By Omoniyi Salaudeen
The search for a structure that can make Nigeria function maximally for the benefit of all the constituent ethnic nationalities is still a work in progress.
At a recent retreat organised by the Constitution Review Committee in collaboration with the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC) in Kano, the imperative of structural readjustment of the country again came to the fore. During the ensuing debate, the renewed call for a reversal to the old regional system of government practiced at independence in 1960 divided the lawmakers.
While the lawmakers from the South canvassed a return to the era of regionalism, their counterparts from the North insisted on maintaining the status quo. Before the military’s incursion into the politics of the country in 1966, Nigeria had adopted a republican constitution based on regional autonomy. However, with the sudden change of the structural arrangement which allowed each region to develop at its own pace, the country has had to grapple with separatist agitations, making it impossible to attain genuine nationhood.
The ceaseless agitation for self-determination by some sections of the country has been largely blamed on excessive control of the states by the centre. Regionalism aligns with power devolution. For the proponents of the old order, the only way to enable each geo-political zone to address its peculiar problems is to return to regionalism. They believe that with a restructured Nigeria, where constituent regions can move at their pace, control security apparatus, and preserve their socio-cultural affinity, the country will be able to manage its diversity better, According to them, power devolution to the region will reduce conflicts and political rivalry. Switzerland, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and India are examples of countries practicing regionalism.
On the other hand, the forces of the status quo argued that a regional system only addresses challenges based on the region and not on a nationwide scale. Over the years, the issue of resource control has been a major factor fueling the opposition of the North to the agitation for restructuring. Under the old regional government, the Southwest relied on revenue generated from cocoa, the North, groundnut pyramid in Kano, and the Southeast, palm oil respectively. However, the discovery of crude oil in 1958 and the subsequent imposition of the present quasi-unitary system by the military changed the arrangement. Since then, there has been a growing fear in some sections of the country that mineral resources deposited in each region would be confined to the authorities in charge. This is more so as the Federal Government has been unable to implement policies that can diversify the economy to other resources of revenue generation to stimulate sustainable economic growth. To date, Nigeria only relies on oil revenue, neglecting other resource deposits that abound in the country.
The government’s inability to maintain a balance between the desire by some sections of the country to control their resources, on the one hand, and the wish by others to sustain the existing structure has been a cause of incessant conflicts and instability in the polity.
At the Kano retreat, Senator Abdul Ningi betrayed the emotion of the North on the idea of returning to regionalism. His words: “As for the regional government, we have seen how the regional government was operated in the past. My part of the constituency that I am representing didn’t enjoy the development of that so-called regional government that was based in Kaduna. We aren’t going back there again? I am speaking for my senatorial district; it is either the Nigerian Federation or nothing. We can go along; my senatorial district will be satisfied independently with Nigeria, if that is what is required. “As far as regional government, my constituency, my people aren’t for it. What we need is the reform of the Federal government, fiscal federalism and there is nothing like true federalism. I have visited India, Argentina, Singapore, and the United States, all in trying to understand federalism. Federalism is done according to the history of each particular country.” Whatever is the argument for or against regionalism, there is a need for consensus among the stakeholders across the country.
As the Senate Majority Leader, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, rightly posited, adopting a regional form of government is not a thing that could be dealt with by mere sponsorship of a bill either by a parliament member or by the executive. It has to go through the laborious process of consensus-building.
It is an ongoing debate. According to Opeyemi, the Constitution Review Committee will be organizing a public hearing on geopolitical and zonal levels to collate the perspectives of the various stakeholders to achieve political consensus. Without consensus-building, he said, the constitutional amendment would be an exercise in futility. Chief Chekwas Okorie, in a telephone chat with Sunday Sun, dismissed the renewed call for a return to the old regional arrangement as an invitation to chaos.
He said: “It is impossible to go back to the regional government without causing major disruption that will even lead Nigeria to more anarchy than we had witnessed in the past. We have come to a level where every ethnic group continues to clamour for a state of its own. So, how do you collapse these states into regions? Even with the existing six geo-political zones that could have been considered as regions in the new sense, at the last national conference, people recommended the creation of seven states based on the equality of the geo-political zones. If that recommendation had been implemented, Nigeria would have had 42 states by now. Yet, somebody is sitting somewhere trying to take us back to a regional arrangement.
“We have been involved in state structure for too long. What we should be talking about now is the geo-political restructuring of Nigeria in a manner that will give the states the latitude to develop at their own pace to enjoy a certain level of freedom in terms of revenue generation and allocation. Before the Nigeria/Biafra war, revenue allocation in Nigeria was 50 per cent by derivation. And that enabled the regions to develop rapidly.
“My recommendation, therefore, is to simply restructure what we have now. We don’t even need more states. Going back to regionalism is like taking the Israelites to the biblical era of Egypt. That is not what we need at this time. If you go to the North right now, the Hausa people in Zamfara and Sokoto don’t want to associate again with the Fulani. And that is the cause of the battle they are having in the Northwest. The Middle Belt people also feel that they can no longer be under the monolithic North where they will just be canon folders and be used and dumped. That is why they have the Middle Belt Forum. This Middle Belt we are talking about is made up of eight states. How do you carve out a region from such an arrangement? Let the states be, but let Nigeria be structured in a manner that people will have a sense of citizenship.”
A respected elder statesman and Second Republic politician in Kano, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, also shared the same view, saying the call was a misplaced priority. According to him, a return to the old regional government would entail another constitution conference, which he said, would be unnecessary.
“The number of people in this country is such that we will always have different ideas, different approaches and different mindsets. Returning to the old regional government will mean changing the constitution. I don’t know if the country is in the mood to organize another constitution conference. I have been a part of two constitutional conferences. I will not think of holding a constitutional conference now or in the near future. I don’t think it is advisable. A return to the regional government will entail holding a constitutional conference. We cannot go back to the regional government without a constitutional conference. I don’t think the country is in the mood to do that now,” he declared.
A renowned constitutional lawyer and Human Rights activist, Dr Tunji Abayomi, concurred with Yakasai on the imperative of changing the constitution. However, he insisted on the practice of true federalism. He said: “If our diversity was working at independence, a return to the federalist Constitution would work for us. There will continue to be agitation and crisis in the country because the present constitution didn’t take into consideration the peculiarities of our nation.
“By the composition of Nigeria, the present constitution is inappropriate for the unity of different ethnic nationalities that make up the country. At independence in 1960, we had a constitution that allowed each region to run its affairs, but the military destroyed it and imposed another constitution that was largely unitary where the central government took virtually everything.
“What the people agreed upon at independence was a federalist Constitution where our diversity was taken into consideration and we were moving very well. There was healthy rivalry.
“I have been consistently saying it that Nigeria does not have a constitution because it is not a government that gives a nation a constitution. It is the constitution that gives a nation a government. And it is not the content of the constitution that validates a constitution. It is the procedure of making a constitution. In the case of Nigeria, the military started from a false premise and even lied with the preamble, ‘We the people.’