The Nation Newspaper

Tag: restructuring

  • Restructuring: Buhari can’t violate constitution, says lawmaker

    A member of the House of Representatives, Hon.  Olajide Jimoh, has said President Mohammadu Buhari cannot act outside the constitution in a bid to restructure the country.

    He told reporters in Lagos that agitators for restructuring must be sensitive to the existing constitution and consulty widely.

    Jimoh, who represents Lagos Mainland Constituency, said: “President has not said he would not restructure. This issue should go through constitutional processes. There are ways and methods to go about restructuring.”

    he explained that the National Assembly turned down the 2014 National Conference Report on power devolution because it was not carried along by the previous administration.

    Jimoh said the conference was held in a hurry because of the motive behind it.

    He added: “Former President Jonathan did not wait for the National Assembly to give order before he went ahead. A  huge amount of money was wasted.

    Jimoh said those clamouring for restructuring are looking for avenues to position themselves for relevance.

    The lawmaker said the issue of budget padding raised by Hon. Abdumumin Jubrin must not be swept under the carpet.

  • Restructuring and its frenemies

    Restructuring and its frenemies

    Back in the Athenian garden where the tradition of public debate was first documented in antiquity, the danger had long been recognized. Logicians call it red herring.

    Those in the habit of artfully diverting an argument in order to obfuscate the question prefer this kind of fallacy.

    Such, it would seem, is the clear and present threat now encroaching the national gallery over the issue of restructuring. Depending on where you stand on the divide today, the word is applied loosely in a manner likely to confound even those who originally conceive the word, “perestroika” (restructuring), in the last years of the old Soviet Union.

    Unable – well maybe unwilling – to keep the old empire together under the force of arms, often meditative Mikhail Gorbachev did not stop at “perestroika” beginning from 1986, he added “glasnot” (openness) in a steely resolve to reform the old union, but ended up as the last president of the empire cobbled together by the Bolsheviks several decades earlier.

    To the political establishment in Abuja and a faction of the ruling party today, the word is perhaps no more than the new synonym for the shriek wailing of the politically displaced, if not treasonable dismemberment of the nation. To the opposition, it is undoubtedly an invocation to hold the ruling party to certain high standards to which they themselves were however also unable to rise yesterday when in power.

    Further afield, the understandably querulous actors of the civil society are no less divided today in defining restructuring in the Nigerian context. So, in the ensuing philosophical melee, we now find ourselves having to separate the truth from lies the same way we distinguish our friend from the enemy.

    Or, is it the darker creature the English dictionary newly classified as frenemies – enemies disguising as friends?

    Only a few, in in my view, have brought a clarity to the issue like Bashorun Seinde Arogbofa does in his new book, Nigeria – The Path We Refused To Take. He identifies the challenge as twin: systemic and human. To resolve the malaise, the first step is to “plant a good system and simultaneously… grow the right people to implement the system.”

    His prognosis is that a return to regionalism will revitalize the polity and free the latent energies across the land that will, in turn, catapult the nation to greatness. He argues that the quality of leaders a country parades is only a reflection of the integrity of the system in place.  It needs be clarified, however, that the problem with Nigeria’s federalism from the outset was more human than systemic. By obliging regions to retain 50 percent of the fruits of their labour and remit 30 percent to the government at the centre and the remaining 20 percent in the general pool to be re-distributed according to collective needs, that post-Independence federalism recognized the nation’s cultural diversities, abundant resources and, therefore, sought to incentivize industry rather than the entitlement mentality.

    It is a measure of the synergy of such symbiotic arrangement that the groundnut pyramid spiraled in the north, cocoa boomed in the west and palm oil flowed abundantly in the east, to the prosperity of the nation at large.

    But poor actors soon tainted the politics with nepotism, intolerance and “ten percent”, eventuating in the collapse of the First Republic and the military incursion on January 15, 1966.

    Since the military is unitarist in philosophy and operation, the next casualty was the federalist character beginning with the Aguiyi-Ironsi’s unification decree. The nation then morphed into one huge garrison synchronized to a central command. Long years of military rule helped deepen this aberration.

    Sadly, successive constitutions fashioned by soldiers for the nation only sought to normalize this anomaly, which gradually shifted emphasis from real production to the carnality of monthly sharing of oil receipts in Abuja. Hence, the intensification of the struggle to control political power as the master key to easy money and the weaponization of the electioneering process as do-or-die.

    This, let it be said, has been the bane of Nigeria’s development in negation of the evidence of phenomenal growth.

    Meanwhile, symptoms of the old gangrene, which metastasizes by the day, are quite visible to all. State governors have to daily fund a Federal police they don’t control. Someone sits in Abuja and aspires to build homes for residents in faraway communities they don’t know. Niger Delta generates wealth that does not reflect its material condition. Lagos generates roughly 60 percent of VAT, gets back only a fraction of the amount, but have to endure the environmental pain arising from the economic activities that make that possible…

    Paradoxically, the average Nigerian politician usually shares this perspective until they gain power. Suddenly, the erstwhile clear-headed, fire-spitting visionary turns into an agent of reaction, feverishly seeking to preserve the sitting arrangement at the national buffet and the crooked sharing formula.

    It explains why PDP hierarchs had pooh-poohed the idea of restructuring while in power but today are quite vociferous in its advocacy. The same reason the APC barons who canvassed the idea most vigorously yesterday now seem to either feign memory loss or are busy scratching their heads in false ignorance, having secured power.

    Therefore, the perennial tragedy of the Nigerian situation is the assumption – usually promoted by whoever is in power and their friends – that tends to conflate the promise of “good leadership” with the imperative of restructuring. They are far from related. The former is the product of the exceptionality of man.

    Conversely, durable institutions don’t happen by accident; they are erected on solid foundation resulting from clear architectural vision. If any lesson is to be learnt from history, it is that institutions are far more durable than mortals. So, whereas the exertions of the “good leader” may secure today, only institutions guarantee social security expected to endure much longer.

    No country readily illustrates this today better than the United States. If the world’s super power has not yet collapsed under Donald Trump’s foul eccentricities and abominable imprecations, it is because America’s socio-political institutions are durable and kicking. The system ensures that even when the avuncular Republican bully would rather have fellow citizens who don’t see the world through his narrow prism be either punched in the face or thrown overboard and those wishing to enter “God’s own country” henceforth be screened based more on the faith professed or colour of their skin rather than the content of their character, there remains a good number of conscientious judges across America committed to interpreting the law in a manner that defends and promotes social liberty.

