Resolving the Enigma of Nigeria's 3rd Republic

By

Kòmbò Mason Braide, Ph.D.

Port Harcourt , Nigeria .

Wednesday, 18 August 2004

kombomasonbraide@msn.com

Of Democracy. Slavery, Federations & Republics:

As a process, colonisation painstakingly differentiates the coloniser from the colonised, and the freeborn from the slave. For the ancient Greeks, their perception of “democracy” (i.e. government of the people) did not really accommodate their slaves, who, as they reasoned, were not Greeks, and were, by extension, probably not human enough, or simply were not “the people” they meant in their fundamental understanding of the (Greek) terms that make up the word we all now call, “democracy”: a concept that has been generally misunderstood, and bastardised by most non-ancient Greeks, particularly modern Nigerians. For the ancient Greeks, “democracy” simply meant “government of the Greeks, for the Greeks, and by the Greeks”. Less understood, frequently abused, and intuitively misused are the later-day political concepts of federalism and republicanism.

In 1787, James Madison sought to increase the authority of the central government in Washington DC over those of the constituent states of the United States of America . He located the status quo in the White House, and tried to increase the authority of the federal government as a means of placing limits on the authority of the individual states. We now know that the liberty-loving citizens of the United States of America vehemently resisted, and ultimately destroyed Madison ’s dream of a so-called “strong, united, and indivisible” USA .

Sequel to the American Civil War in the mid-19^th century, secession was eliminated as an effective extra-constitutional check on the progressive increase in central government authority. In the 20th century, constitutional guarantees against federal encroachment on the authority of states were frequently undermined by executive, legislative, and judicial departures from established principles of federalism. At the end of the 20^th century, the status quo in the USA was clearly in the opposite direction from what James Madison accomplished in the 18^th century. Clearly, in the end, political reform in the direction of federalism must incorporate the effective devolution of power toward the constituent states, away from the central government, as the political histories of the USA , Canada , Switzerland , the USSR , Yugoslavia , and several others have shown.

Federalism offers protection against the excesses of a central government. However, it seems as if Nigeria ’s anti-federalists are saying, “We do not mind being colonised, so long as we are colonised by Nigerians, and not Britons”. The attitude of such Nigerian pseudo-patriots, who repeatedly trivialise the need for meaningful federalism in Nigeria, or thwart the organization of a national dialogue that should be followed by a referendum before the activation of a meaningful Federal Republican Constitution, aimed at devising ways and means by which political power could be devolved effectively from Abuja to the 36 states, is very strange, and surely borders on paranoid power politics. How could such persons and/or groups, who mouth loud slogans about “democracy”, yet, doggedly oppose federal initiatives, be anything other than abysmally fraudulent or uninformed?

A federal political structure stands halfway between a regime of fully autonomous states on the one hand, and a monolithic, all-powerful central authority on the other. Federalism is a means of reducing overall political power, and of equitably sharing whatever power that exists. Federalism curtails the scope of centralised political authority, while limiting the potential for the exploitation of the individual citizen by state or/and provincial units. Within a federation, the central authority should be constitutionally restricted to the enforcement of transparency of economic interactions. Within this scope, the federal authority must be robust. However, it should not be allowed to extend beyond constitutionally defined limits. State and local government units should carry out other collective political activities, as competitors of sorts with the central government.

Compassionate Colonialism:

We are amazed but not amused by the stiff opposition to efforts at moving toward federalist structures, worldwide, in which political power could be equitably and consensually shared between various strata of government. Why, if we may ask, is there so much benign resistance, in the United Kingdom in particular, to the idea of an effective European federation? Why all the scepticism and agitations that derailed, and ultimately blocked the take-off of the 1995 “Conference of the States” in the United States of America? Why has the Federal Republic of Nigeria remained politically moribund, tenaciously fixated on non-federal and non-republican governance, since Saturday, 31 December 1983 ? Why, if we may also ask, should die-hard conservatives, classical liberals, free-spirited libertarians, and even radical socialists alike, worldwide, oppose structural reforms that seek to embody federalist principles?

Since the termination of Nigeria ’s First Republic , the sovereignty of the individual Nigerian has practically evaporated, while basic individual liberties have been asphyxiated systematically. Several major fundamental issues of national significance like the Land Use Decree, the creation of states and local governments, and the ratification of Nigeria ’s post-First Republic constitutions (like the Obasanjo Constitution (1979) and the Abubakar Constitution (1999)) have been imposed on Nigerians, more or less, without the simple courtesy of national referenda, but by military fiat. Of course, we all know that coercion is required to do things, or to submit to things others do to us, that we do not, or would not voluntarily agree to do ourselves, or to have done to us.

