourage Scotland to hold a referendum on its future relationship with the rest of the United Kingdom. When the referendum takes place, it may or may not go the way the SNP wants. Any government that is afraid of referendum must have something to hide or something that it is gaining by shutting the people up.

Furthermore, opting for selection (over election) of delegates reinforced the view that the conference was not for citizens. This choice also made delegates vulnerable to a large extent. Delegates had no backing by their communities and were thus not accountable to anybody outside the group that made their selection possible. Consequently, invoking the mantra of Nigeria’s indissolubility and indivisibility at the beginning of the conference could not have been resisted by delegates as hamstringing them from making maximum demands that would have unearthed the political unconscious of communities with respect to Nigeria’s federal system and thus made negotiations meaningful among competing interests on re-structuring or re-inventing Nigeria. It is therefore too late for delegates from any region to complain about other regions blocking them at the conference. Regional rivalry should have been anticipated when delegates accepted to participate at a conference where the option to problematise Nigeria had been closed ahead of conference deliberations.

Leaving delegates to deliberate without the benefit of knowing the true feelings of citizens at the community level left the important issues of how to re-federalise Nigeria solely in the hands of appointed delegates. It also gave the communities and citizens no role, as communities had no power to re-call or ask delegates to return home if and when conference resolutions or recommendations were perceived to be adverse to the interest of specific communities, states, or regions.

Finally, series of meetings among self-appointed leaders of various sections of southern Nigeria before the conference did not help to advance the cause of re-federalising the country in its post-military era. Southern pre-conference meetings and the various position papers produced at such fora gave the impression that the country was already divided into two: North versus South on the issue of federalism. After advertising the Southern Position at the conference in advance of the conference, what was left for the North to do: come to the conference to accept the choice of self-appointed southern leaders or bow out of the Nigerian federation with gratitude? Realising that the gains from de-federalisation of Nigeria by successions of military dictators from the North would have been thrown away if northern delegates had welcomed the call by some Yoruba delegates for return to regionalism, should it have surprised anybody that the North came to block the call for regionalism, as some Yoruba elders have claimed?

To be continued

History tells us that Ironsi had to be killed by his fellow soldiers because he re-created Nigeria in an image that was contrary to its original image at independence in 1960

The subtitle of today’s piece: “The triumph of General Aguiyi-Ironsi” is borrowed from the assessment of the just concluded national conference by Dr. Orobola Fasehun, formerly of Nigeria’s Foreign Service and the United Nations. Dr. Fasehun said among other things in a recent tele-seminar that the national conference has fully resurrected General Johnson Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, despite several chest-beating assessments of the conference in glowing terms by many of the delegates, particularly those from the Yoruba region.

The reference to Ironsi’s resurrection is to remind us of the promulgation of Decree 34 by Ironsi during his six-month tenure as military head of state after the first coup d’etat in 1966. Decree 34 dismantled without apology and pretence the federal structure of the country and installed a unitary system that transformed the country into an assemblage of provinces administered by a strong centre. History tells us that Ironsi had to be killed by his fellow soldiers because he re-created Nigeria in an image that was contrary to its original image at independence in 1960. After Ironsi, the federal structure was resuscitated, only for a few years.

As we have observed on this page several times since 2007, Nigeria’s federalism gradually waned under the leadership or sponsorship of military dictatorships, largely between the creation of the first 12 states out of the four regions and the multiplication of the 12 states to the current 36 states, recently slated for increase by the national conference to 54 states. Not even Ironsi had the courage to create 54 provinces during his suicidal declaration of Nigeria as a country of centre-driven provinces. What the national conference had done by resolving to balkanise the country into 54 states is to ensure that the possibility of using regions as federating units or of even having any state or province economically viable enough to pass for a federating unit is made to disappear from the imagination of Nigerians.

