We have survived because the ordinary Nigerian overwhelmingly desires to live together in one united country under some commonly acceptable arrangement
I have had this running dialogue with my very good friend, Antony A. Sani, Publicity Secretary of the Arewa Consultative Forum (A C F) who sees any talk of regional economic integration or any effort at canvassing true federalism as nothing but a façade for ethnic nationalism that I could not but shout hurray when in recent times equally significant voices from the North have come out loudly in support of both. In an article: The State Of The Nigerian Nation, by Alhaji Ahmed Joda, and, also, by former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar as recently as at the ceremony of the award of the Leadership Governor of the Year by the LEADERSHIP newspapers at Abuja this past week, a ringing support was lent the drive towards true federalism which remains about the only panacea to our lingering problems as a country.
Wrote Ahmed Joda: ‘Our country has passed through difficult times, including a civil war and has survived. We must not mistake the fact of our survival to anything such as military might. The truth is that we have survived because the ordinary Nigerian overwhelmingly desires to live together in one united country under some commonly acceptable arrangement. It is quite clear from all we are passing through and from all the political debates in which we have been engaged, that there is a sufficient body of opinion around the country that the present arrangements are not adequate and need to be discussed further.’ And in his opening remarks as Chairman of the 2012 Leadership Conference and Awards Ceremony at Abuja on Tuesday, September 18, 2012, former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, not only called for the overhauling of Nigeria’s political structure in order to pave way for true federalism, he publicly regretted not supporting former Vice-President Alex Ekwueme’s call for the creation of six semi-autonomous regions. Said he: “Now, I realize that I should have supported him because our current federal structure is clearly not working. Dr Ekwueme obviously saw what some of us, with our civil war mindset, could not see at the time. There is indeed too much concentration of power and resources at the centre. And it is stifling our march to true greatness as a nation and threatening our unity because of all the abuses, inefficiencies, corruption and reactive tensions that it has been generating.”
Without a doubt, the modus operandi towards achieving the desired goal has been as varied as there are calls for true federalism. While many have called for a Sovereign National Conference Alhaji Ahmed Joda apparently fears this model, believing it could be a recipe for disintegration. He was winsome enough, however, to concede that though such an outcome cannot be ruled out, the problems we face will not permit us to ignore the fact that we need to, and must, address these problems in order to safeguard our future either as one unit or under some other form of arrangement; concluding that it is much better to face the issues frontally, and to discuss them frankly in an open forum to come up with solutions that can ensure a peaceful existence for Nigeria. His preferred route is via a Constituent Assembly which he presents as follows:’ It appears that a likely more acceptable arrangement will be the establishment of a Constituent Assembly, with a full mandate to comprehensively review the Constitution. The Constituent Assembly should be composed of an entirely elected membership. No representation should be permitted for special interests. The election should be on zero political party bases. Serving Members of any legislative body should not be eligible. Public Servants, who wish to serve, must resign from their offices. And it should be brought into being by an Act of the National Assembly.’
With this well reasoned position, and more, in support of true federalism, it will be apposite for opponents of true federalism to go back and re-learn their history of Nigeria in order to understand how in the First Republic of 3 regions, regional autonomy galvanized overall national development through positive inter-regional competition.
This, incidentally, was a theme that featured prominently in the Keynote Address by the Ekiti State Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, at the recent National Convention of Egbe Omo Yoruba (National Association of Yoruba Descendants in North America, held in Baltimore, Maryland.
Happily, many of the things he recalled for the Western region, if not most, are replicated in the other regions of North and East. During that period, he said, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, as Premier, established the first TV and Radio Station in Sub-Saharan Africa, Cocoa House, Ibadan, he said, was built from revenues generated from cocoa and coffee just as the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, was established from same sources. Under the auspices of one of the best organized political parties in Africa, the Action Group, he continued, the government inaugurated the free primary education programme which, till today, has put the South-West in good stead politically, educationally and economically. It was in that era too, he reminisced, that such great institutions as the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, were established in the North and the East, respectively.
However, on the contrary, the military with its command structure mindset came in 1966 and imposed a suffocating unitary system that had remained the bane of the country even where sustained struggle had rid Nigeria of military autocracy.
His address then continued: ‘At independence in 1960, there was regional autonomy and each region had its own constitution. There were only about 26 items on the exclusive list of the Federal Government but today, there are 66 thereby nearly completely suffocating the states. Suddenly our unity in diversity was trampled upon by the military with far reaching consequences. For instance, he said, the totalitarian imposition and horrendous decimation of the Yoruba educational system, its economy and commerce let to many of the Yoruba intelligentsia leaving in doves to Europe and America; people who, today, cannot guarantee that their own children will ever return to Motherland, thus culturally, and otherwise, depleting the Yoruba’. If the above is true of the Yoruba, so also is it true of the 250 other ethnic groups in Nigeria.
But there remains a window of opportunity which is restructuring towards true federalism which will, once again, engender positive inter-regional competition and co-operation instead of our unedifying atavistic politics of who controls the unitarist federal government which, as Vice-President Atiku says, has proved thoroughly inefficient.
Not surprising though, the opposition is totally unrelenting. Indeed, so enervating has opposition to regional integration and true federalism got that I once responded to Tony Sani as follows: ‘These things, Tony, are about perspectives, and a pointer o each group’s preferred developmental paradigm for the nation. For the status quoists, what is on ground is simply the best. But for majority Yoruba, stronger regional groupings will make for a much stronger, more peaceful and equitable country. I then said: ‘consider, for instance, that both the North-East and the North-West had each synergized earlier via integration and economic cooperation, both would probably have chalked up developments that would have made Boko Haram a most unlikely phenomenon. I intend, one day soon, to consider doing an article on your strongly held opposition to regional integration which I see as a fall out of the North’s fear of the unknown. Whilst not only Europe or the Americas are synergizing, I am perpetually astonished at your angst against mere regional economic cooperation as a way of maximizing development and catalyzing national development and cohesion’.
Today, I feel certain that my friend will sooner than later bow to a development whose time has come and for which leading lights in the North are beginning to lend their support.