    For Nigeria, the enduring challenge of statesmanship, as powerfully put by Bashorun Arogbofa in his book, is not to settle for what is convenient for the day but muster the political courage to institute a new reward regime that instead frees the Nigerian from a fixation on only what they stand to gain rather than what they can contribute in a new shared commitment to true nation-building.

     

    Re: Changing sitting order in stuck Titanic?

    Your article with the title, Buhari’s Speech: Changing sitting order in stuck Titanic?, of August 23 refers. I must you commend for the objectivity of your writings. But I challenge objective columnists like you to also find courage to speak up on the big moral question of Rivers State today. A curious Appeal Court judgement was entered last week over River East senatorial seat in favour of All Progressives Congress (APC) at the expense of Peoples Democratic Party. Suddenly, all is quiet on the media front despite many glaring inconsistencies.

    To arrive at this strange judgement, the court relied on “results” supplied by police, and not INEC. When did police become electoral agency? Why is the media quiet?

    So incompetent, they easily let the cat out of the bag with their poor oversight. The serial number of the result sheet brought by the police was exactly the same as that of INEC which the court ignored. Same serial number, different entries! Who is fooling whom?

    I observe that whenever PDP won cases in the past, APC was always quick to say judges took bribes. Recall the midnight raids on judges’ residence by security agents in search of “dollars” believed to have changed hands.

    But how come no one is saying anything this time when one of the presiding judges in the latest judgement happens to be a spouse to one of the APC leaders. Now, the chorus seems to be “fantastic judgement”.

    Really? The objective facts do not support that. Historically, Rivers State, like others in South-South except Edo, has always belonged to PDP. So, “court-allocated” victories can’t change that. It explains why Onyesom Wike won the governorship landslide in 2015. It is debatable if the ruling party at the centre has really done anything tangible in the last two years to win the people over. I dare say that, given many things APC has not done well since, PDP will win Rivers again if elections are held today. My only puzzle is why the court that ought to be the last hope of the underdog should become collaborator of political desperadoes bent on subverting the will of Rivers people.

    Please, truthful columnists like you should not keep quiet on this matter. This impunity has to stop.

     

    • Belema Henneiken,

    Yenagoa, Bayelsa State. 

  • Our Girls; ‘Restructuring Minds’?

    Our girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Work for their release.

    Obasanjo may have the right idea of ‘restructuring’ –‘We Must Restructure The Mind’ because ‘Minds’ lead to ‘Thoughts’, Ideas’, ‘Attitude Change’ and ‘Actions’ to Restructure Nigeria. However he did not say whose ‘Minds-to-Actions Need Restructuring’.

    There is ‘Internal Restructuring’ within the borders of Nigeria and ‘External Restructuring’ altering the borders of Nigeria. ‘Internal Restructuring’ involves tinkering with the strangely sacrosanct federal exclusive list, which we did not participate in making, and at every political and administrative level and in every Ministry, Agency and Department (MDA) empowering the states within which resources like land, water, railways and roads lie.

    Is ‘Internal Restructuring’ therefore not a simple request of a people feeling the effects of ‘federal cheating’ and should those perceived as cheating others not rise to the occasion and admit their guilt and offer equity as well as unity in order to preserve that ‘unity’?  Instead, using cries of ‘The Unity of Nigeria is not negotiable’, the ‘Anti-Restructurists’ in an effort to preserve for themselves the many advantages of ‘False Federalism’ and ‘Federal Cheating’ use proxies and the few calls for ‘External Restructuring’ as the threat of anarchy, doom and terrorism and make it into a stick to beat down every attempt to discuss even simple ‘Internal Restructuring’.

    Most Nigerians are in the silent majority but love their Nigeria even more than the politicians with noisy media access and have stashes of government cash and Nigerian budget houses worldwide. Most Nigerians are totally against ‘External Restructuring’ and also totally against ‘Federal Cheating’ which with corruption has crippled development. ‘External Restructuring’ it is only mentioned as a distant possibility if serious attempts are not made on ‘Internal Restructuring’ and if no ‘Internal Restructuring’ is achieved. ‘Internal Restructurists’ are not terrorists, but pragmatic realists who have unnecessarily suffered and seen their country suffer underdevelopment under the existing ‘Federal Cheating’ structure. Nigerians must have a right to ask questions and get answers to the knotty questions stunting our growth. If ‘Anti-Restructurists’ say the current structure is not ‘Federal Cheating’ then they must come to the table, referendum, conference or constitutional, and explain to the country the mathematics and morality behind the 50 or so apparently sectional discriminatory decisions that were made in the past and why those decisions should remain unchanged if there is a refusal to change them to a more ‘Equitable True Federalism’.

    Let us interrogate the Obasanjo suggestion about the ‘Restructuring of the Mind’…. Is it the ‘mind of the market masses’, belt tightening mama market, Nigeria’s youth- sweating, selling or riding a politically introduced murderous okada, an unheard of business in developing countries killing and maiming more than Boko Haram? Is it the ‘Mind of the Masses’ of ‘Unpaid Civil/Private Sector Employees’ working ‘tirelessly’ for kobo-kobo wages, without salaries for months, watching irresponsible politicians swallowing ‘government N200+ multibillions’ and more nationwide?

    Is it the ‘Mind of The Masses’ of ‘Pension-less Pensioners’ in repeated Re-Verification queues after ‘Gallant Service’ and even ‘Dying-In-Queue’ as the N6.1billion jeeps of NASS and governors, ‘siren blaring‘, drive recklessly by, wrecking the traffic, on their way to buy the next election with stolen budget money while ‘illegally legally’ paying themselves 1,2,3 and even 4 pensions?

    Is it the ‘Mind of the Masses’ of ‘Dedicated Professionals of All Description’ working to keep a broken Nigerian wheel of progress in motion across a broken Nigeria? Rats in Buhari’s office are simply the sign of ‘Nigeria’s Incompetence In ‘Simple Maintenance’, i.e., cleaning and servicing failures? Rats grow in quiet undisturbed surroundings. Period!! Who locked the Presidential door? I have seen rats in every hospital I have worked in.

