Tag: federation

The recent Biafra resurgence has since led to so much renewed talk about restructuring Nigeria. With due respect, I dare say all such talk is so much glib talk.

What makes it glib, but what we have refused to acknowledge, is that Nigeria lost its innocence as a federation in the true sense of the word long ago when, on a fateful day in May 1966, a power-hungry clique our first military head of state, Major-General JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi, surrounded himself with, pushed him into promulgating the ill-fated Unification Decree No 34. That decree abolished the existing four autonomous regions – North, East, West and Mid-West – and substituted them with Nigeria as a unitary state of 19 provinces.

One telling example of how Aguiyi-Ironsi and his clique intended to use the decree to run Nigeria with an iron hand emerged shortly after its promulgation when the late Chief Cyprian Ekwensi, a pioneer popular novelist, walked with his team into New Nigerian, in Kaduna, then still owned by the North, and announced to its bemused expatriate boss, Mr. Charles Sharp, that he had come from Enugu with a brief to take over the newspaper company! Just like that. Somehow the Enugu team never managed to really take over before there was a counter-coup in July in which Colonel Yakubu Gowon, the army chief, replaced Aguiyi-Ironsi.

Gowon duly abolished the offending decree in September and returned the country to its four regions. But Nigeria had eaten  the forbidden apple, so to say, and the country could never be the same again. Events eventually led to a civil war, and as a strategy for isolating and defeating the rebels, Gowon split the four regions into 12 states. This changed the nature of our federation from the normal one in which autonomous regions came together to cede powers to the centre, into an abnormal one in which it was the centre that not only delegated powers to its constituents, but, in Nigeria’s case, actually created them.

This creation went from 12 constituents in 1967 to the present 36. The contrast with America, the Real McCoy, couldn’t have been sharper; it started from a country of 13 states that decided to become a federation when the initial confederation attempt failed, and grew into a country of 50 autonomous states that ceded powers to the centre.

The problem with those who talk so much about restructuring Nigeria is clearly their refusal to come to terms with the fact that the forces of state creation have since become difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.

Of course, since 1995, following the Constituent Assembly established by the late General Sani Abacha, there has been increasing talk of reducing those 36 states into six autonomous regions of North-West, North-Central, North-East, South-West, South-South and South-East. Indeed they have even been used for administrative and political allocation of jobs andpatronages. Even then anyone who imagines the states would want to dissolve into these their geo-political zones is probably living in cuckoo land, considering the continued demand for even more states each time the country convenes a constitutional conference.

So instead of wasting time talking about an almost impossible political structuring, we should draw a line with our current 36 states and make the best we can of their structure.

Several leading politicians and public figures have lately been calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to implement the recommendations of the last constitutional reform conference convened by his predecessor, as the best, if not the only way to resolve the constitutional crises facing the country. Among them are Professor Ben Nwabueze, president of the Igbo Elders Forum and an unrepentant advocate of ethnic nationalism, Dr. Frederick Faseun, the co-founder of the militant Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) and Senator Kofoworola Bucknor-Akerele, former deputy governor of Lagos State.

In an interview in the Sunday Sun of November 22, Bucknor-Akerele, for example, said: “I will advise President Muhammadu Buhari to implement the recommendations of that confab.” She even went further to say if those recommendations had been implemented long ago, not only would the Biafra agitations not have arisen, even Boko Haram would have been anticipated.

I beg to disagree with the advocates of the Jonathan constitutional reform conference for the simple reason that, as The PUNCH said in its editorial of November 11: “Unfortunately, many administrations in the past had organised national conferences purposely to address these self-inflicted wounds, but they turned out to be grand larceny designed to serve their selfish political interests.”

Jonathan’s conference was no exception. If anything, it was probably the worst. By comparison, that of Murtala/Obasanjo was certainly the best since the Republican Constitution of 1963. Aguiyi-Ironsi pre-empted his own conference by Decree 34. Gowon’s first attempt ended in Aburi fiasco. He pre-empted his second attempt by declaring 1976 unrealistic for handing over power to civilians as he had promised in  his first independence broadcast after the civil war on October 1, 1970. This led to his overthrow in July 1976.

General Muhammadu Buhari in his first coming in 1983 initially said democracy was not his priority. And before he would make it so, he was overthrown by his army chief, General Ibrahim Babangida. The new military president’s longish transition programme ended in grief in 1993 when Abacha overthrew the transition government he had left behind, following his annulment of the presidential election of June 12 in the same year. Ditto Abacha’s transition programme in 1998, following his sudden death in June. The last and the shortest one by a military regime under General Abdulsalami Abubakar, Abacha’s successor, merely tinkered with the constitution bequeathed by Murtala/Obasanjo when it ushered in the current dispensation on May 29, 1999.

Among all these constitutional conferences, none was anywhere as thorough and none was as transparent as that of Murtala/Obasanjo. First, its 50-member Constitutional Drafting Committee (CDC) under the late Chief FRA William, Nigeria’s first Senior Advocate, took nearly a year listening to Nigerians before submitting its draft to the authorities. This was between its inauguration in October 1975 and September 1976 when it submitted the report.

Second, no post-independent constituent assembly (CA) has been as representative of the country as Murtala/Obasanjo’s; of its 230 members, only 27 were nominated by the government, seven of who were chairmen of the CDC sub-committees to shed light on the committees’ conclusions. Third, the CA went through the draft clause by clause between October 6, 1977 and June 5, 1978 when it finally adjourned.

In sharp contrast, Jonathan’s constitutional conference was a fire brigade convened, as it were, in the run-up to this year’s elections in March and April. It was such an emergency decision that there was simply no time for any election into the conference. The ex-president seized this opportunity to impose a thoroughly skewed conference membership on the country.

At any rate, anyone inclined to give the former president the benefit of doubt as to his motive must have had it shattered by the fact that he himself refused to implement even aspects of the conference’s report, which were within his administrative powers to carry out, apparently because they were of no use to his determined presidential bid.

All this is not to say that the report is completely useless.All the talk about political restructuring associated with the report may be glib. However, such recommendations it contained about fiscal federalism, state police and the creation of local governments being exclusive to states should be taken seriously. The last two may require constitutional amendment, but the first, which is arguably the most important, does not. What it requires is a spirit of give and take, which, unfortunately, is in short supply among our political class.

The easier aspect of the two-legged fiscal federalism is the vertical allocation among the three “tiers” of government – namely federal, state and local. Between 1980 when the late Dr. Pius Okigbo, a foremost economist, recommended a formula of 55:30.5:10 for the three tiers, with the balance of 4.5 per cent as Special Fund, and the present formula of 48.5:24:20 with the balance of 7.5 per cent  as Special Fund, the formulae have changed a few times. There are no constitutional reason why the current formula cannot be changed by reducing that of the centre and increasing that for states.

The other leg of fiscal federalism, i.e. the horizontal allocation among states and local governments, may be difficult to deal with, but, as I said, with a spirit of give and take, it too can be tackled by reaching reasonable compromises on the weights to be attached to the main principles of derivation, population, geography and equality of states.

In short, our current constitution, whatever its shortcomings, provides sufficient basis to solve our problems, provided, of course, there is good faith and goodwill among our political class.

Without such good faith and goodwill, even a perfect constitution, were it possible, will get us nowhere, for the simple reason that no constitution is self-executing. Unfortunately such good faith and goodwill can never be legislated. It can only be cultivated. So, the sooner we learn to do so, the better our chances of transforming our hapless country into a happy nation.

Note

For two weeks now, I’ve started out with the intention of publishing reactions to my column, only to run out of space. Next week, God willing, I’ll do so, even if it means using most of the space for the reactions.