By Clem T. Ofuani
The Nigerian Federation is today a study in contradictions. It is everything but a federation in its political functionality. How did the country arrive at this pass? There is this famous encounter between two of our founding fathers Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and the Sardauna Sokoto, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello. Dr. Azikiwe was quoted to have said to the Sardauna “let us forget our differences” and the Sardauna was said to have replied, “no, let us understand our differences”. These two statements largely underscored the temperaments of the two leaders and their attitudes to the Nigerian Federation. While one brimmed with idealism and the unity of mankind, the other was more practical in recognizing that mankind is influenced greatly by cultures and traditions learnt from infancy. To build a nation where differences in attitudes can be forgotten therefore, the differences have to be understood first.
At independence, the constitution adopted by the people appeared to have accepted the Sardauna aphorism. The constitution recognized the differences in the Nigerian federation and sought to give to each region the autonomy to organize their political affairs and harness and develop their resources within the context of one nation. The only problem was that it did not go far enough in the aggregation of the political groups. This meant that while the constitution gave the regions fair autonomy to arrange their affairs, the regions were not the homogenous cultural and linguistic entities that were assumed. Hence so many peoples in the regions agitated for further political freedom.
While Chief Obafemi Awolowo understood this yearning and indeed championed it on behalf of the minorities, the Eastern and Northern Regions under the NCNC and the NPC respectively interpreted it as championing tribalism. In the political atmosphere of the time, the two parties joined hands to break up Awolowo‟s Western Region through the creation of Midwestern Region. This response in some perverse way satisfied the need of some of the autonomous people; the main drawback was that it did not go far enough even though it provided hope for minorities in the Eastern and Northern regions.
Even though the Midwestern Region was created via a referendum, it was seen by the constituent parts as a first step to their ultimate autonomy within the Nigerian Federation. The creation and re-drawing of the political map of Nigeria was inexorable. This was however interrupted by the incursion of the military into the governance of the country. This incursion added fillip to the creation of more political units. However, the arbitrariness of the process under the military dulled its potency as an agency for freedom while creating newer and more sinister problems.
Chief Awolowo once said that Nigeria is not a nation but a geographical expression. Most nations of the world started out as geographical expressions before they forged the nation. Nations are made up of peoples who subscribe to certain basic ideals. These ideal can be democratic governance with emphasis on respect for human rights, or common defence and security, or economic and customs union. The choice belongs to the peoples. It is they that concede residual powers to the governments. In other words, the governments exist for the benefit of the people and should therefore exercise only such powers as the people are willing to concede to it. Nowhere was this principle put more succinctly than in the Declaration of Independence of the United State of American. The signatories stated that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men deriving their just Powers from the consent of the Governed, that whenever any from of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the \right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute New Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and Happiness”.
These principles were adopted by the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress Assembled and became the foundation upon which the Constitution of the country was made. It is no wonder then that this constitution has endured for over 200 years with few amendments.
Before the colonization of Africa by the European States, the various indigenous peoples existed as autonomous units, relating to one another as was desirable by the peoples. They exercised control over their cultures, languages, trade, land and sea and all the resources contained therein. Their boundaries were clearly defined and were not functions of population, landmass or mineral resources. Their viability was not the subject of some economic criteria. Thus the Itsekiris existed side by side the Binis, the Ogonis existed side-by-side the Ijaws, as did the Zurus with the Hausa/Fulanis.
The British did not meet one Nigerian and indeed entered into separate treaties and or militarily conquered each people. For reasons of administrative convenience, they unilaterally joined these separate nations together. While colonial rule lasted, the people endured; bearing in mind that the objectives of the colonial government were not Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness for the indigenous people. Following from the injunction enshrined in the Declaration of the Independence of the United States, the peoples of Nigeria organized and abolished colonial rule and sought to institute a Government that will guarantee for them Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
However, with the active complicity of the British as interested parties in the future government of Nigeria, a political arrangement that subjugated certain peoples to others that are numerically superior was instituted. Attempts by the disadvantaged to effect a change since independence have been thwarted by the favoured who have given themselves veto powers dictated by their numerical superiority.
In various attempts to redress this situation, the military governments of Gowon, Mohammed, Babangida and Abacha balkanised Nigeria into several arbitrary political administrative units which have merely compounded the problem. Also, the military governments, through various decrees and policies, took all the powers of the people and dictated the residual powers of the lower tiers of government.
Thus the Federal Government, which should have been the recipient of residual powers from the peoples, became the agency delegating only such powers as it considered safe. One would then ask: safe for whom? Nigeria has thus come to the situation where every constituent part feels and claims to be marginalized and for good reason. The question then is: who is marginalizing whom?
This is the misnomer that all the military-inspired constitutions in Nigeria have sought to correct but because they fail to address the fundamental problems, they merely create palliatives, which compound rather than resolve the problems. In
1979, a Presidential constitution was foisted on the country. This created a powerful executive presidency in place of parliamentary cabinet government. Under the Presidential system, the cabinet members who affect the lives of the people in the execution of their offices are not elected representatives of the people. The required accountability provided by periodic subjection to electoral renewal or rejection of mandate was lost. Ministers and commissioners were only accessible to friends and relatives who facilitated their appointments rather than the people who should have determined, in the first instance, whether they are good materials for the exalted offices they occupied.
