Tag: 2019 election

There is no doubt a reasonable degree of consensus among informed Nigerians on the need at the very least of some measure of tinkering with the structure of the polity in order to overcome some of the persistent existential threats to the country’s peace, progress and prosperity. It is obvious, for instance, that the current unitary policing structure is grossly deficient to ensure internal security in a complex, plural society like Nigeria. Hence the glaring impotence of the Nigeria Police in the face of the prevalent high crime rate and the drafting of military task forces and specialized operational squads to perform police duties in no less than 30 states of the federation if not more. Consequently, the country’s internal security is not necessarily better guaranteed since the military is not trained for such civil assignments while the protection of her territorial integrity, which should be the sole focus of the military, is jeopardized due to the avoidable distraction of the latter.

In the same vein, the federal government continues to be burdened with a surfeit of responsibilities including education, health, agriculture, trade and commerce, which can be more efficiently administered at the lower levels of government with the centre only setting and enforcing regulatory standards. Thus, the federal government enjoys a more than proportionate share of federal revenues while most of the states and local governments where the vast majority of Nigerians actually reside are perennially short of funds to even pay public sector workers not to talk of providing quality social services and infrastructure for their citizens.

Most of the states are economically unviable not because they lack natural or mineral resources within their jurisdictions that could be exploited for the benefit of their people.  Rather, the extant 1999 constitution makes the ownership, control and exploitation of these resources the exclusive preserve of the federal government.  A good example is Osun State, which is reported to have considerable deposits of gold that she is constitutionally prohibited from mining. Experts contend that there is no state or local government in Nigeria that is not similarly endowed with diverse natural and mineral resources that could guarantee their viability if exploited.  Against this background, it is inevitable that the issue of restructuring will be a dominant theme in the campaign for the 2019 elections.

One reason for this is that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has not taken any step towards effectuating, even minimally, the restoration of true federalism that is stated in its constitution. This is obviously because from the perspective of its leader, President Muhammadu Buhari, the fundamental problem with Nigeria is more behavioral than structural. Specifically, corruption will kill Nigeria if Nigeria does not kill corruption as the President is wont to say. It is, of course, logical to argue that corruption is a function more of personal moral deficiency than structural debility.

This column has consistently maintained that structural change is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for accelerated national transformation in Nigeria. No less imperative is a thorough revamping of the country’s value system to inculcate in a critical mass of the citizenry significantly higher standards of ethical integrity. But this does not diminish the necessity to urgently eliminate the structural impediments to moral probity particularly in the country’s public life. The excessively centralized character of Nigeria’s federal structure itself provides fertile ground for corruption to thrive.

Does this then mean that devolving greater resources to the sub-national units of government will necessarily help to check corruption? Not necessarily. It only implies that decentralization of powers, responsibilities and resources to deepen federalism in Nigeria must be accompanied by mechanisms to strengthen checks, balances and accountability at these lower levels of government.

The failing of the APC in this regard has been smartly exploited by a wily political tactician like Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to place restructuring on the front burner of his campaign. Atiku signaled his intention to maximally exploit the not insignificant sentiment for restructuring in wide swathes of the country to his advantage when he took on the Vice-President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) on the issue recently. The Turaki Adamawa vehemently contested Osinbajo’s reported submission at an event in the US that what the country needs most critically now is good governance rather than ‘geographical restructuring’.

Closely reading the public exchange of the two men on the issue, however, there seems to be hardly much difference on their perspectives on the ideal political structure for Nigeria. They both essentially advocate a deepening of federal practice in Nigeria through some degree of decentralization of powers and resources to sub national units of government. At the rhetorical level, Atiku sounds more radical in his advocacy of restructuring and this has no doubt endeared him to such groups as Afenifere, Ohaneze and the Pan Niger Delta Forum who have publicly thrown their weight behind his candidacy. However, there will certainly be the need, during the campaign for next year’s elections, for both parties to spell out in concrete terms exactly what they mean by restructuring. What are Nigerians to expect in terms of structural re-engineering of the polity if either party wins?

There are different contending perspectives on what constitutes restructuring. For some, it is a radical and drastic alteration of the current order to either return the country to the regional structure of the first republic and/or the restoration of the parliamentary system of government. Others advocate the merger of states across the country or the adoption of what amounts basically to a loose, confederal structure that is difficult to distinguish from disintegration. Is Atiku likely as President to embark on any of these wild, emotive and arbitrary adventures in political engineering? By temperament, ideological outlook and personal disposition, I do not see him doing so.

If elected as President, will Atiku have the constitutional latitude in a presidential democracy characterized by countervailing checks and balances to engage in such experiments with unpredictable outcomes even if he desires to? It appears to me that built into the extant constitution are institutional road blocks to prevent such indulgences in political phantasmagoria except by revolution. This may have been a restraining influence on the APC’s federalist aspirations even though I doubt if the party in the last three and a half years summoned sufficient political will to move the country even tentatively in the direction of true federal practice.

Ironically, from the perspective of a radical organization like the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), those seemingly radical advocates of restructuring in the form of a return to regionalism or strengthening ethnic micro nationalism are part and parcel of a backward and reactionary political class. In an insightful publication in The Punch of Thursday, July 5, 2018, ASUU avers that “The debate on restructuring goes on within the context of domination of the economic, political, educational, and all welfare institutions in Nigeria by the same group of Nigerians, from all states and all geopolitical zones, who have since 1960 used their political power as a tool for collective looting of the country’s resources. The debate about restructuring is, at the base, about how to satisfy the demand for redistribution of political and economic power among the contending ruling class groups in the country. The debate is conducted without the participation of the people of Nigeria; it is dominated by coalitions of ethno-nationalist leaders, politicians, businessmen and women (contractors) and their intellectuals”.

There is certainly much that is true in ASUU’s submission and we will be taking a deeper look at the organization’s perspective in due course. If the APC were a radical progressive party and not just a little to the left of the PDP ideologically, that is the kind of position on restructuring that would set it apart distinctly from the former ruling party.  Paradoxically, it is the ideologically ultra –conservative but morally puritan President Muhammadu Buhari that seems to be the most notable exception to ASUU’s sweeping categorization of the Nigerian political class as largely venal, exploitative and self-serving irrespective of their ethno-regional origins or religious conviction.

Buhari’s fierce aversion to corruption or mindless material acquisition by ruling class elements must certainly be informed to an extent by some empathy for the millions of poor and downtrodden victims of the excesses of Nigeria’s political class. Unfortunately, he apparently lacks a corps of intellectuals capable of shaping his elementary views on morality, puritanism, religion, discipline and governance into a coherent and easily assimilable body of political ideas around which a mass, pan-Nigerian movement can be mobilized.

More damagingly, the embarrassingly nepotistic inclination of Buhari’s inner circle, the infamous cabal, casts a dark shadow over an otherwise quite luminous political figure in contemporary Nigeria. And it is largely because of the sectional and arrogant antics of this cabal, as demonstrated by the impunity exhibited at the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) during the week, that restructuring will be a key issue in the campaign. Many Nigerians are so angry and pissed off that they will be easily swayed by ethnic entrepreneurs and regional political merchants masquerading as advocates of restructuring.  It is a pity.