The Nation Newspaper

Tag: SNC

  • NC and the return to the basics

    NC and the return to the basics

    You see that Benz sitting at the rich’s end?
    Ha! That motoka is a motoka
    It belongs to the Minister for Fairness
    Who yesterday was loaded with a doctorate
    At Makerere with whiskey and I don’t know what
    Plus I hear the literate thighs of an undergraduate — Theo Luzuka, “The Motoka”

    All of a sudden, the National Conference (NC) buzzes with a fervour of patriotism and Nigerianness, that you doubt if the whole exercise was not a wilful waste of time, energy and resources.

    If Nigeria were such a model country, and its citizens proud and sated patriots, why then the eternal agonising over its possible failure, that has forced a consistent clamour for a Sovereign National Conference (SNC), in response to which the Goodluck Jonathan National Conference (NC) has been called, with all its perceived booby traps?

    Of course, such cheap patriotic grandstanding, in the face of nation-threatening fundamental problems, is no different from vainglorious personal emptiness aptly demonstrated in the Ugandan Theo Luzuka’s poem, “The Motoka” (which opening lines are quoted to begin this piece); and in Nigerian Nkem Nwankwo’s novel, My Mercedes is Bigger than Yours.

    All too sudden, our NC conferees have become excellent citizens of an excellent country. Yet, resource-parched Nigerians, whose longsuffering youth gain death for fighting the pain of joblessness, are being forced to cough out N7 billion to purportedly fix their eternally sick country!

    It is indeed, a rhapsody of patriotism! Some happily declared themselves ethnic vacuums, and that, their formidable ammo to fix Nigeria.

    Others said, rather glumly, they wouldn’t clamber on board if they weren’t sure Nigeria was on the right track.

    Yet others solemnly swore “Nigerian unity” — that comic-tragic fixation that often begs the question, and may yet end in costly disillusionment — was beyond question. And all of these from “elder statesmen” who had earlier contributed more than a fair quota to the Nigerian fiasco!

    But before our esteemed delegates get too carried away by their own illusory poetry, it is high time someone jolted them back to the stark reality.

    Every Nigerian indeed dreams of a great Nigeria, a country that would compete with the best in the world, and deliver prosperity to its citizens. But right now, Nigeria is starkly opposite what it should be. That is why it needs urgent fixing.

    A good example of the Nigeria dissonance is the NC legal status. Right now, there is no legal plank on which the NC stands. But that is no accident. It is because, even as Lugard’s contraption shows signs of acute, if not terminal distress, there is no pan-Nigeria consensus on how to save it.

    That is no country deserving of glum patriotic gushing. It is a country in acute trauma; and the earlier the NC delegates see themselves as life-saving emergency medics, the better for everyone.

    Then, take the dysfunctional presidency. Even before President Jonathan, the presidency — democratic or military — has been a terrible breed. The “military presidency” of Ibrahim Babangida annulled Nigeria’s freest election; and nearly plunged the country into needless war and avoidable destruction. Under another Khaki presidency, Sani Abacha stole the country blind, so much so that his thick odour of infamy still oozes from his grave.

    Olusegun Obasanjo, even as elected president, suborned the Nigerian economic bluebloods to fund a personal project, thus grossly abusing his high office. The other day, President Jonathan himself declared, in the heat of the Sanusi Lamido Sanusi saga, that he had “absolute powers”! Absolute powers, in a democracy, with supposed institutional checks and balances?

    That, to be sure, was an un-presidential Freudian slip. But that is what the Nigerian Presidency has been all about: rakishly insensitive, bordering on the tyrannical — and parasitical to boot!

    That is no prime organ to crow about, in a model state, that by its performance should earn the love and affection of its citizens. Nigeria is no such model state. That is why it needs urgent fixing.

    But the Jonathan presidential temper is a grand irony, given that a cabal of the Umaru Yar’Adua presidency nearly made a Jonathan presidency a still-birth. At the height of that presidential criminality — in the name of a gentle but dying president, who did not know what was going on — brutal realpolitik trounced constitutional legality, which should, as routine, be supreme. Until the Senate came with its “doctrine of necessity”, the almighty state was at the mercy of the rogue few.

