PEOPLE
AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA Towards
a viable federation The recent Biafra resurgence has since
led to so much renewed talk about restructuring Nigeria. With due respect, I
dare say all such talk is so much glib talk. What makes it glib, but what we have
refused to acknowledge, is that Nigeria lost its innocence as a federation in
the true sense of the word long ago when, on a fateful day in May 1966, a
power-hungry clique our first military head of state, Major-General JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi, surrounded himself with, pushed him into
promulgating the ill-fated Unification Decree No 34. That decree abolished
the existing four autonomous regions – North, East, West and Mid-West - and
substituted them with Nigeria as a unitary state of 19 provinces. One telling example of how Aguiyi-Ironsi and his clique intended to use the decree
to run Nigeria with an iron hand emerged shortly after its promulgation when
late Chief Cyprian Ekwensi, a pioneer popular
novelist, walked with his team into New
Nigerian, in Kaduna, then still owned by the North, and announced to its
bemused expatriate boss, Mr Charles Sharp, that he had come from Enugu with a
brief to take over the newspaper company! Just like that. Somehow the Enugu
team never managed to really take over before there was a counter-coup in
July in which Colonel Yakubu Gowon, the army chief,
replaced Aguiyi-Ironsi. Gowon duly abolished the offending decree
in September and returned the country to its four regions. But Nigeria had
bit the forbidden apple, so to say, and the country could never be the same
again. Events eventually led to a civil war, and as a strategy for isolating
and defeating the rebels, Gowon split the four regions into 12 states. This
changed the nature of our federation from the normal one in which autonomous
regions came together to cede powers to the centre, into an abnormal one in
which it was centre that not only delegated powers to its constituents but,
in Nigeria’s case, actually created them. This creation went from 12 constituents
in 1967 to the present 36. The contrast with America, the Real McCoy,
couldn’t have been sharper; it started from a country of 13 states that
decided to become a federation when the initial confederation attempt failed,
and grew into a country of 50 autonomous states that ceded powers to the
centre. The problem with those who talk so much
about restructuring Nigeria is clearly their refusal to come to terms with
the fact that the forces of state creation have since become difficult, if
not impossible, to reverse. Of course, since 1995, following the
Constituent Assembly established by the late General Sani Abacha, there has
been increasing talk of reducing those 36 states into six autonomous regions
of North-West, North-Central, North-East, South-West, South-South and South
East. Indeed they have even been used for administrative and political
allocation of jobs and patronages. Even then anyone who imagines the states
would want to dissolve into these their geo-political zones is probably
living in cuckoo land, considering the continued demand for even more states
each time the country convenes a constitutional conference. So instead of wasting time talking about
an almost impossible political structuring, we should draw a line with our
current 36 states and make the best we can of their structure. Several leading politicians and public
figures have lately been calling on President Muhammadu Buhari
to implement the recommendations of the last constitutional reform conference
convened by his predecessor as the best, if not the only, way to resolve the
constitutional crises facing the country. Among them are Professor Ben Nwabueze, president of the Igbo Elders Forum and an
unrepentant advocate of ethnic nationalism, Dr Frederick Faseun,
the co-founder of the militant Odua People’s
Congress (OPC) and Senator Kofoworola Bucknor-Akerele, former deputy governor of Lagos State. In an interview in the Sunday Sun of November 22, Bucknor-Akerele, for example, said “I will advise President
Muhammadu Buhari to implement the recommendations
of that confab.” She even went further to say if those recommendations had
been implemented long ago, not only would the Biafra agitations not have
arisen, even Boko Haram would have been anticipated. I beg to disagree with the advocates of
the Jonathan constitutional reform conference for the simple reason that, as The PUNCH said in its editorial of
November 11, “Unfortunately, many administrations in the past had organised
national conferences purposely to address these self-inflicted wounds but
they turned out to be grand larceny designed to serve their selfish political
interests.” Jonathan’s conference was no exception.