It is now abundantly clear that Nigeria ’s key political players have been, and remain blatantly coercive in their desire to extend the range of their political control over the lives and liberties of other fellow Nigerians, while pretending to be compliant with the demands of the so-called Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria . Their addiction to narcissistic partisan politics, coupled with their dogged opposition to basic federalist ideas and ideals, would surprise very few Nigerians. What is most upsetting about such antagonism towards the very idea of federalism is that they originate from persons and/or groups that are acknowledged variously as “elder statesmen”, or “enlightened”, or “moderate”, or “eminent”, or “mature”, with political leanings ranging from “neo-conservative”, to “ultra-conservative”; from “far right”, to “new left”; from libertarian, through socialist, to “extreme left”.

Political action, regardless of how decisions are made, involves choices that are made for, and imposed coercively on all members of a community. Anyone who is a participant is, almost by necessity, required to juxtapose his or her own (real or imagined) interests against the (real or imagined) interests of others in the polity. Federalised structures allow for some partial correspondence between politics and local identity. At the very least, federalised structures minimise the extent to which local identities in politics may be taken for granted.

Definitely, persons and/or groups, be they those who oppose the devolution of centralised authority from the White House, Washington DC, to the states in the United States of America, or those who oppose any limits on the nation-states of the European Union, or those who impose centralised command and control on the states and local governments, from Aso Rock, Abuja, in the Federal Republic of Nigeria are, by such attitudes and actions, placing other values above those of the liberty and sovereignty of others. It is therefore necessary to revisit the concept of competitive federalism, including a careful examination of the dynamics of engagement of the individual in a republic, vis-à-vis the size of the political terrain. We need to examine the relationships between a federalist political structure, and the sovereignty of the individual citizen, in terms of the general implications of current discussions in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Compartmentalised Republicanism:

For a start, a republic is a polity in which the people govern themselves, through their freely elected representatives, without extraneous social, economic, or similar other external constraints, and/or impositions. In fact, the minimum prerequisites of republicanism render such sterile and infantile debates in Nigeria on issues like “zoning”, or “power shift”, or the role (if any) of the plethora of provincial superheroes, feudal comics, and rural unelected male parasitic plutocrats, scattered nationwide, so-called “traditional rulers” or “royal fathers”, or even the active participation of any living former (military or civilian) dictator (i.e. General Gowon, General Obasanjo, Major General Buhari, General Babangida, Chief Shonekan, and General Abubakar) in any meaningful democratic context in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, rather fallacious, farcical, fatuous, paradoxical, and laughable, since the very notion of unelected representation, which uniquely characterise their regimes, is fundamentally antithetical to both federalism and republicanism. Meanwhile, Nigeria is, supposedly, a “ Federal Republic ”!

Between Saturday, 1 October 1960 , and Tuesday, 1 October 1963 , the Governor-General of the Federation of Nigeria was Sir (Dr.) Nnamdi Azikiwe (KCBE): the duly selected Nigerian representative of Her Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, in post-colonial Nigeria . Just like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand today, Nigeria, even though it was a federation, and had been independent three (3) years earlier, was not a republic until Tuesday, 1 October 1963. Throughout that period, some three years post-independence, the official residence of the Head of State of Nigeria was Buckingham Palace , London , and there were not even rumours of a coup d’etat! The officers of the Queen’s Own Nigeria Regiment (the later-day so-called “radical”, “hot-headed”, “patriotic” coup plotters of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria), knew the limits of their youthful exuberance when their Commander-in Chief was a non-Nigerian. In other words, in the period between Saturday, 1 October 1960 , and Tuesday, 1 October 1963 , when Her Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, was the Head of State, and Commander-in-Chief of the Federation of Nigeria, there was no coup d’etat! Coup plotters waited for Nigeria to become a republic!

On Tuesday, 1 October 1963 , the Federation of Nigeria became a federal republic. That was the beginning of Nigeria ’s First Republic . The first President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe who, incidentally, was then the immediate past Nigerian appointee of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. On Saturday, 15 January 1966 , the First Republic was terminated by military intrusion, with the concurrent imposition of impunity and autocracy in the governance of Nigeria thereafter, to date. In summary, the First Republic collapsed barely three (3) years into Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s first term of office as the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

For thirteen (13) good years, between Saturday, 15 January 1966 , and Monday, 1 October 1979 , Nigeria was neither a democracy nor a republic. During that period, the country was under the unelected dictatorships of Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, General Yakubu Gowon, General Murtala Mohammed, and General Olusegun Obasanjo, each of who grappled relentlessly with attempts by their fellow soldiers at repudiating their authority at minimum provocation. The application of regimentation, monolithic command mentality, and intrigue manoeuvres, in the governance and politics of Nigeria , were institutionalised during those 13 years of military dictatorship.

