Advocates of restructuring were told yesterday to define what they want.
The issue returned to the front burner ,with President Muhammadu Buhari speaking on it in Paris, France and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo addressing it in Lagos.
The President gave conditions to be fulfilled before the government could go into restructuring of the country.
The President said: “There are too many people talking lazily about restructuring in Nigeria. Unfortunately, people are not asking them individually what they mean by restructuring. What form do they want restructuring to take?
”Do they want us to have something like the three regions we used to have? And now we have 36 states and the FCT. What form do they want? They are just talking loosely about restructuring.
”Let them define it and then we see how we can peacefully do it in the interest of Nigerians.
”They are just saying they want Nigeria restructured and they don’t have the clue of what the form the restructuring should be.
”So, anybody who talks to you about restructuring in Nigeria, ask him what he means and the form he wants it to take.”
He spoke in Paris during an interactive session with Nigerians living in France where he was rounding off his visit after attending the Peace Forum with about 70 other world leaders present.
The President meets with Nigerians living in any country he is visiting.
Among his audience were members of Nigerian Diaspora Organisation (NIDO), All Progressives Congress (APC) members in France, students and friends of Nigeria. They raised questions ranging from restructuring, security, the anti-corruption war, education and the possibility of Nigerians in the Diaspora voting in the 2019 elections.
For Osinbajo, the kind of restructuring Nigeria needs is the one that will make the states stronger rather than the one that advocates the creation of more states or a fusion of states.
The Vice President said the idea of geographical restructuring, which is the common notion about restructuring, is not achievable.
He added: “By that, I mean going back to the old regions and creating more states would not solve our problems. One of the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference is the creation of 18 more states. Can you imagine a situation where you have 18 more states?”
To him, the restructuring Nigeria needs is one in which each state is able to produce its own wealth by leveraging its resources to generate revenue. He said: “This would entail devolution of more power to the states to enable them control more of their own administrative decisions, such as the creation of councils and community police, special courts or tribunals etc. The point I am making is that the state must have more powers and more rights.
“The states, as they are presently constituted, now with better educated people and with more people working, do not generate enough tax for the economy to survive. So, when we talk about restructuring, we must ask ourselves the question, what type of restructuring? Today, everybody depends on oil; every month state governments gather in Abuja to share revenue.”
Osinbajo cited the monumental achievements made under the leadership of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the defunct Western Region after independence, financed with taxation and revenue from agriculture and mining.
The Vice President delivered a lecture to mark the 40th anniversary of a Lagos social club, Association of Friends, in Maryland, Lagos.
Osinbajo said it was by restructuring that Nigeria could generate enough revenue to survive. Besides, he added, visionary leadership and creativity are the keys. His lecture was titled “Restructuring and the Nigerian Federation”.
He said most states were unviable under the present dispensation, because they relied mainly on federal allocations for survival. He said Lagos State is the most productive state, in terms of internally generated revenue (IGR), because the revenue it earns in one month is what 31 states put together receive within the same period.
But, he added that it was the necessity that arose out of the seizure of its statutory allocations under former President Olusegun Obasanjo that led Lagos State to reform its tax system for greater efficiency, as it realised that it could not survive if it did not do so.
Osinbajo said even though there were no constitutional changes, Lagos State had done a lot in terms of pushing the frontiers of restructuring since the return of civil rule in 1999, in terms of litigation, by taking the Federal Government to court.
In his view, there is mass poverty because of “grand corruption” and the failure of the development approach that the country adopted: the expoitation of natural resources and sharing of revenue. He described grand corruption as taking money directly from the treasury, without any contract or pretence.
The professor of law said in spite of the fact that Nigeria enjoyed an oil boom and high revenue from crude oil export between 2010 and 2014, the country’s external reserve fell, the number of out-of-school children increased and the debt profile rose, because of grand corruption. For instance, he said in one day, $292 million was taken out of the system, adding: “After that day, for two weeks, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) did not have cash in dollars to give out.”
Osinbajo said in the next two decades, when Nigeria is expected to become the third most populous in the world after India and China, based on her rate of population growth, it would either become the pre-eminent leader in Africa and the world or the greatest socio-economic disaster in history, if the country was not careful.
He said some of the elite who see the Buhari administration’s social investment programmes as an indirect way of campaigning did not complain when some members of the previous government was engaging in grand corruption.
Eminent scholar Prof. Adebayo Williams praised Osinbajo’s thoughts and delivery. He said that was why he (Williams) had been advocating that the Vice President should engage in more interactive sessions, to throw more light on the administration’s programmes.
To Williams, however, the corrupt structure in the country disposes people to corruption. He said unless the problem of the lopsided structure was addressed in a more holistic and systematic way, the country would not work.
He added: “I cannot see how we can have stronger states with the current structure. At some point, we need to sit down and decide how we are going to live together.”
He said the creation of 18 more states was recommended at the last national conference on condition that the regions could pay for the running of such states under the new dispensation.
Williams cautioned that the approach the Vice President was talking about is administrative in nature. He said government should not rule out the revolutionary approach.
Former Oyo State House of Assembly Speaker Akin Onigbinde (SAN) also agreed that it was extremely important to look at the structure causing problems and adjust it, adding that older democracies did the same thing.
He said the idea of earning arbitrary statutory allocations was fuelling the debate for restructuring and, therefore, revenue allocation formula should be reviewed.
Onigbinde said many states were sitting on wealth, yet poor because the system gave them no incentive to be creative. When there is no more money to share in Abuja they will sit up.
Former Solicitor-General of Lagos State Fola Arthur Worrey said the problem revolves round the fact that, aside from the defunct Mid West Region, the other states were created by military fiat.
To Arthur-Worrey, the problem is governance – and efficiency. He said Nigeria should review the revenue allocation formula – suggesting 60 per cent for states; 30 per cent for the Federal Government; and 10 per cent for the local governments.
He also blamed the National Assembly for not doing its work, adding that lawmakers are behaving like federal officials, rather than representatives of the people.