The urgent need to institutionalise true federalism in the country resonated last week in Enugu during the 14th Chief Emeka Anyaoku Lecture Series on Good Governance.
Speaker after speaker took turns during the lecture titled, “The Imperative of Good Governance: Nigeria in a Global Comparative Perspective,” to draw attention to the link between the practice of true federalism in a plural society and political stability. Anyaoku took the lead by renewing his appeal for Nigeria to adopt true federalism with a warning that the country risks disintegration if it continues its current centralised structure.
Drawing parallels with other multi-ethnic societies that collapsed under similar strains, the former Secretary General of the Commonwealth and elder statesman said only a new democratic constitution that reflects Nigeria’s diversity can save Nigeria from such fate.
“Other multi-ethnic countries that failed to address their pluralism through federalism have since disintegrated. Nigeria must not continue along this part,” he warned.
The line was also toed by former Foreign Affairs Minister Ike Nwachukwu who said Nigeria’s centralised system is fundamentally flawed. Nwachukwu said it was for this reason he has been “advocating the restructuring of Nigeria into a proper federation.”
For him, state autonomy is critical as it brings governance closer to the people, enabling them to harness their local resources for development.
In his keynote address, Nigeria’s former Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, called for a radical rethinking of governance, starting with structural changes.
“There is an urgent need to significantly devolve power to the people through restructuring,” he said even as he called for a rejig of the leadership recruitment process, retooling of the state to serve as a guarantor of security and unity to foster new elite consensus.
There is a common thread around the issues raised by the three speakers. They revolve around a new constitution that reflects Nigeria’s diversity to save it from disintegration, diluting the centralised system of government and power devolution through restructuring. They speak of the same challenge from different angles. But the issues are not entirely new.
Agitations for restructuring to guarantee true federalism both in its spirit and practice have been a recurring decimal in the country’s political journey over time. They were intense during the early years of Nigeria’s return to democratic governance in 1999 and have further been accentuated by events of the recent past and the present. And they will continue to be so, assuming dangerous dimensions until they are realistically and genuinely addressed to the satisfaction of the constituents.
The response of former president Obasanjo to agitations for restructuring and true federalism was the setting up of the National Political Reforms Conference (NPRC) in 2005. Its purpose was to strengthen democratic institutions, and address issues of national unity and stability.
The conference made far-reaching recommendations in the area of political party reforms, decentralisation of election management and integrating technology for transparency in election management. Other recommendations included state creation to ensure parity between geo-political zones and ensure the stability of existing ones and power rotation for executive positions at the federal, state and local government levels.
Equitable revenue sharing process, the establishment of constitutional courts to handle presidential election petitions and serve as an appellate court for gubernatorial, national and state assembly elections were also some of the highlights of the recommendations.
These recommendations could not be implemented before that administration wound up. It is speculated that events surrounding the purported tenure elongation moves of the Obasanjo administration were largely responsible for the non-implementation of the high-minded recommendations of the NPRC.
The tempo of agitations did not abate when the Yar’Adua/Jonathan administration came on board such that Jonathan, after the death of his boss, inaugurated the National Conference (NC) to address the contentious issues of our federal order and advance Nigeria’s unity, progress and development.
The recommendations of the NC included the scrapping of the 774 local governments in the country with states granted autonomy to establish their own local government structure, a modified presidential system, power sharing and rotation (rotation between the north and the south and among the six geopolitical zones), a reduction of the federal government’s share of national revenue with a corresponding increase for states and reversion to the old National Anthem.
Jonathan was unable to implement the recommendations before he left office. He rationalised his inability to implement the conference recommendations, blaming it on mass defections in the then national assembly. According to him, the mass defections led by the then speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, made it impossible for him to send the report to the national assembly. This may be correct.
As could be seen, all administrations since the return to civil rule in 1999, except that of Muhammadu Buhari, empanelled national conferences to address nagging issues of our federal structure accentuated by the way the constitution heralding civil rule was put together by the military. These agitations were also very potent as Buhari held sway.
But he had a different attitude to them even as some of his policies which were heavily skewed in favour of the north did a lot to reinforce the imperative for true federalism and restructuring.
Today, the issues are still as potent as they were when Obasanjo and Jonathan organised conferences but failed to implement their recommendations. All the key issues – revenue allocation, devolution of powers, state creation, electoral reforms, power rotation between the north and the south and among the six geo-political zones – are still with us. As a matter of fact, some of them have assumed such dangerous proportions that they now pose serious threats to the nation’s corporate existence.
These can be located in the cascading insecurity across the country with some of the non-state actors professing weird ideologies that do not make for national cohesion. It can be seen in mass defections to the ruling parties at both the federal and state levels. It is more pronounced at the federal level because of the huge resources at the command of that level of governance and the lure to share from it.
It is evident in the increasing slide to prebendalism (the struggle to capture political power for members of one’s ethnic group and his family). Prebendalism is reinforced when allegations of nepotism and skewed appointments at the federal level are freely traded.
Dearth of serious opposition and intolerance to dissent leading to increased fears of a slide to a one-party state and the fad of gravitating to the party in government so as to ‘belong’ are clear evidence of the inability of our leaders to manage diversity. It therefore serves no useful purpose to leave issues fundamental to our national existence to the whims and caprices of leaders without constitutional safeguards.
Even then, allegations on the flouting of such constitutional issues as the reflection of the federal character principles in appointments have overtime been freely traded. All these point to the inevitability of a new democratic constitution that truly reflects and guarantees the diversities of the constituents.
The recommendation that the presidency should rotate between the north and the south and among the six geo-political zones is reinforced by rising accusations of nepotism and favouritism in appointments. It is a key constitutional change that will stabilise this country. Let it go around! By the time all sections must have had a taste of it, maybe the right lessons on how to manage a plural society would have been learnt.
What the country requires now is not the piecemeal and largely uncoordinated amendments of the constitution which the national assembly is currently into but an entirely new constitution that properly reflects the diversities in the country through true federalism.