    A country that relies on realpolitik, rather than manifest justness and the routine triumph of its laws, is terribly ill. A people given to cutting ugly compromises, rather than an uncompromising national ethos of justice, equity and fair play, are endangered.

    Nigeria is such a country. Nigerians are such a people. Both need urgent fixing.

    But even as the Senate’s legal contraption dislodged the Yar’Adua power cabal, the Jonathan presidential emergence has implanted another future power bomb.

    Jonathan’s 2011 presidential candidacy issued from a toxic fountain of lies and damn lies, against the zoning formula of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which ironically fetched Jonathan the vice-presidency under Yar’Adua.

    Jonathan’s 2011 presidential win issued from a near-hysterical South-Middle Belt Vs North emotive electoral sentiments, even with Jonathan’s so-called pan-Nigeria mandate, loudly touted by his Neighbour-to-Neighbour campaign lobby.

    Now, all Jonathan craves is an encore, when he knows all he has done is earn himself a massive electoral shellacking, even if he wins PDP nomination.

    But even if he gets his desire, that future danger still looms. A wounded North would feel no obligation to follow any future political arrangement, strictly outside the Constitution. More noxious: there is this abiding centrist mindset among the northern political elite, which tends to long for central power as it is, despite the clamour for federalism and restructuring.

    Now, if the North does get power back as it is, and political zoning is out, what happens? The North can try power in perpetuity — which it can ill sustain — claiming it has the population to do it. But other parts of the country too will be up in arms against such, but they have lost any pro-zoning argument by their 2011 anti-zoning conspiracy.

    That would be a recipe for disaster.

    That is why NC delegates must suspend their showy patriotism and alter the present format for good. A future time bomb ticks. But only restructuring can defuse it.

    That would turn Nigeria into a productive federation, pare down the presidency, drain the centre of excess cash and change the revenue relationship from revenue allocation (by the centre to states) to revenue contribution (from regions/states to the centre).

    That is how Nigeria can emerge the country of our collective dream; and have a fair chance to scale its second century, after the fiasco of the first.

     

     

  • The national conference: things it will talk about and things it will not talk about (1)

    The national conference: things it will talk about and things it will not talk about (1)

    Over the last two decades, the calls had been for a Sovereign National Conference (SNC). What has finally emerged is the Jonathan National Conference (JNC). Praise be! Since the JNC is not and can never be the SNC, please don’t bring the expectations of one to the other, the expectations of the SNC to those of the JNC. To clarify what this means, I have outline below the things that the JNC will talk about and the things that it will not talk about.

    Money sharing (or “fiscal federalism” and the principles of resource control and derivation): JNC will talk a lot about how oil wealth should be shared between the three tiers of government – the federal government; the state governments; and the local councils. There will be a lot of quarrelling, a lot of squabbling concerning what proportion of oil revenues should go to each of these three tiers. The oil producing states will argue passionately for an increase above the current 13%; the so-called “core” North will vigorously oppose that demand and will insist that population should be the main criterion of the share that goes to each state and each geopolitical zone of the country; the Southwest and the Southeast will in principle support the criteria of derivation and resource control, but it will be a weak, dithering support. Altogether, there will a significant pressure by most states and geopolitical zones for reduction in the share kept by the center, by the federal government.

    Money sharing as an issue of great importance at JNC will be completely silent on the paltry and insignificant share of our oil wealth that goes to workers, farmers, the poor, the unemployed, old age pensioners and the millions of jobless youths. This is the fundamental cause of economic insecurity and backwardness in our country, but JNC will not talk about it. It will not talk about it for several reasons. First, the great majority of the handpicked delegates to JNC have never shown the slightest awareness of the fact that the poverty and economic insecurity of the overwhelming majority of Nigerians is a problem, a problem of crisis proportions. Secondly, JNC will not talk about it because the delegates are perfectly satisfied with how our oil wealth is currently being shared, that is primarily among the elites with a trickling down of a mere pittance to the masses through patronage. Thirdly and finally, the majority of the handpicked delegates to JNC are so fixated on ethnic nationality and geopolitical zones as the basis of money and power sharing in our country that where they should see concrete, living and suffering human individuals and groups, they see the “tribe”, the geopolitical zone and the religious community as the only valid criteria and agents of negotiation.

