Tag: summit

Even in the Yoruba region with the first free primary education scheme in sub-Saharan Africa, about 6% of children of primary age are not in school while more than 10% of those who attended primary school are not enrolled in secondary schools

I predict that every multilingual or multinational country with a unitary constitution must either eventually have a federal constitution based on principles which I have enunciated, or disintegrate, or be perennially afflicted with disharmony and instability.—Awolowo in The Peoples’ Republic.

To ensure effective governance of the United Arab Emirates after its establishment in 1971, the rulers of the seven emirates that comprise the Federation agreed to draw up a provisional Constitution specifying the power allocated to the new federal institutions. As in many federal structures around the world, certain powers remained the prerogative of each of the individual emirates, which already had their own governing institutions prior to the establishment of the Federation.www.uaeinteract.com/government/political_system.asp

Today’s piece will begin to address some of the questions raised at the end of last week’s column:

If the groups at the summit are in opposition to most of the governments in the Yoruba region, at what point are they going to call for rapprochement with elected governments of Yoruba states not in attendance at the summit? Do Yoruba citizens have a stake in the kind of federalism the Ibadan summit has called for? If so, what process does the summit have in place for mobilising citizens in the region for the fight for immediate re-federalisation or secession from the Nigerian union? But the focus of addressing some of these points today will be to demonstrate to those that organised last week’s Yoruba Unity Summit that the problem of dwindling federalism in the country is a long-term one that requires a long-term, rather than, a quick-fix solution.

This column is not opposed to the call for federalism at the Ibadan summit of selected Yoruba socio-cultural organisations. The evidence for change of vision about how to make Nigeria achieve its huge potential is striking. For almost half a century, the country has failed to improve on the quality of life of most of its citizens while it has grown at the hands of military dictators into a centralised state system that denies subnational levels the autonomy required for innovativeness in such areas as economy, security, education, healthcare, and even infrastructure. Compared to when the country was governed as a fully federal state in the years before the fragmentation of the country into mini states, the Nigeria of today is in many respects incapable of raising the standard of living of most of its citizens. In the era of competitive federalism in the years before the civil war, it was possible for each of the four regions to apply the principle of competitive advantage to its development, despite ideological differences among the three regions. They each achieved this by raising from revenue principally from agriculture: cotton/peanut farming in the North; Palm produce in the East; Palm and Rubber production in the Midwest; and Cocoa from the West.

In a recent World Bank report, Nigeria was ranked the third among the world’s ten countries with extreme poor citizens. Over 70% of its population live on N200 or less per day. 7% of the 1.2 billion people living below poverty line in the world are Nigerians. The Southwest in particular has lost the advantages of the head start in education that it gained in the years before independence and the civil war. Some of the causes of endemic poverty in Nigeria, according to the World Bank, include harmful economic and political systems, national conflict and violence, weak government effectiveness and efficiency, human rights abuses, weak respect for rule of law, and weak control of corruption. It has been observed that about 40% of primary-school age children are out of school. Even in the Yoruba region with the first free primary education scheme in sub-Saharan Africa, about 6% of children of primary age are not in school while more than 10% of those who attended primary school are not enrolled in secondary schools. It must be painful for those who participated directly or indirectly in promoting the importance of education under the government of Awolowo to look away from the decline in education, healthcare, security of life and property, and even lack of modest infrastructure in a region that was the actual pace setter in the years before the onslaught of military dictatorship.

It is, therefore, not surprising that those at the Ibadan conference cried out for immediate intervention to end the system of centralisation that had been driven principally by military dictators and the belief by former military rulers that the Manna economy made possible by petroleum could support creation of tens of mini states that largely live on handouts from the federation account funded mostly by resources from petroleum. Just recently, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, leader of Northern Elders Forum, reminisced nostalgically in a newspaper interview about the positive impact of federal system of government in the past had on development in the country. He acknowledged the country’s cultural diversity and quoted Sir Ahmadu Bello on the need to construct a governing system that is driven by understanding of cultural differences rather than planning to obliterate such differences. Similarly, a leader of Northern Leaders Group in the Northeast even called for a national conference at which the North, particularly the Northeast would table its special needs. Those at the Ibadan summit are not alone in their call for a new political design of the country. This is in contrast to the new mantra being promoted by political office holders across the three levels that ethnic and religious differences are the source of Nigeria’s underdevelopment.

Making their call for reinvention of the country at the coming to power of a former military ruler who campaigned on the platform of change and whom citizens voted for because they are hungry for change is good timing. The menu of policies for change is still being constructed by President Buhari as he shops for ministers to help him change the country. It is true that weak control of corruption has been cited by the World Bank for Nigeria’s decline, despite the country’s access to easy funds from petroleum for over five decades. It is also true that the new president has focused his attention on weakening the culture of corruption. But so is it true that the World Bank has fingered harmful economic and political systems as one of many causes. The balkanisation of the former four regions into 36 mini states at the beck and call of the central government by military rulers is an illustration of harmful economic and political systems.

It may be myopic to just heap all the blame of the country’s underdevelopment on corruption. Since 1966, no government – military or civilian – has come to power without promising to end corruption. What appears to have been missing is coming to terms with some of the direct and indirect causes of corruption. It is conceivable that the transformation of Nigeria since 1975 into a country of unviable states in the guise of ensuring territorial unity is a major cause of corruption in the country. The competition among states had stopped for a long time being over revenue generation but over ostentatious use of funds passed to them from Abuja. If old men and women brought up on the cultural diet of achievement orientation in the decades before 1975 feel outraged by the visible decline in the Yoruba region to the extent of crying out for help, this should not surprise or alarm anybody who is interested in development of parts of the country and by extension the country as a whole. The right demand was made at Ibadan. What was overlooked at Ibadan is recognition of the complexity of restoration of federalism at the hands of a former military dictator who assisted in re-designing Nigeria away from a federal system.

Re-federalising Nigeria is not as simple as Jonathan’s conference of 2014 that the Ibadan summit anchored its demand on. Insisting on the recommendations of Jonathan’s conference can be politically counterproductive. Jonathan’s party, the PDP, was not even in support of the conference. It was Jonathan that accepted to be goaded by many of the individuals now peddling his conference as the way out of the present political paralysis as a way of negotiating for votes. Individuals and groups that want restoration of federalism need to accept that the presidential elections of 2015 are over. The best way to move beyond obsession with Jonathan’s promise to restore federalism in a post-election period is to adopt a supra-partisan approach to ending the current unitary system that is designed for sharing of national cake, as distinct from baking the cake in all forms and in high quantities that can go round. Awolowo and other federalists and autonomists in other parts of the world had provided effective models for both partisan and supra-partisan methods of struggling for federalism. There is no evidence for such approach in the announcements of those hobbled by the Jonathan conference. We will discuss different approaches that had worked in other places next Sunday.

• To be continued