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Now that presidential aspirants are crawling out of the political wood works, the media has to raise the issue of political restructuring of Nigeria. Nigerians who want restructuring, and those who do not, deserve to know the position of the aspirants before they emerge as presidential candidates.
The media and the electorate cannot allow the aspirants to sit on the fence on this matter; they cannot skirt around this most important issue in Nigeria. That journalists, civil society organisations, youths, professionals and labour must put the feet of presidential aspirants to the fire of restructuring is an irreducible minimum.
Several Nigerian pressure groups, including Coalition of Northern Groups, Yoruba Afenifere, Ohaneze Ndigbo and others have been consistent in demanding that Nigeria’s political system needs a comprehensive overhaul.
The Northern Elders Forum, responding to Indigenous People of Biafra’s call for separation of Biafra from Nigeria, even went to court to demand a referendum for Igbo people. Other pressure groups, like Igbo lawyers forum, have joined themselves to the suit.
They disagree with the view, held by prominent Nigerians, like former President Olusegun Obasanjo and former military President Ibrahim Babangida, that the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable: a final, absolute, done deal.
It is a patronising and paternalistic attitude to dealing with the problems of Nigeria, a confused country that is out of sorts with itself. So long as the arrogant opinion of these jaded statesmen persists, Nigeria will remain in that lockstep that reggae musician, Max Romeo, describes as ‘One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward.’
Bolaji Abdullahi, who as Publicity Secretary of All Progressives Congress and member of APC Committee on restructuring led by Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai, said certain elements within the party did not support restructuring because they thought it favoured Southern Nigeria more than the North.
The most vexing issues are control of the nation’s resources and the principle of fiscal federalism, which suggests that states should manage the resources within their borders and remit an agreed percentage of revenue derived therefrom into the federation account from where the Federal Government takes its own and allocates the balance to the states according to an agreed formula.
Another vexing issue that needs to be negotiated is the matter of state police that will check both the rampaging herdsmen, who trespass on farmlands and sometimes kill the farmers and bandits, that hold North-West Nigeria by the jugular.
Policing will be knotty where Section 215(4) of the Constitution says, “… the Governor of a State… may give to the Commissioner of Police of that State such lawful directions with respect to maintaining and securing public safety and public order within the State… provided that before carrying out any such directions… the (CP) may request that the matter be referred to the President…”
You may have noticed that after the introduction of South-West Security Network, better known as “Amotekun,” the frequency of herders attacking farmers and wasting their lives and crops has drastically reduced.
To enable Nigerian citizens take advantage of the adult universal suffrage that enables them to vote and be voted for, Sections 65(4b), 106(d), 131(c) and 177(c), which provide that a Nigerian can become a federal or state legislator, president or governor, only if “he is a member a political party (registered with Independent National Electoral Commission) and is sponsored by that political party,” must go.
It should be replaced by a provision that allows independent candidates to contest all levels of government. You may have observed that creative Nigerian politicians have devised a way to bypass these sections by simply floating a political party as a special purpose vehicle to actualise their ambitions.
If the independent candidacy is inserted into the Constitution many more, especially the youths who cannot stand the protocols of the old breed politicians, will take their political fates with their two hands and pull the political chestnut out of the fire.
The Land Use Act (that started as a military decree) must be revoked so that land will be vested in the individual landlords or their communities. A former Chief Oluwa of Lagos told British colonial masters that land in Yorubaland is held in trust by the living, on behalf of the dead and the yet unborn. What could possibly be wrong with this arrangement?
Many entrepreneurial projects never took off because banks stubbornly required a certificate of occupancy signed by a state governor before accepting land as collateral for loans. Whoever thought of that decree is probably a sadist.
It is pertinent to question the rationale for insisting that electricity power generated beyond certain megawatts by a state government must be uploaded onto the national grid! This is unreasonable and absurd.
It’s like a ploy to remove credible competition from the oligarchs who bought the electricity generating and distributing companies without technical or financial competences to successfully run the “lemons” they bought. Even with the “arrangee” loans they got, they are still paper tigers.
Section 6(6)(a), an ouster clause of the Constitution, says citizens cannot legally compel the government to carry out contents of Chapter II on Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy, a list of obligations that governments owe the people.
Listing the names of the 36 states and the local government areas along with their headquarters in the Constitution implies that increasing their numbers will require invocation of the cumbersome Section 9(1-4) of the Constitution.
If, for instance, a river or the Atlantic Ocean were to permanently overrun a state or local government headquarters it will require the invocation of Section 9(2-4) to legally take the expedient measure of relocating or renaming the headquarters.
Relevant portions of the convoluted Section 9(2-4) of the Constitution, “An Act of the (NASS) for the alteration of (1999) Constitution shall not be passed… unless the proposal is supported by the votes of not less than two-thirds majority of all members of (the NASS) and approved by resolution of the Houses of Assembly of not less than two thirds of all the States,” needs urgent review.
One major damage that the military government wrought against the people of Nigeria is to put the Federal Government in the role of a superior that can supervise the activities of state governments that are not necessarily under the Federal Government.
Imagine a federal system that allows the Federal Minister of Education to give instructions to State Commissioners of Education. That explains why advocates of restructuring insist that states should have their own constitutions as obtained in the First Republic.
Without restructuring any Nigerian President will fail woefully. The time to restructure is now.