    Power sharing (or “political and administrative federalism”): This will almost certainly be the most dominant issue of deliberations at JNC. The effective line of division will be between those who want the present order of a centre that is much stronger than the federating states and zones to continue and those who want considerable devolution of power and responsibilities to the federating units. At the core of this division between what we might designate the “unitarists” and the “federalists” is the presidency itself and the presidential system as compared with the parliamentary system. Jonathan has picked delegates to his JNC with an incontrovertible numerical advantage to the “unitarists” but at the end of the deliberations, concessions will be made to the “federalists”. At any rate, compatriots, expect to hear and read much about a “rotational presidency” at JNC.

    But don’t expect that deliberations on power sharing as a subject at JNC will extend to true and genuine empowerment of the masses of Nigerians. Don’t expect to hear passionate and genuine respect for the rights of free association, of assembly, of rallies and demonstrations to be expressed at JNC. Don’t expect calls for building an active, mobilized and civic-minded populace as an inestimable expression of true democracy at JNC. Least of all should you expect that popular sovereignty, as contrasted with the “sovereign” power and authority of the President and the Executive State Governors, will be articulated at JNC. In the last four decades in our country, both the idea and the practices of popular sovereignty have been massively eroded, first by the run of military autocrats and then by their civilian legatees since 1999. Without exception, all the incumbents of Aso Rock Villa since 1999 have greatly feared any mass gatherings of Nigerians in their hundreds of thousands if and when such gatherings are not for religious revivals or in support of the government or a ruling class party. Without exception, when politicians and ruling class political parties in our country think of and talk about power sharing, they mean, quite unequivocally, power sharing only amongst themselves!

    Will the terribly backward and ever regressing state of education, science and technology in our country be an important topic of deliberations at JNC? Don’t expect it, compatriots! On a per capita basis, Nigeria is one of the most irresponsible, even most delinquent countries in the world when it comes to public spending, public investment in education. If one makes an exception for a few state governors, spending and investment on physical and institutional infrastructures for education, science and technology in our country are abysmally inadequate. In a modern state – any modern state – this is like deliberately committing cultural and economic suicide. There ought to be an inviolable constitutional provision for this, that per capita spending and investment in education, science and technology that is consistent with UNESCO guidelines for developing countries should be enshrined in our Constitution.

    But don’t expect that this will be an important topic of deliberations at JNC. Why not? Well, have any of our rulers, any of our governing elites, shown the slightest concern, not to talk of panic, about the terribly inferior performance rates of secondary school leavers at NECO exams? Have they shown the slightest concern over the fact that Nigerian universities don’t rank high either in Africa itself or in the world at large? Do they have any inkling as to why our university lecturers and professors have not given up but continue to mount protests against this indifference, this neglect – against all the calculated attempts to demonize them and delegitimize their rights of protest and strikes?

    Let there be no doubt about JNC and what it portends. About slightly less than a year ago, Nigeria officially overtook South Africa as the country with the largest economy in Africa. Many economist and technocrats, either of the establishment itself or with an establishmentarian mind, rejoiced mightily over this “achievement”. But deep down and below the surfaces of growth without development, this “achievement” means little or nothing, either for the masses of ordinary Nigerians or for the Nigerian economy itself. For in the main, Nigeria continues to lag far behind South Africa and indeed most countries in Africa in per capita income. Nigerians living below the absolute poverty line still constitute the overwhelming majority of the populace, both in the urban centers and in the rural communities. The percentage of installed capacity for industrial production that is working is still very low as the aggregate cost of production, the aggregate cost of doing business in our country continue to be very high. Against the background of this array indices of growth without development, of the largest economy in the African continent that is also the most skewed and lopsided in its operations, our rulers and ruling class parties are extraordinary in their complacency, their mediocrity, their indifference to the plight of the great majority of Nigerians. JNC, in terms of the relationship between the things it will talk about and the things it will not and cannot talk about, JNC is the expression of this defining complacency of our political elites.