By 1983, the ministers had totally alienated the government from the people and their arrogance became the excuse the military needed to take over power. The battle between Professor Ambrose Alli of then Bendel State and the Shehu Shagari-led Federal Government over the disbursement of the federation account was further evidence of how the tail was wagging the dog.
Sustained military rule since 1983 has consolidated the powers of the Federal Government over the constituent parts, reducing states and local governments to administrative agencies, with no incentive to develop their resources. Hence, apart from the fact that the arbitrary nature of the creation of states and local government areas has failed to give the various peoples of Nigeria their desired political and cultural autonomy and identity, the bastardization of fiscal federalism further emasculated the administrative agencies created.
Two examples of this financial fraud perpetrated by the Federal Government against the States and Local governments will suffice. Before the introduction of the Modified Value Added Tax (MVAT), later changed to Value Added Tax
(VAT), a principal source of revenue, exclusive to the states was sales tax. The involvement of the Federal Government in VAT was to provide the technical and administrative support for which it was to charge 10 per cent fee. But the success of VAT made the revenue too attractive for the Federal Government to ignore. Thus by 1998, the FG through the Finance (Miscellaneous Taxation Provisions) (No. 2) Decree 1998 signed by General Abdulsalami Abubakar appropriated 25 percent, the states and Federal Capital Territory are to be given 45 per cent and 30 per cent will go to the Local Governments. Add to this, the inequities in the creation of local government area where a state like Kano with less population than Lagos has 45 Local Government areas to 20 in Lagos, and one can determine which administrative unit is losing its constitutional income to another.
The budget of the federation is usually predicated on oil sales expressed in US Dollars. In 1998, the Federal Government converted the dollars to Naira at an exchange rate of N22/U$$1 for the purposes of distributing the federation account. It then turned round and made a rule requiring states and local governments to buy dollars from it at the AFEM rate of N84 to the dollar. According to the re-calculation of the sharing of the federation account by this writer, based on an exchange rate of N80/U$$1, the states and Federal Capital Territory lost N108.8 billion and the Local Governments lost N89.6 billion of their constitutionally guaranteed revenue to the rapacious Federal Government (see Thisday, Friday January 9, 1998, page 14).
Is there any wonder why no state can pay the paltry minimum wage per month of N5,200 or US$60 while the federal government easily implemented it? Or is there any wonder where Abacha and his co-robbers got the billions of dollars and Naira that they stole?
With these enormous resources cornered by the Federal Government at the expense of the constituent parts, all attention in the new political dispensation has been focused on capturing the Federal Government. That is why catch phrases such as power-shift and rotational presidency have suddenly become emotive panacea for national stability. To assuage the genuine fears of the various people, the 1995 Abacha constitution, which is now being „debated‟, recognized 6 geo-political zones and made provisions for multiple vice-presidents to come from 3 regions. A lot of political balancing and ingenuous gerrymandering was done to make the unitary federation of Nigeria work. Everything was done as long as it did not acknowledge the desires of the various ethnic and linguistic groups for a certain level of autonomy to organize their lives and manage their resources. The military wants the country to regard the current 36-states structure as sacrosanct. They do not want to concede that the Ijaw revolt along the entire coastline of Nigeria covering several states is a repudiation of the artificiality of the boundaries, nor that the Ogoni struggle and the rising demand for a restructuring of the federation are calls for returning Nigeria and governance to the peoples who own and who should ultimately determine what kind of Federal Government is good for them to guarantee their right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Events since June 8, 1998 have provided this country opportunities to make Nigeria work as one nation. The rejection of the call for a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) by the Abubakar regime is unfortunate. It would have given the country a unique opportunity to confront its ugliness, appreciate and provide assurances for the genuine fears of the numerically smaller peoples and release the latent energies of the nations for development rather than to resisting the current anomalous contraption.
The Decree guiding the current transition programme, which allows elections to be run under the provisions of the 1979 Constitution removes the urgency for another military-inspired Constitution. Nigeria should borrow a leaf from the South African Experience and let the 1979 constitution amended by the Decree guide the next civilian government only as an interim constitution so that the parliament will be given the responsibility to prepare a constitution during its lifespan. Such constitution will be ratified by each autonomous ethnic group as were independent at the advent of British rule.
A Nigeria created by the common will of the peoples will free the various peoples to develop to their full potentials. Any arrangement that continues to give veto powers to some ethnic groups, no matter how big, over others, no matter how small, will continue to create tensions and divert the resources and energies of the country from the vital and urgent business of human development and thus deny the peoples their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness even in these dying days of the 20th century.
Clement T. Ofuani, Lagos. December 14, 1998
Ofuani is presently the Director General, Delta State (Nigeria) Capital Territory Development Agency
Publisher’s Note: With concerns over the unity of the country still elevated-this article written over a decade ago is surreal and requires that the world read it and understand that developments in Nigeria over periods are classic omens of people fighting for their own identity and voice that bear watching. Thank you Clem for the article