Between Monday, 1 October 1979 , and Saturday, 31 December 1983 , the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was Alhaji Shehu Shagari (GCFR). That was Nigeria ’s Second Republic . The Second Republic collapsed barely three (3) months into Alhaji Shehu Shagari’s second term of office as the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Thereafter, for sixteen (16) long years, between Saturday, 31 December 1983 , and Saturday, 29 May 1999 , when some opinionated officers and men of the Nigerian armed forces successfully subverted the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, for the second time in the country’s post-independence history, again, Nigeria was neither a democracy nor a republic.

Once more, the country was under the unelected dictatorships of Major General Mohammadu Buhari, General Ibrahim Babangida, Chief Ernest Shonekan, General Sani Abacha, and General Abdulsalami Abubakar, incidentally, all of them, Grand Commanders of the Federal Republic (GCFR)! To further compound the absurdity with more paradox, their dictatorships were referred to as “Federal Military Government”, and they were called “Head of State” of the Federal Republic of Nigeria: a pseudo-federation that was overtly subsumed monolithically, under their understandably regimented perception of the known universe; a republic that ceased to be by the very fact of their imposition on Nigerians; indeed, by their very existence as (military or civilian) dictators.

By now, the oxymoronic reference to a military dictator as the “Military President” of the Federal Republic of Nigeria should be as self-evident as coming to terms with the weird idea of a virgin prostitute, whose mother, and grandmother are also NAFDAC-certified virgins! It is simply absurd. It is equally patently ridiculous to assume, as some incorrigible simpletons would want us to believe, that Nigeria’s Third Republic was actually under the “military presidency” of one General IBB, while the Fourth Republic is sailing smoothly under the “civilian presidency” of another General OMO, ably choreographed and chaperoned by a formidable garrison of retired and serving Black mercenaries.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is now obvious that, since Saturday, 29 May 1999, the presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was “zoned” to Lord Lugard’s Southern Protectorate of Nigeria, by a coalition of  some very willing, filthy-rich, cerebrally challenged, and ideologically vacuous expired Nigerian tyrants. In their presumptuous omniscience, they “zoned” the presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to one of their kind, specifically to the Balogun of Owu, the current Chairman of the Owu Council of Kingmakers, the incumbent Honourable Minister of Petroleum Resources of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and the President of Africa.

Consequently, at best, the past five (5) years may be described as a traumatic transition from overt malignant military dictatorship to benign predatory autocracy in mufti, en route to a stable federal republican democracy. In other words, the Third Republic is yet to come, and the Fourth Republic only exists in the morbidly fertile imaginations of aspiring Nigerian coup plotters of the early 21^st century kind!

The “Cat-and-Mouse” battle continues.

Kòmbò Mason Braide (PhD)

Wednesday, 18 August 2004 @ 7:15 pm .

Appendix:

A Beginner’s Guide To Competitive Federalism:

The concept of competitive federalism is simply an extension of the principles of market economics. The economy of a nation produces values from which all participants benefit. There are guaranteed rights of entry into, and/or exit from exchange transactions in any market. In other words, if goods or/and services offered by a producer (or seller) are “bad” compared with goods or/and services offered by other producer (or seller), the prospective buyer (or customer) simply exercises the exit option, and shifts his or her business to an alternative supplier. Marketing “good goods” rather than “bad goods” ensures that scarce resources flow toward those uses that yield relatively high values. Suppliers are always in competition among themselves, faced with the knowledge that demanders have the choice of exiting from any on-going economic transaction.

Conceptually, the political structure of a country reflects its market economy, in the sense that the objective of politics is the generation of results that are of value to the citizens. However, by its very nature, politics is coercive. In Nigeria , members of a political party must concur with the decisions of their party, or risk being accused of “disloyalty”, or partaking in “anti-party activities”. The prospect of exit, which is so important in imposing discipline in economic relationships, is glaringly absent in Nigerian politics.

In a market economy, “exit” is the dominant strategy by which participants freely exercise control: federalism incorporates this means into politics. The efficacy of competitive federalism depends directly on the operative strength of the exit option. The ability of citizens to migrate, and to shift investment and/or trade across boundaries, serves to limit political exploitation. Even though it may sound outlandish, ultimately, the exit option (i.e. secession) will have to be deliberately embedded in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in order to prevent the break-up of the country, and also enhance federalism.

Does Size Matter?