    I do not in the least with to imply that the things JNC will talk about and those things it will not and cannot talk about are unconnected. For instance, power and/or wealth sharing among the elites and between the elites and the generality of Nigerians should be the concern of all true democrats and progressives. Indeed, I contend that we cannot or should not talk of one without talking simultaneously of the other. This observation has concrete, practical implications. Let me briefly spell out some of these implications in a provisional non-concluding end to this essay that will be more fully elaborated in next week’s continuation of the series. In the first place, democrats, progressives and radicals picked by Jonathan for his “national conference” should go there only or precisely to raise issues that JNC will not talk about. It is also okay for some of such progressive and democratic citizens who do not wish to join the JNC confab to decline the invitation, but to do so not in order to retreat into either silence or a jeremiad against the things that JNC will talk about. The great task before us is to show how power and money sharing among the elites connects to power and money sharing between the elites and the vast majority of our peoples. This will be the starting point in next week’s continuation of the series.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • ‘Why there is stability in Senate’

    ‘Why there is stability in Senate’

    Senator Munirudeen Muse was a member of the sixth Senate Lagos Central. He Spoke With Musa Odoshimokhe on the national conference and other issues.

    What is your position on the national conference?

    It is a welcome development. In the first place, government never kicked against national conference. What the government is against is the Sovereign National Conference (SNC). I think the conference is appropriate at this time. It is important that we should have it, to discuss the challenges facing the country.

    Will this not have some negative effects on elections that will hold in 2015?

    Why do you want to procrastinate? We have been shouting let us have a conference and now, they said it’s time for conference, you want to preempt the situation. Why do you want to preempt? That is not necessary. Let us go for the conference. That is my feeling about it.

    Some stakeholders have expressed reservation about the conference and the fear that it will lead to break up…

    In the past, the north felt this way. But, since the agitation from the south about the conference goes on unabated and the president has called for the conference, they would have to be part of it. That has removed whatever position anybody holds and let us go ahead with the conference to reach a common ground on how best the country can live together in peace and harmony.

    Is the current Senate living up to expectation?

    All I know about the Senate and the people that were elected into the Senate is that they are people of integrity. There is maturity in that chamber including the current one. The Senate has done well vis-à-vis the Houses of Assemblies are doing very well.

    So, many things that would have distorted the progress of the country have been well attended to by lawmakers. Looking back, when the late President Umaru Yar’Adua succession issue was generating problem, you could see the way it was settled. If not for the Senate the country would have been plunge into crisis. And looking back, I likened the period to what happened at the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), when a gang of four wanted to take over the government. It took the deft intervention of the Russian President, Boris Yeltsin to avert the situation. This is similar to what happened here.

    So, I said what had happened should not be swept under the carpet, we should investigate it thoroughly. We thank God, that we found a solution within the Senate which ensured that everything was resolved. The seventh Senate which is now legislating for the people has not disappointed. I have passion for the Senate and listen to its deliberation. I want to read what is going on there. So, I followed it so well, they are trying their best. And I am very confident about the leadership of the Senate. The Senate President, David Mark, is a man who will put all his cards on the table for you. He has nothing to hide. He is a well respected man within that chamber and, I think, within the country.

    The presidency of the Senate has been stable under this regime…

    There is maturity in the Sixth Senate and it goes on till now. This is because of the leadership of the Senate, who is open and will tell you his mind. He will tell you, we are going to solve our problem here. I am not going to settle it only in my office. When we go into close session and discuss everything.

    Why is the Senate playing a hide and seek game with the Academic Staff Universities Union (ASUU) strike?

    The Senate must have dabbled into it. They must have given their advice to the executive. You see, because I am out of the Senate now or government, I don’t know what exactly is the cause of the prolonged strike is. One side is saying we have reached an agreement and the other side is saying they have not. I believe that from my own little idea, the people involved in the strike are going too far. And I tell you that is why I did not allow my children to go to public universities. I send them to private universities.

    But the private university is expensive…

    It is not the cost that we are talking about, but, if you can afford it do so. Gradually, the price will come down and many people will be in the position to send their children to private universities. It is just that the private universities are just springing up in the country. This probably informed why they are expensive for now.

    Some have said the All Progressives Congress (APC) is not united and that this may affect its performance in future election. What is your view?