    The above snapshots of the ‘Mind of the Masses’ ask ‘Why are we a development cripple with all God has given us. The ‘Mind of the Masses’ know it did not steal or mismanage God’s gifts of soil, sun, oil, and ask ‘So why are we so crippled developmentally now?’, ‘Are we happy to be here?’ ‘What governance mechanism, which politicians are responsible for our failure to develop speedily? The masses reject the traditional ‘Followership is too docile’ blame. Nigerian leaders take ‘Serious Oaths’ and break every word! They wield enormous powers to build, cripple, destroy or stagnate any project, projections, plans or policies of their institution, business, LGA, State or Nation! As Obasanjo infamously said very correctly ‘I have adviserrs but I do not have to take their advice, abi!!!’ Yet Nigeria expends a stupendous budget on armies of Senior Special, Special and Other Advisers triplicated at state and even LGAs!!! Even with bad eggs among the ‘Masses’, the majority are good and cannot be in need of Obasanjo-style ‘Restructuring of the Mind’. Nigerian suffering has already ‘Restructured the Masses’.

    So we must look beyond the ‘Masses’ to answer ‘Whose Mind Needs Restructuring’? The leadership must accept therefore that it is 99% of today’s problem with Nigeria and it must ‘Restructure Its Mind’- at Obasanjo’s’ Command!!! The current governance structure, as mal-practiced by politicians has plunged us into under-development, an unhappy situation. The masses react periodically and predictably. Every time they are answered with ‘Non-negotiable ‘Unity’! But unity was not in doubt except in one or two extreme cases! Can two non-friends, standing side by side be in ‘Unity’?

    NB: Nigerians, discover a new generation of untainted ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’

    Knowledgeable candidates for 2019.

  • Nwabueze, Anyaoku, Adebanjo, others set for consensus on restructuring

    •Elder statesmen plan to engage with Fed Govt 

    Eminent leaders of thought have concluded plans to mobilise national consensus on agitations for restructuring to forestall degeneration of ethnic acrimony, it was learnt at the weekend.

    This came to light after Thursday’s media interaction organised by a group of elder statesmen led by Prof. Ben Nwabueze, SAN in Lagos.

    Already, it was gathered that a high-powered team from southern Nigeria led by Prof. Nwabueze, including former Secretary-General of Commonwealth Chief Emeka Anyaoku, Gen. Alani Akinriade, Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu, Chief Ayo Adebanjo and Gen. Ike Nwachukwu, has already initiated “a major tactical national consultation”.

    Others in the team are: Mr. Donald Duke, Prof. Pat Utomi, Prof. Kimse Okoko, Solomon Asemota, SAN, Obong Victor Attah, Admiral Ebitu Ukiwe, Prof. Akin Oyebode, Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu, Chief Tola Adeniyi and Prof. Sola Ehindero.

    The group’s Head of Secretariat, Olawale Okunniyi, spoke at the weekend while clarifying issues after the inaugural public intervention of the emergent pan Nigerian Movement on Thursday.

    The move, Nwabueze said, was designed to forge a negotiated consensus among critical stakeholders on how best to restructure the country.

    Okunniyi, who also heads the Nigeria Political Summit Group (NPSG, said regional youth groups and ethnic militias are included in the consultation.

    He said: “This stakeholders driven initiative, under the auspices of Project Nigeria Movement is projected to surpass what PRONACO achieved under Chief Anthony Enahoro and Prof. Wole Soyinka between 2005 and 2007; when PRONACO convened a major peoples’ national conference of ethnic nationalities and social groups in Nigeria, leading to the unanimous adoption of a draft peoples constitution for Nigeria on August 26, 2006…

    “It could, therefore, be reassuring to recall how both progressive leaders rode in the same vehicle into the open hands of Chief Anthony Enahoro and other leaders at the PRONACO Secretariat on June 12, 2006.”

    He said the list of the “Northern/Middle Belt team for the national consultation on restructuring is still being composed by the leaders of the North”.

    Okunniyi said the labour movement and other social groups in the country have also been penciled for strategic consultation and mobilisation before a major interface with the Federal Government on the modalities for the restructuring.

  • Restructuring is not the same thing as secession; it is the continuation of bourgeois-consumption sharing of the ‘national cake’ and the kind of ‘unity’ it has hitherto normalized

    Restructuring is not the same thing as secession; it is the continuation of bourgeois-consumption sharing of the ‘national cake’ and the kind of ‘unity’ it has hitherto normalized

    [Being an open letter to Garba Shehu and Issa Aremu]

    Dear Mr. Garba Shehu and Comrade Issa Aremu: Greetings!

    Lest I be accused of unjustifiably lumping you together when nothing of obvious political and ideological significance connects you, Mr. Shehu, as Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, to you, Comrade Issa Aremu, the General Secretary of the National Union of Textile and Garment Workers of Nigeria (NUTGWN), let me quickly state why I have thought it necessary to address this open letter to both of you when I could easily and more properly have addressed it to either of you. There are two reasons for this. First, both of you, in my opinion, offered the most articulate and passionate endorsement of President Buhari’s speech of Monday, August 21, 2017. Secondly and more importantly surely, it is remarkable isn’t it, that a major labour leader sees eye to eye with the President’s media publicist, so much so that the views expressed by the two of you about the speech are almost completely identical?

    Of course, a cynical Nigerian would see this congruence between both of you on the subject in question as an expression of the probability that you, Comrade Issa, is an appendage of the Presidency’s long media reach. But personally, I know you well, Comrade. I know that you would never parlay your solid reputation within the labour movement and the Nigerian Left for an actual or symbolic mess of potage from the overflowing kitchen, speaking metaphorically, of the Presidency. In other words, the thought that the unrestrained endorsement that you, Comrade, gave to the President’s “unity-is-not-negotiable” speech might represent the thinking of a segment of the trade union leadership – this is the main reason why I chose to address this letter as much to you as to Mr. Shehu, if not indeed more.

    Going straightaway to the subject of this open letter, permit me to say that the most important thing that I wish to discuss herein is, for me, the astonishing fact that both of you, Mr. Shehu and Comrade Issa, are indifferent to the fact that your endorsement of the President’s unity-is-not-negotiable speech reflects and takes sides with the “Northern” position on restructuring as distinct from the “Southern” position on the matter. Can you have been so indifferent to such a perception or is it merely the case that you do not care one way or another whether both “Northerners” and “Southerners” would automatically see you as taking sides with the “North”? For make no mistake about it: it is a “Northern” position on the issue of restructuring to lump it together with secession, just as it is also a very “Northern” position to almost reflexively see a fundamental opposition between restructuring and the unity of the country when, in fact and in logic, there is no necessarily oppositional or contradictory relationship between them.