It is hard to explain how this kind of resolution could have come from majority of the delegates considered by many observers to be some of the country’s best. Could it be that the conference lacked thinking economists or economic thinkers? By packaging its failure to make a final pronouncement on resource control and revenue allocation on the ground of lack of technical expertise, the conference honestly owned up to significant intellectual deficiency with respect to issues that called for rigorous thinking. Resolving to break the country into 54 provinces or states suggests that most of the delegates (at least 70%) must have made spiritual and psychological commitment to running an administrative federalism that is sustained and can be sustained only through handouts from the central government. It is also surprising that the conference had enough expertise in the house to determine within the short time available to it which areas or communities should be allocated additional 18 states.

Before any delegates or their supporters begin to congratulate themselves for devolving power from the exclusive list to the states, let us briefly compare the number of functions on the conference’s exclusive list to what exists in the 1999 Constitution put together at the instance of military dictators. There are 68 items on the exclusive list in the 1999 Constitution, with the first being “Accounts of the Government of the Federation, and of offices, courts, and authorities thereof, including audit of those accounts” and the sixty-eighth item being “Any matter incidental or supplementary to any matter mentioned elsewhere in this list.” On the recommendations of the conference, there are now 62 items on the legislative exclusive list. In reality, the central government has not lost any power. Some of the powers in the current constitution have been combined, thus giving the impression that the number of items of the proposed exclusive list is smaller than what obtains in the 1999 Constitution. For example, items 6, 15, and 24 were combined into one item, items 9, 18, 30 and 42 in the current constitution were merged while items 23 and 28 were combined into one item, to give a total of 62 items on the conference’s new exclusive list.

With respect to functions proposed by the conference for the states, there are basically five new additions to the pre-conference concurrent list: police (by states that choose to have such law enforcement agency in addition to the overarching one provided by the central government), railway, prison, public holiday, and creation of local government. This is despite the fact that the conference still endorsed continuation of current allocation of petro-naira to local government as third tier of government. These additions to state powers are already being danced about by several delegates around Yoruba cities, but before the Yoruba get misled, the provision to neutralize the power of states to use these new powers and those on the old concurrent list has been added to each item on the concurrent list. Invocation of the principle of central legislative supremacy: “The National Assembly shall have power to make laws for the Federation or any part thereof with respect” to anything under the sun indicates that no state has any freedom to do anything that is not supported by the central legislative assembly, which has the power to legislate in whichever direction it chooses.

Despite ample references to the Basic Laws of Germany by the conference, there is very little evidence that the conference borrows good models from the concept of sharing power and governance in the context of Germany’s combination of ethnic and territorial federalism, just as there is no such evidence with respect to the practice of territorial federalism in the United States. Just as the framers of the 1999 Constitution intended, a country of 36 (planning to morph into 54) mini states that beg for handouts from the central government cannot be given substantial powers that are not to be regulated or checked by an overbearing central government that has control over resource mobilisation and allocation. Having resolved to increase the number of provinces a la Ironsi from 36 to 54, it would certainly not make sense for the conference to fail to add the principle of federal legislative supremacy to every item on the concurrent list. Without doubt, some position papers sent by groups of Yoruba professionals that called for just two forms of power: exclusive and residual lists must have been thrown into the trash can before commencement of negotiations at the conference.

Even if the national assembly, the only institution that can transform the resolutions of the conference to constitutional provisions (with the conference having already dismissed the option of a referendum and barring the invocation of Nigeria’s latest code word for decree, Doctrine of Necessity), accepts the resolutions of the conference hook, line, and sinker, Nigeria will remain as far from federalism as it was before the latest of its national conferences. In other words, it is not yet Uhuru for apostles of federalism and advocates of a sovereign national conference. In all, the recently concluded national conference has not been a waste of time, as many of its critics would like citizens to believe. On the whole, the delegates have thrown substantial light on what needs to be done to improve governance in a polity designed for administrative federalism. But the conference has clearly shown the nation what not to do, if it is to fulfil the desire of many of its citizens and nationalities to create a functional and sustainable federal system of government.

To be continued