    I am not aware of any division in the party. And I want to tell you now that I have not really made up my mind to go along with the party. The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), to which I belonged, is moribund. Throughout my time nobody talked about the APC. I have been a Senator and I am still a Senator. I don’t believe that we would be talking about merger in our party without inviting some of us. That, to me, was not good enough. It would have been better everybody was carried along.

    Are you saying the party is not cohesive?

    If you want to merge, you have to think about this nation in general perspectives. This nation comprised of so many ethnic groups. The main three languages; Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba must be carried along in the discussion. If you want to do any merger talk, you don’t do that to their exclusion. I remember very well that our brothers in the Southeast have this opinion that it is a Yoruba party. I can tell you that this has been said for long ago. They even say our ACN is Yoruba party. I have put it across to our leaders that we must live above board because others from the other places see us a Yoruba party.

    There was one meeting we held in Abuja, a leadership meeting, and our leaders were there. I raised the issue. I said look at us here as we sit here, and can anybody say this is a Yoruba party? This is because we have so many others who are non- Yoruba present at the meeting. In fact, those of us who were Yorubas sitting at the meeting were less than seven in number, despite the fact that the number was fairly large. Our leader Asiwaju, was there. Chief Bisi Akanda, Mamora, Lai Mohammed, Ganiyu Solomon and I were there. And when I mentioned it, they looked around and could see that there were other tribes well represented from the North, South and Southeast. You see, we should not do something that will make people to see us as tribalist. The party should be seen as national party and that depend on the deliberate efforts get others involved.

  • ‘If Jonathan has hidden agenda, national conference will not succeed’

    ‘If Jonathan has hidden agenda, national conference will not succeed’

    Pro-National Conference Organisation (PRONACO) chieftain Comrade Linus Okoroji, in this interview with Musa Odoshimokhe, explains how the proposed national dialogue can resolve the national question and restore hope to Nigerians.

    What manner of dialogue should Nigerians envisage? My position is not quite different from our stance on the Sovereign National Conference (SNA). I think for now, we should accept it with two hands in whatever guise is has come. We should not give them the opportunity to give excuses. We have been clamouring for it for long. The area I am not quite comfortable with is the move to remove the word “sovereign”. Nobody should tamper with the report. There should be a plebiscite.The people will vote in favour or against it. So, it will be the people’s constitution. This should not be the elite issue, and those who have stood up to kick against it are afraid that it would be politicised.

    Are there antecedents to show that it was hijacked in the past?

    This is in view of what Chief Olusegun Obasanjo did, what General Sani Abacha did at his own time. Having said that, I have seen some of the people in the advisory committee led by Dr. Femi Okorounmu. He has name to protect and I have no reason to doubt him. More so, he is a Yoruba elite and an Afenifere chieftain. When he was in the Senate, he had advocated for a SNC. So, I cannot doubt his integrity. For now, I think we should accept this with our two hands and see how we are going to manage it. What I think would be the challenge is how to get the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO)’s support, which the conference desires. We should return the country to a true federal system. Each region should control its resources. We should look at the PRONACO document and see its position. Today, there is no state in Nigeria that has a working edict. In the pas,t the Northern Region had its own constitution, the Western Region had its own constitution, the Midwest Region had its constitution and the Eastern Region had its constitution. But all these federal paraphernalia have been thrown away. People like Indians and Chinese understand what it means to decentralise governance according to their nationalities. We should not be a different people. We should look at all of these and see how we can move forward.

    Some sections of the country are afraid that it will lead to the breakup of Nigeria? What is your view?

    What is wrong, if the country breaks up? Will the North not survive, if the country breaks? If that is their fear, they should come down to terms with other sections of the country. They should not continue to play the role of a senior brother or owner of Nigeria. If they nurse such fear, they should come down low and give Nigeria the opportunity to survive. The problem we have is the North, which does not want others to survive. They are using the resources of other nationalities, which they want to manage. They should work together with others so that Nigeria will survive in the interest of all and not their own interest alone. That is even the fears of other minorities in the North; the majority wants to trample on them. The oligarchy wants to suppress the minority in their own areas. There is this story we heard from Chief Anthony Enahoro, may his soul rest in peace, that Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, when he was the Prime Minister of Nigeria, in the North, he was not recognised above Sardauna. Sarduana was his boss. That is the way they behave.

    What do think should guide us during the conference?