    On that note, I move to perhaps the central proposition that I wish to make and explore in this open letter to you. What is this proposition? It is simply this: far from being antithetical to national unity, in the realms of both policy and action, restructuring has been the single most important and effective guarantor of our country’s unity and corporate existence in the post-civil war period. Both of you are probably too young to have had the benefit of lived experience to substantiate this claim, but surely you do know from common knowledge of political developments in our country since the end of the Nigeria-Biafra war in 1970, that it was on the basis of serial and sustained restructuring that the three big regions of the North, the East and the West became the thirty-six states that we have today? This is so basic, so indisputable that one cannot but wonder why both of you, reflecting and taking sides with the current “Northern” position on the subject, now see restructuring as a threat, a destructive specter haunting our country’s unity and corporate existence.

    Because so much depends on it, permit me, Mr. Shehu and Comrade Issa, to repeat, in the form of a question, the essential point that I am making here: Why has restructuring become so unpalatable to the “North”, to the extent that every and any mention of the term evokes terrifying visions of disunity and even disintegration? And conversely, why is the “South” now so hellbent on restructuring to the extent that for the majority “Southerners”, the word, the term now connotes the ultimate panacea for virtually all of our country’s crippling problems and crises? Indeed, on this crucial observation, let us not mince words at all: for the “South”, restructuring is so desirable, so totalizing in its appeal that many “Southerners” do not care in the least that the “North” and its leaders see and hear secession, hate speech and/or national disintegration anytime that the term is mentioned. Why is this happening? How did it come about that the country became so divided, so seemingly irreconcilable over a term that hitherto had been seen as a pillar of the country’s unity?

    Mr. Shehu and Comrade Issa, I have two answers to this question that I am quite happy to share with you and the readers of this column. One answer is fairly simple and uncomplicated; the other is a bit more complex. As a matter of fact, the first answer is so simple and uncomplicated that it is nothing short of an embarrassment for me to have to point it out. For what it is worth, here it is: we seem, one way or another, to have forgotten that unity comes in many forms and takes many shapes; moreover, unity is slippery both as a term and as lived experience, so much so that it constantly and forever has to be redefined and reinvented. I suggest that it is due to the loss, the forgetting of this constitutive variability of unity as a term and as lived experience that the current, respective “Northern” and “Southern” understanding of the term can be so dissimilar, the “North” seeing unity as threatened by restructuring, the “South” seeing restructuring as the ultimate guarantor of unity. Based on this fact, I confess that I for one am unable to decide which is more outlandish, more fanciful, more confounding, the view of the “North” that unity is settled for all time and is therefore not negotiable and the view of the “South” that restructuring is the panacea for all our problems, especially our continuing crises of growth and development.

    With regard to the second, more complicated answer to the question of why the “North” and the “South” are so irreconcilably divided on unity and restructuring, I suggest that what we are witnessing is the fact that with the coming to power of Muhammadu Buhari as President and the APC as the new ruling political party at the center, all the lies, all the deceits and all the delusions of our political elites in all the ruling class political parties proffering themselves as the champions and standard bearers of our country’s unity and corporate existence have been exposed in a way that had hitherto had been impossible. There is both a personal and a systemic dimension to this historic unravelling of the promises of bourgeois-consumption unity and restructuring in our country that surfaced in the wake of the electoral victories of Buhari and the APC. It is helpful to deal first with the personal dimension.

    On the personal level, without descending into insult and calumny, I cannot but say with all the emphasis that I can muster that Buhari has turned out to be one of the most parochial, sectionalist and nepotistic rulers we have ever had in this country. This is a man who enjoyed – and probably still enjoys – respect and even sedulous followership all over the country, well beyond his own regional and local neck of the woods. But now, it is an understatement to say that his blatant and even arrogant sectionalism has caused a deep crisis of credibility since even his own wife and some of his closest, longtime supporters and allies have either publicly and openly criticized him on this issue or broken with him precisely because of the regional, ethnic and cultural narrowness of those with whom he has surrounded himself. Mr. Shehu and Comrade Issa, do you think Nigerians are not aware, keenly and militantly aware, of these contradictory aspects of Buhari’s otherwise messianic presidency? Unity is not only or merely a word, a constitutional provision; it is also an embodied and lived experience. Nothing shows the hollowness of the President’s invocation of the inviolability of Nigerian unity than the great, yawning chasm between what he says and what he communicates through his actions and deeds.

    The systemic dimension of the crisis of bourgeois-led restructuring and unity in our country is nowhere more evident than in the fact that when we put the words, “North” and “South” and/or “Northern” and “Southern” in brackets, this does not in any way hide the fact we are talking of politicians within the same ruling party, the APC, as well as politicians of all the ruling class political parties. Naturally, this ought to make us pause to ask why politicians of the same ruling party and the same larger ruling class can be so bitterly divided on restructuring and unity. Indeed, we must go further and ask: are they really that divided or is it rather the case that, as they have done so many times in the past, they will sooner or later come to some agreement, some accommodation of their bitterest differences on the basis of the sacrifice of the interests of the poor and the excluded of all the regions, states and ethno-nationalities of the country? Or is it the case that we are now at a completely unprecedented historical and political juncture in which restructuring might at last usher in a “unity” that will lay its foundations on the primacy of the interests of the workers and the poor of all the regions, geopolitical zones and ethnicities of the country?

    This question is not as abstract as it seems. As I did in last week’s column, I bring this discussion to a close on the question of – production. In popular parlance, the kind of restructuring and unity – or unity through restructuring – that we have so far seen has overwhelmingly been based on sharing of the national cake – loot; public office; institutional perquisites. This is what in the title of this piece I have termed the bourgeois-consumption model of unity through restructuring: more of the share of our oil revenues; more states with their gleaming capitals surrounded by undeveloped wastelands of rural hamlets; more airports while roads and highways throughout the country go back to the state of nature; more federal and state universities while education and, especially, higher learning, go the dogs; more local governments without any significant or even visible positive impact on the lives of the great majority of our peoples.

    The “North” and the Niger Delta, these are the two poorest geopolitical zones of the country. Is it any surprise that each one respectively stands resolutely for and against restructuring, without their differing stands making any dent whatsoever in the surfeit of hardship and suffering imposed on the masses of the ordinary citizens of each region? Mr. Shehu and Comrade Issa, perhaps the presidency of Buhari and the governance of the APC will bring this absurd, terrible contradiction to an end for these two particular zones and for the rest of the country?

    We await your answer to this question. More importantly, we await the response and the action of your principal, the president himself.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • ‘Restructuring is not the answer to our problems’

    ‘Restructuring is not the answer to our problems’

    Former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Chief Olisa Agbakoba, last week in his law chambers, Ikoyi, Lagos, cuts the picture of a frustrated patriot. In this interview with Sunday Oguntola, he talks on why restructuring will not work, how the political elite have imprisoned Nigeria and why the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) will keep losing corruption charges among other issues. Excerpts: 

    EVERYONE seems to be in love with the latest fad in town -restructuring. But how come you believe that Nigeria’s challenges are beyond restructuring?

