Only a few days ago, the Governors Forum met with President Buhari to indicate concerns of its members about the growing failure of states to meet their statutory duties: payment of salaries to workers and of pensions to those who had served the states in their productive years before retiring to tend their bodies and minds in their old age. Two things from the proposal of the association of 36 governors across partisan lines is acknowledgment of the negative impact of collapse of oil price on governors’ capacity to sustain their states. Another thing is the request for increase in allocations from the federation account to states. It was reported that the president also told the governors that the federal government also has problems meeting its own responsibilities but he promised to study the governors’ request and make appropriate recommendations to other branches of government. The acknowledgment by governors of the possibility that their states may atrophy, if no serious intervention beyond periodic bailouts is put in place, must re-ignite the theme of re-federalisation which appears to have been relegated to the backburner since the emergence of the government of change.
The problem of fiscal control of the states by the central government in the 1999 Constitution is imaged most illustratively by the chairman of the Governors Forum: “You will agree with me that states are the landlords. We own the land and the people, therefore, the economy of this country lies in the states. Everything comes from the states- the oil, agricultural produce, mining and people are in the states, while the federal government is in Abuja.” Although this statement was made to support the argument for allocation of more funds from the federation account to the states, it could also have been made directly to call for fiscal and political autonomy to the states, a move that can change the architecture of governance in the country from a house of one puppeteer and 36 puppets to a house of equal siblings or partners committed to the same goal: improvement of the life of citizens wherever they may be in the country.
As the president’s group studies the governors’ proposal, citizens and pundits will do the country a lot of good by suggesting solutions to the country’s political and economic problems. They should not assume that the manifesto of the party of change will self-propel and all that citizens need to do is to wait for each pledge to be met by the president. Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State also expressed ideas similar to that of the chairman of the Governors Forum at this year’s London School of Economics African summit to suggest that governors are thinking alike about what Nigeria needs to do in the wake of the decline in oil revenue: “If we ask for tax revenue, we in the government will have to deliver something. We need to imbibe fiscal discipline in delivering the public services that our citizens so rightly deserve. This calls for a greater autonomy of state and local governments, which in turn promotes accountability. If we look at Canada for example, its decentralism has played a great part in its growth and success, allowing for maximum provincial authority in the fields of healthcare, education, taxation and social benefits.”
Even before President Buhari assumed office and became privileged to know the depth of Nigeria’s economic problems arising principally from collapse of oil price and from systematic predation by the locusts that had governed the country for decades, he too sensed that the re-designing of the structure of governance in the country needs immediate attention. One of the core statements in his manifesto illustrates this commitment well: “Initiate action to amend our Constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties and responsibilities to states and local governments in order to entrench true Federalism and the Federal Spirit.”
The copious quotes from the ruling group are to establish the recognition on the part of current rulers of the need to re-envision and re-design Nigeria in the direction of unity of purpose, as distinct from the decades-long notion of unity per se. Now that it has taken the relative evaporation of the huge revenue from sale of fossil energy for top members of the executive branch to recognise the need for a new design of the country’s economy, pundits and the public, particularly the non-partisan ones ought to recognise the need to project the call for return to federalism outside the debate about inter-ethnic tensions, such as the conflict between Fulani herdsmen and Agatu, Igbo, or Yoruba farmers. The review of the 1999 Constitution in relation to the architecture of governance is an argument that is independent of what states or ethnic nationalities do or do not do to each other. The problem that the current constitution encapsulates was caused not by the existence of several nationalities in the country, but by the vision of several military dictators and their civilian surrogates in charge of the country since 1966.
For readers of this column who may be too young to know how Nigeria came to this pass, it is necessary to go back briefly to history. At independence in 1960, Nigeria was a federal system based on three regions. In 1963, it became a ‘republic’ still under a federal constitution. In its ten years of self-rule from 1957 to 1966 and with very little revenue from petroleum, the three regions functioned as equals under a federal constitution and as partners with the central government to create a more conducive environment for citizens to make a living. The competitive federalism that was in play until 1966 made it possible for each region to benefit from comparative advantage thrown up by its vegetation and values. Cotton, groundnut, and cattle production drove the economy of Northern region; palm produce and rubber drove that of Eastern region while cocoa and rubber pushed the economy of Western region. Even after a fourth region, the Midwest (now Edo and Delta States) was carved out of Western region, the four regions were still meeting their responsibilities until the end of the First Republic.
The first coup and subsequent ones put the management of the country in the hands of soldiers. The civil war fought partially for the control of the petroleum producing areas in the Niger Delta became an excuse in the hands of military rulers for tinkering with the country’s architecture. The first attempt to shift from the federal system to a unitary one by General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi was resisted by the makers of the second coup. Shortly after the onset of the civil war, many of the foreign countries that supplied Nigeria arms made it clear that they would rather support whichever area had control of the oil. Suddenly, Nigeria was transformed into 12 states under the command of General Yakubu Gowon, who ironically came to power on the need to save the federation from over concentration of power at the centre. Even after creation of 12 states, each state was still big and resourceful enough to fulfil its duties to its citizens. But as military rulers succeeded each other, each dictator wanted to put his stamp on the country. The goal for all the dictators was to make it hard or impossible for any state to be strong enough to want to leave the union. Each subsequent ruler created more states to be funded by the apparently unlimited flow of oil from the womb of the Niger Delta.
Many civilians who hoped to benefit from proliferation of states designed to be sustained by revenue from petroleum egged the dictators on. Such civilians were still calling for new states even in late 2015 although they have been relatively quiet since the coming home to roost of the chicken of petroleum. It is, however, salutary that governors are now more aware than before that the states they have governed with relative ease because of oil money are withering faster than ever under their leadership, largely because of structural problems many of them could afford to ignore when petroleum was a reliable goose laying the golden egg.
- To be continued.
- NATION
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