PMB: Ponder on the words of Atiku Abubakar By Gbogun Gboro

Many Nigerians did not read, and most do not remember, the memo which former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar sent to the 2014 National Conference. That is a pity. I have re-read it, and I must urge all lovers of this country to read it. Coming from one of the most eminent personalities from Northern Nigeria, it deserves to be ranked as one of the most important, one of the most patriotic, documents in Nigeria’s recent history.

In particular, President Buhari, whom we elected on his promise of CHANGE, should read this document carefully and thoughtfully, and then respond to it. He has stolidly refused to respond to the countless calls on him to consider some agenda for restructuring our federation. He cannot now continue to do so without risking the loss of his credibility. That does not mean that we do not appreciate his fight against corruption; but it does mean that his anti-corruption fight does not, and cannot, touch the roots of Nigeria’s failings as a country.  Any claim to be making change without attending to the need for properly restructuring this federation of many nations is flatly unconvincing. We who support Buhari care very much about his evolving image and heritage.

The following are the significant sections of the Atiku memorandum. The words are entirely his – with only minor touching to save space or to highlight sections.

 

“What We Can Agree On

A major reason why Nigeria is not working is the way we have structured our country and governance, especially since the emergence of military rule in 1966. We can agree that the federal government is too big, too rich, and too strong relative to the federating states. We can agree that there is too much centralisation of resources and concentration of power at the federal level.

Nigerians would not have been calling for a National Conference, sovereign or not, if we were meeting our people’s basic needs, including food, shelter, education, security, energy, and transportation infrastructure, if we were putting the country on the right path and every segment of the country feels equitably treated. And we would unlikely see people describing as a mistake the amalgamation of the northern and southern parts of Nigeria 100 years ago.

Unitary Federalism

Therefore, many of our challenges are governance issues which can be tackled by a serious government committed to uplifting our people. To me then, the National Conference should design a political and governmental system that empowers local authorities and gives them greater autonomy to address peculiar local issues, and enhances accountability, while contributing to the general good of the country.  Such a robust federal system would reduce the tensions that are built into our current over-centralised system.  While the relationships among Nigeria’s ethnic and religious groups are important, the National Conference cannot expect to create a federating structure that coheres with our ethnic identities.  Those identities are not only numerous but cross-cutting as well.

Although our regional arrangement in the First Republic was not perfect – and did have its tensions – it certainly made for more local autonomy and better quality governance than what we have today. Our current structure, which can best be described as “unitary federalism” (a contradiction in terms), was created under our military regimes in the context of rising ethnic tensions and violence, an unfortunate civil war and the sudden rise in revenues from crude oil rents.

As more power was concentrated in the centre, the federal government appropriated more resources and expanded its responsibilities. All of these were done in the name of promoting national unity. And the process was relatively easy as the unified command structure of the military ensured little opposition. Military governors/administrators in the states could not defend greater autonomy for their states against their commanders from the nation’s capital: they were merely on military posting.

How to Fix Nigeria

Therefore, fixing Nigeria, to me, will require reversing decades of over-centralisation of power and over-concentration of resources at the centre. That is, it requires federal retreat or a degree of retrenchment of the federal government. The features will include:

1. Fiscal federalism (which allows the component states to keep their resources but allows the federal government taxing powers)
2. Devolution of powers to states and local governments (e.g. state and local control of education, health, roads and other infrastructure)

iii. State and local police to augment the federal police (with clearly defined roles and jurisdictions)

1. Independence of key democratic institutions, security and anti-corruption agencies.

Facts & Realities

We need to eschew emotions and knee-jerk reactions and examine these issues critically.  As is to be expected, interests have been formed and entrenched so that calls for devolution and decentralisation (mostly from the south) have been met with very strident opposition (mostly from the north). It is as though the over-centralisation of power and concentration of resources in the federal government benefit the north more than the south. Nothing can be further from the truth. In my view, and the evidence is there for all to see, the excessive dominance of the federal government has been detrimental to the development aspirations of all sections of this country.  It is precisely why we now rely almost exclusively on oil revenues, which come mainly from a small section of the country. It is what has, by extension, killed our agriculture, local control of schools, and promoted corruption that has eroded the quality of our public and even private institutions.

I come from the north, and I can tell you that government’s reliance on oil revenues has virtually destroyed the economy of the north, and no part of Nigeria has been left unaffected.  I readily acknowledge the role of oil revenues in expanding our infrastructure such as schools, roads and irrigation facilities. However, were oil prices to suddenly drop significantly, the country, every part of the country, will be in even more serious trouble than we are today.

Yet this is a country which, while I was growing up, had federating units that were able to send their children to school, build roads, universities, ports, factories, farm settlements, etc.  I had all my formal education in northern Nigeria and it was the Native Authority and regional government that funded it, even paid me to go to school. Three of the first generation universities, UNN, ABU and OAU were built by the then regional governments.

We must stop assuming that anyone calling for the restructuring of our federation is working for the breakup of the country.  And the notion that over-centralisation and an excessively powerful centre is equivalent to national unity is false.  If anything, it has made our unity more fragile and our government more unstable.  We must renegotiate our union in order to make it stronger.  Greater autonomy, power and resources for states and local authorities will unleash our people’s creative energies and spur more development. It will help with improving security. It will help give the federating units and the local governments greater freedom and flexibility to address local issues, priorities and peculiarities. It will promote healthy rivalries among the federating units and local authorities. It will help make us richer and stronger as a nation.

Let us consider restructuring our federation on the basis of the current six geo-political zones as regions and the states as provinces.

Let us look at our First Republic Constitution for guidance.  It is a constitution that resulted from hard bargaining among our leaders then, leaders whom no one would accuse of lacking in patriotism or developmental zeal.  Let us look at our history, for example the history of our education management and social provisioning in the First Republic and compare that with the current situation. Let us also look at other working federations around the world such as the United States, Canada, and India.  What we will learn from them is that states or provinces and local municipalities have greater autonomy over their resources, development choices, and wage structures, among other things. There is no reason for the governor of Lagos State to earn the same salary as the Governor of Kogi State or for a teacher in Mubi to earn the same salary as the one in Abuja or Port Harcourt, given the widely varying costs of living, productivity and revenue generating capacities across the country.

In a nutshell, the national conference should produce proposals that enable us have a smaller, leaner federal government with reduced responsibilities, a tax-focused revenue base, and a true federal system with greater autonomy for the component states and localities to control their revenues and their development”.

NATION

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