    I think we would start with the fact that Nigeria is challenged-economically and politically. There is no doubt about that. I remember the late Chief Bola Ige said there are two questions we must ask if Nigeria must move forward: do we want to remain together? If yes, how?

    Those questions have not been answered till date. As you know, Nigeria is a product of the amalgamation of the colonials in 1914. By 1960, the colonials also instigated a political contraption with the constitution. Then the military took over and did their own up till the Abdulsalami’s constitution in 1998 through Decree 24.

    So, Nigerians have never really participated in the process of determining how the country should be run. That is why we are in this difficulty. That is the cause of the Biafra war in 1967 and everything wrong with this nation.

    Unfortunately, I don’t understand why all our leaders and Presidents, including Babangida, Abacha and others who had constitutional conferences, failed to realise they can’t govern in peace unless they carry the people along.  I remember the challenge the late MKO Abiola threw to Abacha in those days. He said ‘if you know you are more popular than me, let’s walk down Broad Street.’ People look up to their leaders because their leaders, in turn, look after them. That is the basic thing. As head of my family, if I don’t provide for my children, they won’t look up to me.

    That is the basic of the restructuring debate. You see any political arrangement requires consensus to succeed. So, we must accept the North doesn’t want the word ‘restructuring’. It is a popular concept in the South but the North doesn’t like it. They don’t like it for many reasons.  Generally, the North likes big government so if restructuring means reducing governance, they immediately get concerned. I don’t also like the word restructuring…

    …Why?

    That is because you need the consensus of the North. You can’t do it by yourself. The South cannot by itself restructure Nigeria. In fact, the North has more representatives in the National Assembly. They will naturally kill it. That was why they killed the Devolution of Power Bill.

    So, any sensible and pragmatic person will look to see what is the middle ground. The middle ground would be how to make the states more engaged in the process of development. Restructuring would be the ultimate, ideal goal but the first way to go that all the State Governors will agree is to give them more monies and powers.

    For example, what is the federal government doing issuing driver’s licenses? Give it to the local governments. What is the federal government doing issuing birth and death certificates? Why can’t the local government areas do that? What’s the federal government doing registering marriages? There are too many trivial things the federal government is getting involved in.

    Unfortunately, the restructuring argument has become so politicised that we forget there are many basic, technical things that can be focused on that will not threaten anybody. There are things like health, agriculture and education that will not frighten anybody.

    When we now get the confidence of the North and they realise that’s the way to go, we can move to more technical issues. You know the federal government controls 98 items of power. Under the devolution process, they will give up maybe 30 items to the States and in turn reduce its allocation from 58 percent to maybe 30 percent, making the States have more money and better engaged.

    That will make States not to run to Abuja every month to get money. When you move like that, no governor will oppose it. That is what I would recommend. Restructuring will cause mayhem.

    Really? You believe so?

    …I know so. Listen I was in the National Constitutional Conference organized by former President Goodluck Jonathan. The Northern perspective of restructuring is break-up of the nation. That’s what the President (Buhari) thinks and sees it, too. IPOB is threatening to break away and you say restructuring. The Northerners will interpret it to mean you support calls for disintegration of the nation. If you realise there is no way in your approach, you go another way. Devolution of Powers means you devolve powers to the existing organs while restructuring means you have to create new organs, then devolve powers to them. So, why don’t we start with devolving until everybody becomes comfortable with restructuring?

    But there are people who believe more monies to States means the Governors, who are more or less operating as Emperors already, will become so powerful they can even contend with the federal government…

    … What’s wrong with that? The fact is that scenario will reduce the concentration of power in Abuja. The truth is people are prepared to kill to be President. It is that obvious. Even a layman will attempt to be President if he can get there. But if you have 36 mini-presidents, then people can clamour less for the centre. I, for example, can say if I cannot be President, I can be Governor with the means to transform my state. Look at Lagos State, for instance, what is the federal government doing owning Ikoyi?  Why is the federal government owning Apapa? Look at the mess in Apapa, our main port. Why is the federal government owning the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos or the one in Owerri? That’s not their job. There are enough more to do. So, the trick is for us to move forward, the President must lead a crusade to determine what government does what. That, for me, is what to work on. If we get that sorted, then we can move on to other processes where Nigeria can become balanced.

    Issues of fiscal federalism cannot happen today. The North will oppose it and fight it to the last because you are telling them they will lose oil. Even States in the South will fight it. It was very clear in the last National Conference that fiscal federalism will not work at all. But if we have constructed this scenario that I talk about and States begin to raise revenues from different sources to the point that oil is no more dominant, nobody will bother about oil again. I just came from Italy. Nobody is talking about oil even though they have it.

    Italy, India, Britain, Singapore are not talking about oil. They rely on agriculture. So, when we have put this process in place and created new revenue sources with oil reduced to the background, you can talk about fiscal federalism then and the guys will understand it.

    If agriculture brings in 40 percent of GDP, the North will not bother about oil money again because they are the most arable part of the nation. They can produce cotton, groundnuts, yams, apples and all sorts of agricultural produce with sound agricultural policies in place. They will tell you to go away with your oil money.

    For me, as a political tactician, I have to meander my way around the complexity that we have. Otherwise, if you come back to me in the next 40 years for this interview, we would be discussing the same issues. If we want to make progress, we must adopt the principles of compromise and consensus. The North has to sign for Nigeria to be restructured. So, we have to look at what to give up for them to come on board.

    We give up restructuring and take up devolution of power until they understand what we are talking about. The question on whether governors will abuse their powers, for me, is not the issue. I feel theoretically, if resources are closer to the people, the process of monitoring the governors will be narrower.

    I don’t think any governor with more powers will steal what those at the federal level are stealing. I am from Anambra State. I would rather my governor steals and I see the benefits than the federal guys steal without seeing anything.

    People romanticise restructuring as if it is an almighty formula that once applied will fix Nigeria head-on. But you believe it has been politicised. How do you mean?

