Former President Goodluck Jonathan has been talking up a storm, selling a story of his political failure that combines half-truths with lame excuses. As he tells it, his administration did not implement the recommendations of the National Political Conference primarily due to “lack of time” and wants the world to believe that he was committed to the fundamental restructuring of Nigeria. This is a blatant attempt to rewrite history: Jonathan actually showed no appetite in his five years in office to lead the charge for change beyond the time-buying feint of the conference.
Without doubt, Nigeria is desperately in need of restructuring to reflect the natural federation that it is, douse the flames of divisiveness and facilitate development. There is an urgent need for a national consensus and collaboration to overthrow the current, unworkable unitary system and restore autonomy to the states as federating units. This noble goal will not be served by diversionary attempts to dodge responsibility. Those who had the opportunity but failed must all acknowledge their mistakes, missteps and cowardice, and join others to move ahead with the reforms to save the country from disaster.
We find Jonathan’s recent return to a familiar and false refrain he has been peddling since his failed re-election bid in 2015 worrying. To be fair, the time between the submission of the 2014 conference report in August 2014 and terminal date of his administration on May 29, 2015, the diverse, contending political interests and inability to mobilise the National Assembly and the majority of the states’ houses of assembly may not have allowed for a root-and-branch constitution amendment.
But Jonathan demonstrated his brinksmanship: he had more than enough time and opportunity to implement those recommendations that did not require constitutional amendments and other laws, only executive fiat and lending his office to forging a consensus. These include stopping state sponsorship of religious pilgrimages, initiating laws to facilitate non-conviction-based asset forfeiture to recover proceeds of graft and special courts to try corruption cases, initiating negotiations on the recommended new revenue allocation formula, as well as steps to raise resource derivation from the current 13 per cent. Trying to sell himself as an advocate of restructuring is dishonest. A conference member and former governor of Ogun State, Olusegun Osoba, reiterated that Jonathan could, by Executive Orders, have done some good if indeed he was a committed reformer. We agree.
Indeed, the Chairman of the National Conference, while submitting the report to Jonathan on August 21, 2014, emphasised the trichotomy: “We approved over 600 resolutions, some dealing with issues of law, issues of policy and issues of constitutional amendments…”
Agitation for a fundamental remodelling of Nigeria’s failing federation predated Jonathan and he followed a path trodden by his predecessors, who lacked the conviction and courage to lead the move for change and sought instead to hijack the agitation for their own personal aggrandisement. In fact, agitation peaked after the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election won handily by the late Moshood Abiola. The response of successive governments has been to stoutly oppose calls for a sovereign national conference of the country’s nationalities and, in its place, to buy time, recruit the entrenched interests and sell-outs among the agitators and set up “national conferences.”
The brutal military dictator, Sani Abacha, set up a conference in 1995 to douse the clamour and facilitate his self-perpetuation. Olusegun Obasanjo’s 2005 conference included the self-serving provision of removing presidential term limits. Desperate to muster support from his South-South base, the South-East and the critical South-West, the ideological base of federalism, as well as from the North-Central, Jonathan too set up the national conference in 2014. He succeeded by this in luring factions of some self-determination groups to support his re-election bid, which however failed.
But eight months (September 2014 to April 2015) was enough time for Jonathan to initiate Executive bills, policy and sincere engagement with all stakeholders to prepare for constitution reforms. Confronted with legal hurdles and a Supreme Court judgement ceding all resources on the country’s coast/continental shelf to the Federal Government, Obasanjo showed leadership by persuading governors, lawmakers and other stakeholders to agree to 13 per cent derivation from off-shore oil revenues to the oil-bearing states.
Jonathan ignored calls to similarly initiate a consensus on the recommended revenue sharing formula. After much clamour, the immediate past Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, directed the heads of federal and high courts to designate some courts to handle corruption cases; Jonathan failed to engage the judiciary towards this direction. These did not need constitutional amendment, only purposeful presidential leadership. He failed the test. The 2014 national conference had 494 delegates, who met for four months and harnessed the work of the 1995 and the 2005 conferences. Rather than act, Jonathan set up a seven-member panel in September 2014 “to study and draw up implementation strategy.” Nothing came of it.
The Jonathan administration was notorious for indecisiveness in other areas too: it failed to implement the Ogoni clean-up even after the United Nations Environmental Programme September 2011 report was released. After the 2012 fuel price protests and revelations of the N2.53 trillion fraudulent subsidy scam, Jonathan did not implement the recommendations of the Idika Kalu panel that, among others, urged that the four loss-making refineries be privatised within 18 months.
Nigeria deserves better in leadership. As the United States Declaration of Independence rightly states, “…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 form 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 organising its power in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
There is no doubt that the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness have been grossly eroded in Nigeria. Nigerians have the inalienable right to “alter or abolish” this unworkable political structure. Nigeria, therefore, must restructure to avert implosion. Like Jonathan, President Muhammadu Buhari has not acted beyond his recent admission of a need for change. The time to act is now.
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