If anything, it was probably the worst. By comparison, that of Murtala/Obasanjo was certainly the best since the
Republican constitution of 1963. Aguiyi-Ironsi pre-empted
his own conference by Decree 34. Gowon’s first attempt ended in Aburi fiasco. He pre-empted his second attempt by declaring
1976 unrealistic for handing over power to civilians as he had promised in in
his first Independence broadcast after the civil war on October 1, 1970. This
led to his overthrow in July 1976. General Muhammadu Buhari
in his first coming in 1983 initially said democracy was not his priority.
And before he would make it so he was overthrown by his army chief,
General Ibrahim Babangida.
The new military president’s longish transition programme ended in grief in
1993 when Abacha overthrew the transition government he had left behind
following his annulment of the presidential election of June 12 in the same
year. Ditto Abacha’s transition
programme in 1998, following his sudden death in June. The last and the
shortest one by a military regime under General Abdulsalami Abubakar, Abacha’s successor, merely tinkered with the
Constitution bequeathed by Murtala/Obasanjo when it
ushered in the current dispensation on May 29, 1999. Among all these constitutional
conferences, none was anywhere as thorough and none was as transparent as
that of Murtala/Obasanjo. First, its 50-member
Constitutional Drafting Committee (CDC) under late Chief FRA William,
Nigeria’s first Senior Advocate, took nearly a year listening to Nigerians
before submitting its draft to the authorities. This was between its
inauguration in October 1975 and September 1976 when it submitted the report. Second, no post Independent constituent
assembly (CA) has been as representative of the country as Murtala/Obasanjo’s; of its 230 members only 27 were
nominated by government, seven of who were chairmen of the CDC sub-committees
to shed light on the committee’s conclusions. Third, the CA went through the
draft clause by clause between October 6, 1977 and June 5, 1978 when it
finally adjourned. In sharp contrast Jonathan’s constitutional
conference was a fire brigade convened, as it were, in the run-up to this
year’s elections in March and April. It was such an emergency decision that
there was simply no time for any election into the conference. The president
seized this opportunity to impose a thoroughly skewed conference membership
on the country. At any rate, anyone inclined to give the
president the benefit of doubt as to his motive must have had it shattered by
the fact that he himself refused to implement even aspects of the
conference’s report which were within his administrative powers to carry out,
apparently because they were of no use to his determined presidential bid. All this is not to say that the report is
completely useless. All the talk about political restructuring associated with
the report may be glib. However, such recommendations it contained about
fiscal federalism, state police and the creation of local governments being
exclusive to states should be taken seriously. The last two may require
constitutional amendment but the first, which is arguably the most important,
does not. What it requires is a spirit of give and take which, unfortunately,
is in short supply among our political class. The easier aspect of the two-legged
fiscal federalism is the vertical allocation among the three “tiers” of
government – namely federal, state and local. Between 1980 when late Dr Pius Okigbo, a foremost economist, recommended a formula of
55:30.5:10 for the three tiers, with the balance of 4.5 per cent as Special
Fund, and the present formula of 48.5:24:20 with the balance of 7.5 per
cent as Special Fund, the formulae
have changed a few times. There are no constitutional reason why the current
formula cannot be changed by reducing that of the centre and increasing that
for states. The other leg of fiscal federalism, i.e.
the horizontal allocation among states and local governments, may be
difficult to deal with but, as I said, with a spirit of give and take it too
can be tackled by reaching reasonable compromises on the weights to be attached
to the main principles of derivation, population, geography and equality of
states. In short, our current constitution,
whatever its shortcomings, provides sufficient basis to solve our problems,
provided, of course, there is good faith and goodwill among our political
class. Without such good faith and goodwill even
a perfect constitution, were it possible, will get us nowhere, for the simple
reason that no constitution is self-executing. Unfortunately such good faith
and goodwill can never be legislated. It can only be cultivated. So the
sooner we learn to do so, the better our chances of transforming our hapless
country into a happy nation. Note For two weeks now I’ve started out with
the intention of publishing reactions to my column, only to run out space.
Next week, God willing, I’ll do so even if it means using most of the space
for the reactions. |