    What I mean is nobody tells us how we would restructure. They are making it look like once you restructure, you have fixed Nigeria automatically. But it is not true. It is the conspiracy of the political elites. They will still gather in their political enclaves and do the same things we have now. They would just be like, ‘you asked for restructuring and we have done it.’ Restructuring is not the answer to our problems. The answer is to find new ways of governing Nigeria with the consent of the people. Nigerians must be part of the process of creating a new Nigeria. The politicians lead the way by finding a neutral language that the South and North agree it. Then, we can move on to build institutions and economic governance. Otherwise the devolution itself will not work.

    Federal lawmakers always argue there is no need for consensus outside of them because they are the duly elected representatives of the people. How then can such people’s consensus you spoke about come to be?

     The National Assembly has the power to alter and amend the Constitution but they do not have the powers to make a new Constitution. There are two different things. They need our authority to change it.

    Look at Brexit. Britons wanted out from the European Union (EU) and they voted for it. That gave Prime Minister Theresa May the authority to push forward and force the Labour Party to follow it through. But if the Prime Minister had gone to the EU and announced Britain was opting out, there would have been turmoil in the UK.

    Unfortunately, you and I fail to understand that there is something called the Office of the Citizens of the Federal Republic. Nigeria is like a multinational company. You have some shares while I have too. Everybody has shares but the problem is that our shares have been stolen by the political elites with our knowledge. If I call a street protest now, nobody will show up. I have never seen a situation like this that Nigerians are completely nonchalant. That has played to the advantage of the political elite. They love it. There is no country in the world that this kind of situation exists and nothing is happening. The political elite can get away with anything. The National Assembly can say anything and nobody will care.

    The President can go away for medical vacation for almost four months and return to his office and it has been taken over by rats and rodents. Does that mean nobody was entering the office? They have reduced us to mere onlookers. There is no place in Nigeria where any political activity takes place except in Abuja. They can sit back in Abuja and throw crumbs occasionally to a few dissidents. States can no longer pay salaries. Everything has collapsed. Nigeria is technically insolvent. Yet, we are doing nothing about it. That’s the challenge.

    Unfortunately, all of the critical elements and institutions of the nation have been crushed. The civil society is gone. The religious community has collapsed. The trade unions, student unions and professional unions have been decimated. There is hunger in the land because hungry people are only interested in feeding, not political arrangements.

    So, we must be very careful in changing the music that is playing to the advantage of political elites. We have to be strategic. If I have a say, I will say don’t frighten the north but take them along on their own terms so that will form the basis of a new Nigeria. Once that is done, the National Assembly will be choked.

    Why is it that there seems to be nobody that can mobilise Nigerians for nationwide protests to get government to act like people like you did in the days of the military?

    In the military days, we had a clear enemy. The lines were clear. It was us versus the soldiers. That is not the case now. There are no more lines. If you do anything, they will say he is an Igbo man. You see the political elite know what they are doing. They have penetrated everywhere.  There is no institution they have not penetrated. They have broken them up. They create pseudo civil society groups and fund them to counter the real ones. I tried to call for a national rally but nobody was interested.

    It was a no-go area except money would be bought. In the old days, you didn’t need money. You just call people and they would show up. That is gone. In the religious movements, there are several leaders who mobilise five million to meetings. Why are they not telling their followers to speak up? Why are they not challenging the status quo? They have been accommodated and would not speak up. The private sector too will not speak up because they are making a hell of money with the ways things are. So, we need to have very ingenious ways to get out of the morass that we find ourselves.

    As a politician and tactician, first of all, I acknowledge the challenges of the Nigerian populace. We are at a disadvantage. But that does not mean we shouldn’t do anything about it. We need ethnic nationalities like Arewa, Afenifere and Ohaneze to speak up and insist on what Nigerians want. Parts of the reports of the last conference can be taken up with the President by the ethnic nationalities.

    The Buhari’s administration has dismissed the National Conference as a ‘come-and-chop’ talk shop. Is it true former President Goodluck Jonathan doled out money to the delegates?

    Yes, he paid but I didn’t take because my daughter called me and asked if I would take the money. So, I was paying my way. Only Tunde Bakare and I didn’t take the money.

    We knew about that of Bakare, how come you didn’t talk about this then?

    I did talk about it. The papers even reported it. I refused the N12million we were offered. I didn’t take it but I wanted to go and contribute to a new Nigeria. So that excited my daughter when I told her I would attend without being paid. She was rest assured I wouldn’t take blood money. Honestly, I thought that Jonathan was sincere. But on hindsight, I realised he just used the Conference to divert attention and win support of the South West, particularly. What made the Conference popular was the fact that civil societies had talked about it for over 30 years and politically astute groups like Afenifere picked it up.

    Jonathan thought Afenifere’s participation was the game-changer. They were the main drivers of the Conference. So, he wanted to use the group to win the South West and nothing more because when the reports reached his table, he did nothing about it. He could have put it into effect and we would have been saved the troubles. That again is the problem. It is when they come out of power that they start talking. When Babangida, Jonathan and others were there, what did they do? That’s the problem.

    So, we have that possibility of dealing with our problems if we can find common grounds with these ethnic nationalities. To be honest with you, Nigeria is a geographical expression of sub-nationalities. It is, in my view, those nationalities that can engage government in meaningful discussions on the way forward. It is not civil societies because only the nationalities can rally their own people.

    CLO cannot rally anybody because the CLO of those days is different from the CLO of today. It is different because the issues are different. Then, every Nigerian agreed we needed democracy and CLO rose on that consensus. Now, not everybody agrees we need political restructuring or a different political path. The only way is to find the relevant constituencies that can lead this.

  • Oshiomhole, restructuring and restless agitators

    Oshiomhole, restructuring and restless agitators

    FORMER Edo State governor Adams Oshiomhole deployed his immense elocutionary and rhetorical skills some three weeks ago in Benin to persuade his audience to take a second, if antagonistic, look at the cry for restructuring. He avoided the definitional maze in which many Nigerians, pro- and anti-restructuring, are entangled. In the lecture held in honour of Prof. Wole Soyinka in Benin, he simply went ahead with deconstructionist proficiency to isolate certain parts of the restructuring argument, hoisted them loftily, and offered them as proof of his fidelity to the new restructuring buzzword and perhaps too to his highly nuanced progressivism that now gets many people writhing in agony. The media were astounded, and so, too, were many Nigerians who had associated Mr. Oshiomhole’s labour union fame as an indisputable evidence of his acceptance of the general principles of progressivism. This astonishment was reflected in the way newspapers cast their headlines the day after, expressing both surprise and dismay.

