At a recent lecture organised by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Ikeja branch, guest speaker, Pastor Tunde Bakare, reiterated the call for the restructuring of the Nigerian polity. His position stands in contradistinction to the recent posturing of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who dismissed restructuring as the solution to the numerous problems ailing the nation, writes STEPHEN UBIMAGO in this piece….
At a town hall meeting in Minnesota, the United States of America, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) reportedly averred that the solution to the problems ailing the country cannot be found in restructuring.
According to him, Nigeria’s problem boils down to fiscal federalism, for which already the Supreme Court has agreed that the 13 percent derivation principle is capable of resolving the problem.
The issue therefore remains how successive governments at the centre as well as in the various states have managed resources allocated to them from the central revenue pool of the federation.
Osinbajo maintained that given that previous governments have not been able to give proper account of revenue accruals that had come to them in the past, he can conclude that corruption is the bane of Nigeria.
While fielding question on Monday from a cross-section of Nigerians that attended the Minnesota meeting, Osinbajo said, “The problem with our country is not a matter of restructuring and we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into the argument that our problems stem from some geographical restructuring.
“It is about managing resources properly and providing for the people properly, that is what it is all about.
“I served for eight years as Attorney General in Lagos State and one of the chief issues that we fought for in Lagos State was what you call fiscal federalism.
“We felt that there was a need for the states to be stronger, for states to more or less determine their fortunes.
“So, for example, we went to court to contest the idea that every state should control, to a certain extent, its own resources (the so-called resource control debate).
“We were in court at that time up to the Supreme Court and the court ruled that oil-producing states should continue to get 13 percent derivation.
“While we were at the Supreme Court only the oil-producing states and Lagos were interested in resource control; everybody else was not interested in resource control for obvious reasons.
“Now, that is the way the argument has always gone, those who have the resources want to take all of it, while those who do not have want to share from others.”
However at a lecture/symposium of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Ikeja branch, which held at the Oranmiyan Hall of the Airport Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos, controversial cleric, Pastor Tunde Bakare, pontificated on the need for restructuring.
Bakare, renowned for his candor, was unsparing in his criticism of goings-on in the political space. He spoke on the theme, “Nigeria: A Nation Still in Bondage.”
Speaking on the Nigeria’s chequered history, he said, “It has been a turbulent journey of triumph here, and then a return to onerous bondage there, in seeming vicious cycle of repetitive routine.”
According him, “Genuine liberty was not attained in 1999, not with a pseudo-federal structure that constrains the birth of and development of true nationhood and the capacity of the constituents to develop at their respective paces.
“Not with a constitution that was forced on the people by the military and which gives fundamental human rights with one hand and takes them away with the other.
“Not with executive governments that have continued the culture of plunder, looting the treasury through various schemes from security votes of state governors to the self-perpetuation of political office holders in power through rigged electoral procedures. No it is not yet uhuru!”
Against this backdrop, it is easy to conclude that for Bakare, unlike Osinbajo, Nigeria’s problem is essentially structural – a systemic constitutional defect.
Tracing how the Nigerian state began to malfunction to the emergence of General JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi as Head of State following the 15 January, 1966 coup, Bakare said Ironsi foisted on the nation a phony therapy for the fractious nature of the Nigerian polity.
This he did when he suspended the 1963 Republican Constitution, which had established the country on the principles of true federalism, and imposed a unitary system on Nigeria.
He maintained, “Eventually, convinced that the politicians had failed the nation, on January 15, 1966, the military struck and the nation was back to bondage.
“Subsequently, on May 24 1966, the framework of the Nigerian state was destroyed when General Aguiyi Ironsi through Decree No. 34 abolished the regions.
“That day saw the death of the budding Nigerian nation.
“It was not long after that the different nations held together by the evolving Nigerian nation began to demand for secession, beginning with the North when the Murtala Mohammed-led counter coup-plotters advocated a Northern breakaway, which would have been but for the persuasion of the likes of Yakubu Gowon.
“Eventually with the East insisting on secession, the Nigerian Civil War was the inevitable result.”
On this note, the question for Bakare is: why did northern elements, who toppled the Ironsi government for foisting a unitary structure on the country, fail to return the country back to true federalism when they eventually seized the reins of power? Rather, they continued to perpetuate the Ironsi legacy even into the 1999 Constitution.
Responding to the poser, Barrister Adesina Adegbite, NBA Welfare Secretary, in a chat with Daily Independent, said, “The key to answering this question is in locating the attitude to power as exhibited by some Northerner politicians then as even now.
“In so far as power is treated as an end in itself, nothing else would matter. They are good at critiquing a system when they are not in power. When they get to power, it becomes business as usual.
“And that problem persists till date among many politicians, be they from the North or South.”
He however maintained that the country must move forward regardless. How?
According to him, “To move forward from this national quagmire, we must go back in order to go forward and we must approach the task on all fronts.
“First we must return to the cesspool into which the young Nigerian nation was dumped on the 24th of May, 1966.
“We must reach out for her, retrieve what is left of her, wash her clean and nurture her back to life.
“This we must do by returning to the dialogue table to restructure.”
“We must get set to rebuild and restore; we must retrieve what is remaining of the pillars of our founding fathers and we must restructure and reconstruct.
“We must rebuild from wall to wall, from gate to gate; from community to community; from city to city; and from region to region until the whole nation is restored.”
Hew added, “As we do so we must not forget that sovereignty lies with the people, not with politicians many of whom did not even win any election but rigged themselves to power.”
However, the occasion was not without those who held misgivings toward Bakare’s positive posture towards restructuring.
Renowned Lagos-based lawyer, Mr. Tayo Oyetibo (SAN), for example, joined issues with Bakare’s assumption that a so-called people’s constitution is the answer.
He wondered whether that would cure the character flaws of the average Nigerian, which, according to him, is at the bottom of the national quagmire.
Responding to Oyetibo, Bakare said Nigeria is in a state of great social, moral, economic and political turmoil that makes the call for restructuring imperative. Hence the moment must not be sacrificed on the altar of petty cynicism, he insisted.
He also recalled the enormous impact which the late legal icon, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, made on him in his formative years as a lawyer.
He said, “I had the privilege of working directly with Chief from my days as a Law student.
“Not only did he give me access to Law books and reports; he availed me the use of his library in preparation for examinations.
“I studied and slept in his library. He sponsored my trip to the United Kingdom for further editing and proofreading of the Nigeria Constitutional Law Report vol. 1 in 1981.
“As a lawyer in his firm, I learnt from his diligence and work ethic, the kind that would tolerate no laziness and for which less-driven souls erroneously labeled him a slave driver.
“Gani fought like a bulldog; once he was persuaded that a case was worth handling, he would deploy the power of concentration and pursue it to a logical conclusion and he never abandoned his cases.
“The rule of law, fundamental human rights, democracy and social justice summed up the profit for which he labored with boundless energy.”
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