Chief Emeka Anyaoku |
In 16 years
of democracy, two attempts to address the structure of the Nigerian state and
corresponding attempts at forging nationhood have been made but both were
devoid of any serious political commitment by the administrations that drove
the processes. The first was the Olusegun Obasanjo era’s Political Reform
Conference, eventually stalemated by the issue of resource control/derivation
as well as the subterfuge of personal regime elongation. The second was the
Constitutional Conference convened by the Goodluck Jonathan administration. The
latter has proven more comprehensive, more practicable and more useful. And it
should be the path to follow in Nigeria’s current circumstance.
More
importantly, a fragile economy, huge waste by the governing class and the
seeming cluelessness of the same elite have all added a note of urgency to the
task of undoing the mistake of 1966 when the military interventionists
unitarised the country and abolished its elegant productive federal nature. Oil
is gone, and restoring the resourcefulness of the state or region as the case
maybe, lies in fiscal federalism, a critical element of a federal state or
structure.
The renewed
call for re-engineering this current distorted federal structure which was
again made the other day in Ibadan by an eminent Nigerian, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, former secretary-general of the Commonwealth,
is testament to the fact that Nigeria as it is cannot work and must be
restructured.
Chief Anyaoku
had underlined the well-known reason for a true federation, namely, historical
differentiation and pluralism. As he put it, “from my
over 30 years’ experience of governance in over 50 Commonwealth countries, I
believe that given its history and pluralistic character, a truer federalism is
a sine qua non for Nigeria’s achievement of its development potentials and
enduring political stability.” He believes, as many Nigerians do, that
the nation made more progress when it practised regionalism with efficient
regional economic freedom and significant development in human and material
aspects in the separate but united enclaves.
In comparison,
today’s 36 states are parasitic appendages of an all-powerful centre, begging
for hand-outs and barely able to pay the salaries of their workers. Therefore, Chief
Anyaoku has appropriately urged the extant National Assembly to begin the
legislative process to restructure the country into six regions in which the
current states would metamorphose into mere development zones without the
burden of a bureaucratic overload. To him, it is the path of reason and, given “the rising global move away from the use of fossil fuel, and
particularly in this period of continuing fall in the price of crude oil, the
constitution must enable the country to plan and pursue a non-crude-oil-based
economic development.”
According to
him, Nigeria “must also address the issue of
concentration of power at the centre, which fuels the destabilizing competition
for the control of the centre between the country’s diverse ethnic and
religious groups.”
While
calling for the end to an unproductive, over-bearing central government and a
restoration of greater autonomy to the regions, Chief Anyaoku also suggests a
revenue sharing formula for federally collected revenue in the order of 40 per
cent to the centre, 15 per cent of which should be for derivation in respect of
solid and liquid minerals, and 60 per cent to be shared equally among the
federating regions. He acknowledges that the realisation of a new federal
structure is fraught with obstacles because the present structure has produced “groups of people with deeply entrenched vested interests,
especially in the Executive branches and Legislatures at the federal and state
levels.”
Therefore,
the change will not come easily. With a streak of optimism, he believes that
the goal of genuine federalism is realisable in the long run with an all-round
coalition for change embracing the media, opinion makers, civil society groups
and the general citizenry.
Of course, Chief
Anyaoku has only echoed a position many patriotic Nigerians have always
canvassed. The need for structuring Nigeria is, indeed, pressing. The present
structure is counter-productive, holds down the levers of development and
compromises even the nation’s unity with its insensitive centripetal exertions.
It provides vents for sundry injustices in the polity.
Thus, the
country is in dire need of a truly federal structure that allows the
individuality of the component units to express and actualise themselves
without jeopardising the whole. The unjust centralisation of Nigeria not only
robs everyone and helps no one; it has continued to fuel corruption and
perpetuate injustice against all. A balanced federation, at least, allows
liberty for all component units to run as far as they can go.
It must be
emphasised that given the many contradictions of Nigeria today, efforts being
made at addressing the issue of restructuring would come to naught unless the
country embraces the actual practice of federalism and not the perpetuation of
the currently skewed system.
This is true
especially in the current battle against corruption in the country as the quest
for the largesse in an over-centralised Nigeria is at the root of the
corruption problem. The war against it cannot be won unless the structure of
the state is re-engineered. In search of a pathway, therefore, the 2014 National
Conference, not only inclusive and comprehensive, made significant progress
towards a true federation. It is a great starting point. It would be useful to
tap into the pool of its resolutions for the journey to a truly federal, just
and prosperous Nigeria. (Guardian)
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