Again we are back to square one. While the celebration over July 11 Supreme Court judgment that granted financial autonomy to the 774 Local Government Areas across the country lasted, not a few had wondered if the Supreme Court was not putting the cart before the horse by embarking on a judicial misadventure over what was unarguably a political issue. And now, the National Assembly, which but for its hypocrisy has the power to confront the nation’s demon, is bellyaching about sections 13, 14 and 16 of Anambra LGA new bill which seek to compel the local governments to pay their federal allocation into an account to be established by the state government, a bill it claims runs afoul of the Supreme Court judgment.
Perhaps our National Assembly that that often treat Nigerian with less dignity than even the colonial masters, think Nigerians are suffering from collective amnesia since neither the said Supreme Court judgment nor the National Assembly has removed the constitutional power of the state Houses of Assembly to make laws for local government.
One was however not surprised that this was coming from Governor Chukwuma Soludo who, as CBN governor, called attention to the chicanery of our leaders with his “Nigeria is the only known federation in the world where the centre allocates funds to third tier of government it does not supervise”.
The truth is that military arbitrarily created local government as third tier of government like the 36 states also created without logic or rhyme are a fraud by those driven by command and control military mind-set. If the fervour was about rural development, we did not see that play out during Babangida’s regime when most of the badly executed or abandoned DFFRI projects were cornered by retired military officers.
And If it was to deepen democracy as Obasanjo wanted us to believe, very few will be persuaded that deepening democracy at grassroots level was by providing money, cars and logistics to feuding intra-party members to destroy their party or destabilise their state as he was reported to have done in Ekiti by ferrying a few members of state House of Assembly out of their states to Abuja to impeach their governors for opposing his third term bid has a familiar ring of fascism.
It was not a surprise most of the professors Obasanjo dragged to his LGA’s ‘third tier crusade’, parted way with him when they discovered they had been used. Both Professor Ben Nwabueze and Chief Rotimi Williams who helped Obasanjo to destroy whatever was left of our federalism in 1979 by ceding almost 70% of the items in the constitution to the exclusive list with nothing in residual list publicly regretted betraying the country before their passage to the great beyond.
The tragedy of our nation is that unlike the unambitious set of leaders we have had since 1999, Nigeria once had selfless and visionary leaders for whom the nation came first. Ex-president Jonathan acknowledged this during his 51st independence anniversary by “thanking our founding fathers who brought joy and hope to the hearts of our people after six decades of colonial rule by working together to restore dignity and honour to a multicultural and multilingual nation of diverse people with more than 250 distinct languages and ethnic groups”.
Read Also: African Diasporans seek Nigerian citizenship
This they achieved in spite of the initial lack of consensus on the national question with Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and his group canvassing for unitary system, Obafemi Awolowo and his Yoruba group insisting on federalism while Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who believed “Nigerian unity is a British invention” and Ahmadu Bello who expressed grief over “the mistake of 1914” settled for confederacy. But at the end, realizing their responsibility to those that look up to them for direction, these illustrious Nigerian pathfinders settled for a federal arrangement that allowed groups to develop at their own pace.
Unfortunately, nearly all northern governors have since 1999 been opposed to returning the country to a federal arrangement, a social system that promises ‘unity in diversity’, justice and fairness. The reasoning behind the northern governors short-sightedness is that the north because of its numerical advantage in the number of states and LGAs, not only collect more free monies from the federation account, but gives it a veto power over any form of constitutional amendment.
But for refusing to confront our demon, everyone is a loser. Nuhu Ribadu some two years back had challenged these northern leaders to show how billions of naira collected from the federation account since 1999 have impacted on the lives of the poor in the north. It is in this regard, one can also ask the Niger Delta’s self-serving leaders who many believe are behind oil bunkering, if lives of ordinary people of the Niger Delta are better today than in 1999 when they first embarked on economic sabotage of the country. And what has been the fate of ordinary people in the Southwest and Southeast where governors surreptitiously worked against restructuring of the country for fear of losing easy money coming from Abuja which they often deploy towards ‘building bridges over land?
Again, for the sake of our uninformed youths, we must go through history our leaders want to supplant with revisionism which celebrates criminals as heroes.
Between 1962 and 1963, the constitution bequeathed onto us by our founding fathers was breached by NPC/NCNC coalition partners of Prime Minister Balewa, President Nnamdi Azikiwe and Premiers Ahmadu Bello and Okpara, who jointly refused to recognise Dauda Soroye Adegbenro, the duly elected and Privy Council recognized Premier of Western Region. That paved the way for the incarceration of Obafemi Awolowo, the setting back of the giant strides made by the West and the installation of Ladoke Akintola as premier by the coalition partners without election. Anarchy was let loose on the west when those denied the right to determine their own fate decided to make sure those who sowed the wind reaped the whirlwind through ‘operation wet e’.
While the west was burning, the north buried its fangs on the neck of the east after the disputed 1962/63 census exercises and the massively rigged 1964 election. Zik as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces had approached the military for support but was reminded that operationally, the military reports to the prime minister. Zik while pretending to be going for medical check-up but in reality embarked on ship cruise to South America, after handing power over to Dr Nwafor Orizu, the Senate President.
In January 1966, Igbo young military adventurers sympathetic to Zik, in breach of the military espirit de corps, selectively murdered their friends, about eight northern senior military officers and their political leaders, two western senior military leaders and their premier while conveniently sparing their over 30 Igbo military officers and Igbo political leaders.
Aguiyi Ironsi after quashing the insurrection took over power with the help of the Senate President who according to Richard Akinjide, refused to swear in the next available minister in the absence of the prime minister as stipulated by the constitution.
Ironsi’s greatest undoing was the promulgation of Decree 34 which turned the country from a federal into a unitary state. That was quickly interpreted as an Igbo agenda having canvassed for a unitary system during the various constitutional debate from 1954 up to the 1957 London Constitutional Conference where NCNC leaders insisted Nigeria should be divided into a federation of 17 provinces which Awolowo claimed would amount to bringing unitary system through the back door.
In July 1966, another set of adventurers led by Murtala Mohammed, Danjuma, Babangida, and others initiated their vengeance coup called Araba (secession) during which all Ibo military officers on sight were brutally murdered.
At the end the civil war that followed, successive northern military leaders created more states and LGAs for the north thus making northern leaders the 1950 Nigeria they could control a fait accompli.
The way forward is not through a third tier fraud or unviable states created without rhyme. The cheapest and tested option before us is to confront our demons by embracing a federation of six geo-political zones as canvassed by Nigerian stakeholders including leaders of ethnic nationalities, the true owners of Nigeria.
This is the answer to distributive injustice in the South-south, tribal war over control of political power and resources on the in the Northwest, Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast and the apparent ethnic cleansing in the North-central where majority of our compatriots live in IDP camps in their own country.
And as for our embattled President Tinubu who voluntarily offered himself a sacrificial lamb after 58 years of crisis of nation-building, he has a choice as to whether he wants to be remembered as a Nigerian statesman or like his predecessors including Buhari, the best statesman we never had.