    But Mr. Oshiomhole is obviously unapologetic about his position on restructuring. Explaining his position at the lecture, the former Edo governor insisted Nigeria’s problem was not structural but that of leadership, attitude and character. Nigerians should strive to make their country work, not advocate for restructuring, he argued amorphously. Three weeks after that lecture, and having of course been pilloried in the media by those who disagreed with him over his unusual perspective on restructuring, he met with a far more vocal and disapproving public which had wised up to what they suspected was his reactionary and expedient position on restructuring. At a one-day colloquium on restructuring organised by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in Abuja last Wednesday, Mr. Oshiomhole drew the ire of the audience when he again repeated his apparently unwelcome opposition to the regnant view on restructuring.

    Despite being heckled and greeted with boos, Mr. Oshiomhole insisted on being heard. Said he: “I believe in the unity of Nigeria. I have said, and I am not saying it for the first time, the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable. Just like the unity of the NLC is not negotiable. But, the governance of our country, the quality of leadership, we must continue to review it and continue to engage it…I ask us to recognise that no structure will be permanent, or will be perfect. We will have to do devolution of power; we must also do review of our attitudes, our characters, and join forces to fight corruption, because what has been taken from a few will not be available for the rest…” After the boos died down, particularly because of the NLC president’s intervention, the newsmen who covered the lecture did not indicate how the rest of Mr. Oshiomhole’s arguments panned out.

    The former Edo governor is a gifted rhetorician who knows how to tug at the emotional strings of an audience. Whether by polemical accident or sheer rhetorical design, he guilefully conflated the problem of corruption, which bothers everyone, with the campaigns for restructuring, which many have touted as the needed national elixir, thereby probably disarming and defanging his audience. He zeroed in on the alleged humongous greed of former Minster of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke, whose properties scattered in some parts of the country have been temporarily forfeited to the government pending the resolution of court cases against her. No one who has read the case against Mrs. Alison-Madueke can fail to be horrified by the stupendous abuse she allegedly masterminded during her stewardship at the Petroleum ministry. Knowing this full well, and knowing that no one could safely excuse her greed or dissociate that greed from the crisis that afflicts the country, Mr. Oshiomhole used her as an example of the character and attitudinal reform Nigeria needed to transcend the crisis in reference.

    Corruption is a cankerworm, but the campaign against that vice, which must of course be vigorously pursued, must be separated from the campaign for restructuring. As many societies which had broken up or been restructured prove, a low level of corruption is not necessarily a catalysing factor for political and structural changes. Neither the breakup of the former Soviet Union nor the dissolution of both Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were caused by corruption. Their political structures showed deep, endemic and corrosive fissures, and they strained badly under various weights including ethnic, economic and spatial, among other factors. Mr. Oshiomhole’s ad hominem argument was a not-so-clever ploy to prejudice the minds of his audience. Sadly, that same argument has begun to receive currency in other parts of the society, especially in government circles. The argument for restructuring, whether the people agree with it or not, must be disentangled from the skein woven around it by those who view it snidely.

    The former Edo governor made two other arguments that gave worrisome indications of just how specious his perspectives are. Whether he believes it or not is not clear, but Mr. Oshiomhole poll-parrots the trite and incomprehensible statement that Nigeria’s unity is settled and non-negotiable. The problem is not that the ex-governor has adopted that controversial position on unity and its non-negotiability; the problem is that given his antecedents, his vocal advocacy of the rights, welfare and liberties of the people, and promotion of other general and non-specific libertarian values, it seems antithetical that a man who espouses such great causes should in the same breath embrace very stultifying political and constitutional paradigms. It does in fact seem that at bottom, Mr. Oshiomhole is not quite the radical and progressive he is cracked up to be. He may be a nationalist, a fine and effective governor, and a leading and successful labour activist, it is however doubtful whether he has given the matter of restructuring and national unity much thought, not to say principled thought.

    Mr. Oshiomhole also, secondly, suggested that most of those campaigning for restructuring were those still smirking from the electoral defeat of 2015. In other words, for him, the issue is not the concept itself, but the advocates of the concept. Apart from offering no validation whatsoever for that sweeping generalisation, it is shocking that given his standing in the society and the fact that he and his party were once in opposition, he also demonstrates the penchant by ruling parties and their functionaries to deride the opposition.

    Not only does his party include in its manifesto a pledge to pursue restructuring, there is nothing to suggest that anyone, whether in the opposition or the ruling party, cannot hold a principled and philosophical stand against unitary government and in favour of full restructuring. Demonising the opposition is both wrong and unwise. After all, even the All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesman, Bolaji Abdullahi, in a statement he issued early this week, insists that much more than the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the APC is in favour of restructuring and is in fact taking deliberate steps to actualise it. According to him, “For the avoidance of doubt, the APC believes in the restructuring of the country. It is at the very heart of our party’s manifesto as explicitly stated in Section 3 (1) thus, ‘We will devolve more revenue and powers, such as policing to States and Local Government so that decision making is closer to the people. We pledge to bring the government closer to the people through fiscal and political decentralization, including local policing.’ “

    Mr. Oshiomhole’s arguments are on the surface sensible and attractive. In reality, however, they are weak, desultory, diversionary and, for a politician of his reputation, shocking and embarrassing. He is at liberty to oppose restructuring — a right he seeks to deny those who oppose it, and a group he tries to demonise — but he must not in the same breath try to pass himself off as a progressive and visionary.

    Restructuring talks about the future. But the political palliatives Mr. Oshiomhole tries to sell deal with stabilising the status quo and producing a new form of beguiling conservatism. His party is reportedly attempting to properly define or redefine the concept, and it has saddled party leaders knowingly and openly sceptical and contemptuous of its definitions with the task of harmonising those disparate definitions, no matter how liberally or conservatively they have been presented. The suspicion now is that the party itself has appeared to fall in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s nonchalant approach to the subject; and Mr. Oshiomhole, perhaps because he does not wish to exclude himself from future national office and assignment in the coming cabinet reshuffle, and also because he is reluctant to sell himself as a non-conformist radical and isolationist his labour union antecedents presuppose, is mouthing egregious opinions on restructuring to the point of even name-calling the opposition.

    Restructuring will be a veritable campaign issue from next year. It will be risky for any of the two major parties to treat the matter with disdain. In fact, though the concept is now roughly dichotomised between the North and the South, the dividing lines will become much more obfuscated as the 2019 electoral season draws near. Then, Mr. Oshiomhole will have a lot of clarifications to make, and much more hemming and hawing to engage in, as he and other leading politicians jostle for prominence and seek interparty and intraparty alliances.