    It is the matter of sincerity and commitment to examine the issues that are germane to our wellbeing as a country. We should aim at making Nigeria a developing, progressive and people-oriented country. We should look at the welfare of the people, the significance of the common good; that everybody who is a Nigerian should be entitled to benefit from the common good. If you are walking on the street of America and suddenly, you collapse and drop, government hospital will pick you up and take care of you. Nobody cares who you are. They take care of you, until you survive, unless such a person is unlucky and die. In Nigeria, we are living like orphans. People who have no parents, unless you have contact with people in government, that is only when your survival is guaranteed.

    But the time is too short to have a successful conference before 2015…

    Before the military left, the NADECO had been clamouring for the SNC, even during the Abiola struggle. Our slogan was let us have a Government of National Unity. With the Government of National Unity, we should go ahead to have the national conference. And it was thought that, within four years, we would have achieved the goal. All the efforts were truncated by personal ambitions of those who came on board. They instituted kangaroo conferences because they wanted to remain in power. But, if that is the strategy put in place now, it will fail because Obasanjo failed when he tried it. The truth is that, is he going to succeed? If he diverts attention because of his ambition, what is going to be his own gain? My thinking is that he wants to break away from just being the President of Nigeria to being a hero.

    What, if the outcome of the conference is finally tempered with by the Nation Assembly?

    It is going to be wrong to subject it to the National Assembly and, whether they call it National Conference or Sovereign National Conference, it boils down to the end result. The outcome of the conference must not be tampered with by anybody. Once it is tampered with, it means the conference did not hold, no matter how long. And whether a National Conference or Sovereign National Conference, it can only be subjected to a referendum and not the National Assembly. What is the significance of the National Assembly to a National Conference when they are at the House discussing issues that favour them alone and their cronies? The only power to vet the outcome of the conference is the people through a plebiscite.

  • Jonathan’s SNC: a gathering of the elites, by the elites and for the elites? (1)

    Jonathan’s SNC: a gathering of the elites, by the elites and for the elites? (1)

    For the moment, I shall leave aside two important issues pertaining to the recent announcement of President Jonathan’s intention to convene a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) and proceed directly to the composition and agenda of the conference. These two issues that I shall for the moment leave aside are, first, the reasons why we need the SNC now and have in fact needed it for a long time and, secondly, Jonathan’s probable motivations now, at this moment, for convening the SNC. I shall return to these two questions at the end of the two-part series in which I wish to reflect primarily on the composition and agenda of the conference. But why this emphasis on the composition and agenda of Jonathan’s SNC?

    It is only with regard to the composition and agenda of the SNC that we will be able to tell whether Jonathan’s SNC will be substantially dominated by our political elites and their interests or will be truly democratic and include the interests of workers, farmers, tradesmen and women, youths, pensioners, the unemployed and future generations of Nigerians. In other words, it is by its composition and agenda that we will know whether Jonathan’s SNC will be a gathering of the elites, by the elites and for the elites or, conversely, a gathering in which the non-elite plurality of Nigerians will be present and will have their interests and the interests of future generations of Nigerians ably represented.

    At this point, it is necessary for me to state that my reflections in this piece do not come from a vacuum but are instead deeply informed by the widely publicized and debated views of individuals and groups that have been the loudest, the most insistent and, I might add, the most persuasive in the calls for the SNC in the last decade and half. In the light of these dominant views, the composition of the SNC should be based primarily on the so-called federating ethnic groups and geopolitical zones of the country. Everybody knows that this means the elites of the ethnic groups and geopolitical zones of the country. And with regard to the agenda of the SNC, the individuals and groups that have been tirelessly calling for the SNC place their focus almost exclusively on relations between the centre of power and authority in the federal government in Abuja and the regions and states of the federation. More pointedly, these individuals and groups see the roots of all that is wrong and perilous in our country at the present time in the over-concentration of power and authority at the centre. On this account, all the corruption, all the waste, all the squandermania, all the ineptitude, all the insecurity, and all the fractious disunity plaguing Nigeria and its citizenry flow from Aso Rock and Abuja and from that cesspit wash over the whole country. In other words, Boko Haram, the militants of the Niger Delta, the pipeline vandals, the extortionate and marauding gangs of kidnappers, the growing ranks of ethnic militias are all the direct and indirect products of the over-concentration of power, authority and sovereignty at the centre in Abuja.