If the concern is for the protection and maintenance of individual sovereignty against the potential coercion of the state, then the size of constituencies, measured by its population, becomes a pertinent variable. As we are all aware, the influence of a participant in a beer parlour discussion is inversely proportional to the size of the discussion group. If persons are, for any reason, either unable, or unwilling to exercise the exit option, at least, they should be able to participate effectively in determining choices that affect their opinions. In politics, this is more effective in small (rather than in large) units. Of course, one (1) vote is more likely to be decisive in an electorate of 100 than in an electorate of 1,000 or 1 million. Moreover, it is easier for one person or a small group to organise a potentially winning political coalition in a localised community, than in a large and complex metropolis.

The effects of the size of a community on the individual’s protection against political exploitation are independent of the degree of homogeneity or heterogeneity of the constituent members of the community. Even if an inclusive polity is made up entirely of similar persons, there remains an argument for partitioning effective political sovereignty between the central, state, and local government levels of governance. However, if we now introduce prospects for ethnic, economic, gender, intellectual, religious, regional, and/or other variants of heterogeneity in such an ideally inclusive constituency, the argument for federalisation is unquestionably strengthened.

Small units, defined geographically, or territorially, are likely to be more homogeneous in makeup than larger units, and the individual is more likely to share preferences for political action with his or her peers, than would be the case where political interaction must include persons who are considered to be “foreign”, or “strangers”, whether the lines are drawn ethnically, sexually, religiously, economically, or otherwise. If the end objective is the minimisation of political coercion and friction, then the individual will feel under less threat (real, imagined, or potential) in a community of similarly situated peers, than in a large community that embodies groups with differing characteristics.

Surely, homogeneity in values among persons is related to social distance. A major factor that brought about the breakdown of the former Soviet Union , Yugoslavia , and most European welfare states was the shift of activities to a central government, far removed from local realities. The shift of political activities to levels of interaction that extend far beyond the perceived moral tolerance of individual citizens, can only serve to exacerbate the emergence of self-seeking groups of power prostitutes, sycophants, and hardened praise-singers on the one hand, and those who feel unduly exploited or/and marginalised on the other, as can be easily observed in today’s Federal Republic of Nigeria.

References & Sources:

1.       Prof. M. Ikhariale: “When Was Nigeria 's Third Republic?” http://www.gamji.com/ ; ( Monday, 26 July 2004 ).

2.       Prof. A. Williams: “Autumn of the Last Patriarch”; ThisDay Newspaper; Leaders & Company, Lagos & Abuja , Nigeria ; ( Sunday, 15 August 2004 ).

3.       Dr. S. Kumo: “Sovereign National Conference - A Historical Imperative for National Survival and Regeneration”; A paper presented at the Workshop on Strategy for Sustainable Development of Resources in Northern Nigeria, at TeeJay Guest House, g.r.a, Zaria, Nigeria; (Saturday, 17 & Sunday, 18 July 2004).

4.       Dr. T. David-West (Jr.): “To Hell With IBB's Apology”; http://www.nigeriaorld.com/ ; ( Friday, 13 August 2004 )

5.       Brigadier General A. Kyari (rtd.): “Think of the Unthinkable: Notes on Nigeria ’s Future”; A paper presented at the Workshop on Strategy for Sustainable Development of Resources in Northern Nigeria, at TeeJay Guest House, g.r.a, Zaria, Nigeria; (Saturday, 17 & Sunday, 18 July 2004).

6.       K. Komolfe: “Onshore/Offshore dichotomy; A Curious Litigation”; ThisDay Newspaper; Leaders & Company, Lagos & Abuja, Nigeria; ( Wednesday, 18 August 2004 ).

7.       A. Ogbu: “ Nigeria Not Ripe for True Federalism - Kure ”; ThisDay Newspaper; Leaders & Company, Lagos & Abuja , Nigeria ; ( Wednesday, 18 August 2004 ).

8.       J. Lohor & t. suleiman. Ogbu: “Arrested Owu Kingmakers Freed, Presidency Denies Involvement”; ThisDay Newspaper; Leaders & Company, Lagos & Abuja , Nigeria ; ( Wednesday, 18 August 2004 ).

9.       E. Aziken: “Why Buhari Toppled Me, by Shagari”; Vanguard Newspaper; Lagos , Nigeria ; ( Sunday, 1 August 2004 ).

10.    R. Abati: “Who Wants IBB's Apology?”; ThisDay Newspaper; Leaders & Company, Lagos & Abuja , Nigeria ; ( Sunday, 1 August 2004 ).

11.    C. Okocha, T. Adedoja, & T. Suleiman: “IBB Group Parleys with Abiola Family, Obasanjo/Atiku Movement”; ThisDay Newspaper; Leaders & Company, Lagos & Abuja, Nigeria; (Monday, August 2, 2004 ).

12.    J.M. Buchanan: "Federalism as an Ideal Political Order, and an Objective for Constitutional Reform’’. Publius: The Journal of Federalism; 25; No. 2; (1995).