  • Buhari to discuss restructuring, Paris Club refund with governors

    Buhari to discuss restructuring, Paris Club refund with governors

    President Muhammadu Buhari will tomorrow discuss the use of Paris Club refund by states amd the growing clamour for restructuring of the country with governors at a meeting at Aso Villa, it was learnt yesterday.

    Sources said the meeting was called at the President’s instance. He is also said to be overwhelmed by the support shown to him by governors since his arrival last Saturday.

    Other issues that is likely to be discussed at the meeting general insecurity and the release of the last tranche of the Paris Club refund believed to be N200billion.

    A source at the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) said: “I can confirm to you that the meeting will hold on Firday and the state chief executives have been notified.

    “It is important to note that the President had initially expressed his happiness on the role the governors played in keeping the country together while he was away.

    “The issues of restructuring, insecurity, hate speech and threats would top the agenda.“

  • PDP believes in restructuring- Adeyeye

    PDP believes in restructuring- Adeyeye

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is in support of restructuring of the country in a manner that will boost the growth, development and prosperity of Nigeria.

    Dayo Adeyeye, the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP National Caretaker Committee, made the clarification in a statement issued on Sunday in Abuja.

    Adeyeye said the clarification became necessary following a statement credited to the National Publicity Secretary of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Bolaji Ojo-Abdullahi.

    He said that he (Adeyeye) read with amusement the statement written by Ojo-Abdullahi that “PDP has never been and is not interested in restructuring,’’

    He expressed surprise in the sudden interest of the APC in restructuring “after several months of denial by elected and appointed officials that APC did not promise restructuring in its manifesto and during the 2015 campaigns.

    “As the word implies, restructuring is a process of re-arrangement, re-organization or re-formation of the manner or way in which something (in this case governance) is done.

    “As used in the Nigeria political lexicon, restructuring refers to the Modification of the System of governance to guarantee the socio-economic and political growth and development of the Nigerian people.

    “It is imperative to inform Nigerians that our party is not against restructuring of the system of governance in the country in a manner that places Nigeria firmly on the path of growth, development and prosperity,” Adeyeye said.

    The PDP spokesman explained that it was the commitment of his party to constantly seek solutions to the challenges confronting the nation that led it to amend its constitution.

    He added that the party’s constitution was amended to include equitable devolution (decentralization) of power for greater functionality, national integration, rapid economic and social reconstruction.

    “Examples of the amendment can be found in preamble 2(b) and (e), Section 7(b) and (f), and many more provisions of our party constitution.”

    Adeyeye said it was also against the backdrop of the commitment of the party to restructure the system of socio-political governance for better functionality and efficiency that made the party to organise the 2014 national conference.

    “The administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan summoned a National Conference to recommend amendments to the Nigerian Constitution.

    “This conference submitted a report with several proposed amendments to the constitution which the APC led Federal Government has refused to implement more than two years later.

    “In light of the above, we reiterate our support for the restructuring of the system of governance in the country to ensure more functional and efficient governance at all tiers of government.

    “We urge leaders of opinion and leaders of thought around the country to participate in the process in the best interest of our country and its people,” he said, (NAN)

  • Restructuring still

    •Sultan says no. But still goes ahead to articulate crucial part of it in his preferred alternative   

    The Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abukakar III, made national headlines on August 13, when he reportedly thumbed down political restructuring but held up, as an alternative model, economic devolution. Yet both, shun of the emotive and fear factors, would appear two sides of the same coin.

    “Rather than the clamour for the restructuring of the country,” the Sultan said, speaking at the Niger State Investment Summit in Minna, the state capital, “the Federal Government should be called upon to release dams across the country to state governments for massive participation of Nigerians in all-year farming seasons”.

    This suggestion is excellent — that bit about releasing dams to the states to facilitate all-year farming, and therefore fire agriculture, raw and processed, as the real dynamo of Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP). But that is exactly the problem of Nigeria pseudo-federalism as presently constituted.

    The fact that the Federal Government could build dams and sit on them, blocking states that can better utilise them, for national productivity and prosperity, is precisely what fires the restructuring question.

    That the Federal Government today, that has no land of its own (except in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory), and yet is deeply ingrained in huge infrastructure for agriculture, is double jeopardy.  There is so much money spent; but too little gains from the investments.

    That willful waste again pushes the argument for some re-drawing of the polity for better economic results. The Sultan calls it economic devolution. But looked at from the political prism, it could also well be called restructuring.

    In his preferred economic devolution, the Sultan pointed at the trove of mineral wealth, buried nationwide, under the Nigerian soil. Although he was not very explicit on mineral resources in his speech, his logic on releasing federal dams for state agriculture could also apply to releasing mineral sites for states to mine.

    That would be a great contrast to the present practice, where the Federal Government plays the dog in the manger; and sits on wealth it has no motivation to mine, because of easy oil money.

    Again, though the Sultan appeared suggesting autonomy to states to mine their own mineral wealth, under his economic devolution theory, it is not much different from the arguments of the restructuring lobby. That again reinforces the point the Sultan’s position and political restructuring may just be two sides of the same coin.

    But despite this similarity, the Sultan sounded as if the economic devolution he advocates is radically different, or indeed, diametrically opposed, to political restructuring. Nothing can be further from the truth.

    True, releasing federal facilities to states, via concessions, might be over-simplifying the crisis of underdevelopment that Nigeria’s present warped federalism has delivered, doing so could indeed deliver, with time, the developmental federalism most of Nigeria are clamouring for.

    But even with this gradualist hope there is a big danger: he who releases can retake. The Federal Government that concessions its facilities today could tomorrow, under more clement circumstances, decide to take back those facilities. Where would that leave the long-term developmental interests of the country, and long-suffering Nigerians?

    That is where not a few feel — and not illegitimately — that the Sultan just used his new theory to buy time for his native North West geopolitical zone: about the only zone still clinging to retaining the Nigerian political structure, as it is. Many even go on to insist that all the Sultan’s labour are directed at retaining such unearned privileges the ruling elite from that zone enjoy from the Nigerian commonwealth.

    That could well be; and human beings, as pain-avoiding animals, are loath to surrendering privileges without serious resistance. If the Sultan indeed epitomises such fears, the least other Nigerians could do is recognise the problem, work around it and try to reassure that lobby that restructuring the country is in the best interest of all.

    But beyond recognising and addressing that fear, there is absolutely no doubt that a restructured Nigeria, which would naturally ensure economic devolution as the Sultan suggests, is the best route to go, from the present debacle of pseudo-federalism. So, what is needed is a legislation to codify the model and give Nigerian federalism a new healthy jab in the arm.