    There is not the slightest doubt that there is some truth in this composite view of over-concentration of power and sovereignty at Abuja as the main structural basis of the crises of politics, society and economy in Nigeria at the present time. For in all states of the world, power, authority and sovereignty are the bases on which both the happiness and the unhappiness of people rest. In states like the Nigeria of Obasanjo, Yar’ Adua and Jonathan in which power, authority and sovereignty are over-concentrated at the centre and are routinely misused and abused, there usually is no peace, no security of life and possessions and no just and equitable distribution of wealth and resources. This is made even more harrowing in a country in which the citizenry and the polity come from diverse ethnic, regional and religious communities. To put their argument on this issue in plain language, the main proponents of the SNC are insistent on the claim that power, authority and sovereignty ought not to be concentrated at the centre in a multi-ethnic and pluralistic country like Nigeria. If for one reason or another power and sovereignty have been historically concentrated and have been routinely misused, the most urgent thing to do is to, first, reduce the concentration and secondly, share sovereignty among all the constituent, federating parts.

    On its own terms, this general profile is accurate and incontrovertible. But seen in the light of some large historical realities and circumstances, some questions arise that make it imperative for us to think beyond over-concentration of power and sovereignty at the centre as the only, or even the most important challenge that we face in Nigeria at the present time. Here are some of these questions: What if the over-concentration of power at the centre is not the only source of our problems and crises? Indeed, what if that over-concentrated power and sovereignty is itself the consequence or effect of a deeper malaise, a greater contradiction that cuts across all the ethnic, regional and religious communities in the land? What if the economic, scientific and technological forces of development and modernity that all the communities in Nigeria face are the same and produce broadly similar effects everywhere in Nigeria, West Africa and the African continent? What if our political elites, with few exceptions, have been remarkably clueless as to how to engage these forces and currents of modernity? Finally, what if, indeed, we can meet these forces of capitalist modernity infinitely far more effectively as a united country than as a band of small, autonomous and loosely connected ethnic and regional communities?

    Let me be very clear and upfront about the basis of my position on the SNC: As much as I worry about the over-concentration of power and sovereignty at the centre and the myriad of distortions that it causes, I am far more worried about the hardship and suffering caused throughout the length and breadth of the country among the vast majority of our peoples, north and south, and east and west. I am far more worried about the fact that wealth and power are so vastly unevenly distributed between the elites and the masses in our country than the sharing of power and wealth unequally among our political elites. And simply stated, I cannot imagine that any genuinely democratic SNC at the present time will not place the terrible state of poverty, joblessness and insecurity among the vast majority of Nigerians at the centre of deliberations at the Conference. For poverty, together with the corruption, waste and squandermania that cause and exacerbate it, is, by a long shot, the most important crisis among the myriad of problems and challenges that we face today.

    Out of every 10 Nigerians, 7 live in absolute poverty, this in a land overflowing with oil wealth. Indeed, in many of the rural communities in the land, the figure is close to 8 out of 10. Among our youths, educated and uneducated, the unemployment rate is well over 40%, this in a land in which the median age is 19 – which means that half of the total population is under the age of 19. Moreover, the gap between the tiny haves and the teeming have-nots is not only great but is growing at an alarming rate. These figures are fairly uniformly distributed across the whole country; no region, no ethnic group, no religious community is exempt from the miasmas of poverty, destitution and insecurity ravaging the land. As a matter of fact, ethnicity, regionalism and religion have all been massively and successfully co-opted as powerful tools of mystification by our political elites in keeping things the way they are at the present time.

    There is no reason in the world why the SNC being convened by Jonathan should not combine these two broad profiles: on one hand, redefinition of relations between the centre and its constituent parts, together with reinvention of true and equitable fiscal and administrative federalism; on the other hand, a pooling of all our human and natural resources throughout the country to confront the forces of capitalist modernity. So far, most commentators and proponents of the SNC have been either totally silent or lukewarm on the necessity of linking the two. How this might be accomplished by a careful attention to the composition and agenda of the Conference will be the starting point in next week’s concluding piece in the series.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu