The recent call for restructuring of Nigeria is coming from all the geopolitical zones of the country and it is alarming that the calls are gathering momentum by the day. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the economic and socio- political problems manifesting in the country have shown that it can no longer continue with its abnormal structure.The recurrent militancy in the Niger Delta , the agitation for Independent Biafran Republic in the South East and the attack of local farmers in the North Central and southern states by the nomadic Fulani herdsmen among other socio problems have made the call for restructuring and true federalism almost on everybody’s lip.
The coming of the military in 1966 brought the current anomalous federal practice .
The coming into governance of the country by the military regime of Major General Aguiyi Ironsi had, in 1966, jettisioned the regional autonomy hitherto enjoyed by the component units as the regime foisted unitarism on the federation. From then on, Nigeria has only been federal in name but unitary in practice.
This unitary system has hindered the creative inclinations of Nigeria’s diverse peoples, different worldviews, multiple languages and make-ups.This has led to endless socio-political and socio-economic problems that could be seen as the natural offshoots of such systemic inconsistency. It is believed that many of the country’s problems today are as a result of the dilemma of a country which is apparently federal in its natural composition but is being run as a unitary state.
The renewed call for the restructuring of the country first came from the former Vice President of Nigeria and a chieftain of the ruling party, All Progressive Congress, APC Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
While stirring the hornet’s nest some months ago with the call for the restructuring of Nigeria, the former vice president stated that Nigeria needed restructuring just as he emphasised that the rejigging of the federation would strengthen its “unity and stabilise its democracy.” He was also full with optimism as he insisted that restructuring would happen one day, no matter how hard it was resisted.
Atiku who made this assurance while speaking at the late General Usman Katsina Memorial Conference, withthe theme: ‘The Challenges of National Integration and Survival of Democracy in Nigeria,’ said: “I suggest we resolve today to support calls for the restructuring of the Nigerian federation in order to strengthen its unity and stabilise its democracy. I believe that restructuring will eventually happen, whether we like or support it or not. The question is whether it will happen around a conference table, in a direction influenced by us and whether we will be an equal partner in the process. Or will it happen in a more unpredictable arena and in a manner over which we have little influence?”
“Nigeria is not working as well as it should and part of the reason is the way we have structured our country and governance, especially since the late 1960s.
The federal government is too big, and too powerful relative to the federating states. That situation needs to change, and calling for that change is patriotic.
We must refrain from the habit of assuming that anyone calling for the restructuring of our federation is working for the breakup of the country.
“An excessively powerful centre does not equate with national unity. If anything, it has made our unity more fragile, our government more unstable and our country more unsafe. We must renegotiate our union in order to make it stronger. Greater autonomy, power and resources for states and local authorities will give the federating units greater freedom and flexibility to address local issues, priorities and peculiarities. “It will help to unleash our people’s creative energies and spur more development.
It will reduce the premium placed on capturing power at the centre. It will help with improving security. It will promote healthy rivalries among the federating units and local authorities. It will help make us richer and stronger as a nation.”
Atiku thinking that there may be opposition to restructuring g said : “Some may say that we are saddled with more urgent challenges, including rebuilding our battered economy, creating jobs, fighting corruption and securing our people from terrorism and other forms of serious crimes. I believe, however, that addressing the flaws in our federation will help us address some of those very economic and security challenges facing this country.
“Let me quickly acknowledge that no federal system is set for all time. There are always tensions arising from matters relating to the sharing of power, resources and responsibilities. But established democracies have developed peaceful mechanisms for resolving such conflicts among the tiers of government. They recognise that negotiations and compromises are eternal,” Atiku said.
In his own view however, the National Coordinator, Open Dialogue Initiative, Comrade Abdullahi Haruna said the call for restructuring is nothing more than mere political statements emanating from politicians seeking attention.
“The call for restructuring of the Nigerian state is unnecessary and more of resort to political bravado by self-serving and attention seeking politicians. Persistent restructuring of a system does no good to the system. At a time other nations are building their system, naysayers kept calling for restructuring. To me, it smacks gross inconsistencies. Make do with what you have instead of unceasing calls for new models of governance.
“Models of governance do not make themselves, the people do. So even if the so-called restructuring model is resorted to and we have a population that isn’t amenable to progress, we will end up with same system that needed change. The advocacy should be on attitudinal build up to patriotism, discipline and productivity.
“Nothing is wrong with us as a people, what we need to change is our deep-seated hatred for crass opportunism, tribal hatred, bigotry and ourselves. Template for equitable distribution of resources, respect for our differences and idiosyncrasies should be what we should talk about and not the call for restructuring. It is retrogressive and distracting,” he said.
Aside Atiku, other eminent Nigerians have also lend voice to the call for restructuring, The elder statesmen and women, including Second Republic Vice-President, Dr. Alex Ekwueme; Yoruba leader, Ayo Adebanjo; former Minister of Information, Prof. Jerry Gana; former Governor of Anambra State, Dr.Chukwuemeka Ezeife; resource control protagonist, Ankio Briggs and the immediate former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi Second Republic Vice- President, Ekwueme said every disappointment was a blessing, noting that his incarceration in 1984 at Kirikiri Prison by the
military afforded him the opportunity to reflect deeply on Nigeria’s problems.
According to him, he came out with the idea of six geo-political structures, which he pushed for in a national conference much later and it became a convention and has taken care of minorities in the South and North.
Ekwueme said what Nigeria negotiated for and agreed with the colonial masters before independence was a regional government, where each has a constitution that were annexed to the Republican Constitution of 1963. According to him, the Republican Constitution then provided 50 percent revenue sharing formula for the regions, 30 percent to a distributable pool and 20 percent to the centre. “There is need for us to return to the basics from what we inherited from our founding fathers,” he said.
On his part, Adebanjo insisted thatNigeria must be restructured to correct the humongous damage done to the nation’s constitution by the military and to put a stop to the various acts of uprising in the country, including those of the Niger Delta Avengers, MASSOB and IPOB. Prof. Jerry Gana said the nation’s founding fathers were right by agreeing to a federal structure, which he described as the best governance structure to guarantee peace, equity and justice.
A woman politician and Treasurer, Bola Ige Movement, Princess Olabisi Sangodoyin said Nigeria has to be restructured.
“We had the experience, we are talking from experience. When it was a federating unit, it was better off. If your brother is around you and he is doing something that is wrong , you can easily correct him , if you have some amount of money or a small food in the house all of you will sit together and ask how do we manage this food , so if everyone has his own unit that unit will give enough money to them, the centre, the federal will just be there as the coordinating point. So even people themselves within the unit will caution themselves. Everybody refers to Awolowo time, he did well but not that we cannot get the likes of Awolowo”, she said.
Former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku said he has called for the restructuring of the country since 2005 at the political reform conference.
“My most recent public statements on the matter were made in Ibadan School of Public Policy and Government last January and at Akure 40th Anniversary Colloquium of Ondo State on January 30. The present governance arrangement we have, with the country comprising 36 non-viable states, most of which cannot pay the salaries of their teachers and civil servants, is not the best. Rather, we should return to an arrangement, where the six regions will form six federating units,” Anyaoku insisted.
Also rising in support of restructuring is the Senator representing Kaduna Central, Comrade Shehu Sani who said “too much parasitism, dependency and laziness, are encouraged by the current arrangement”.
“Restructuring Nigeria is a necessity and a reality that we must live up to. It is a fact that Nigeria as a federation today is not functioning as it is supposed to be and the 36 states structure, bicameral parliament is too expensive for a federation.
There is a need for us to dissolve the 36 states structure and create six straight structures, while each of the federating units work towards generating revenue to execute their programmes and policies, and the units contribute to the centre.”
Speaking on the renew agitation for restructuring, the Ogun state governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun stated that marginalization and violation of the provisions of the country’s constitution were responsible for the agitation for restructuring.
The governor who made this known while addressing participants of Course Nine (9) of the Executive Intelligence Course of the Institute of Security Studies in Abuja however threw his weight behind restructuring that would not split the country but would allow for equal distribution of projects, dividends of democracy and a review of the revenue allocation formula.
The governor lamented that his state which had the highest number of industries in the country, contributing significantly to the revenue generation efforts of the government, was placed 25th in terms of revenue sharing.
He said: “I believe that if our institutions had been strengthened, people will not need to call for the restructuring of the country at all because we will abide by our constitution. But you have a scenario where people do what they like, even in project distribution, dividends of democracy among others.
“Look at fiscal federalism, if you had followed what is in the Constitution and everybody believe that the institution is greater than all of us, we will not be where we are today. So, for me, any restructuring that will affect the unity of the country, I am not for it.
“But a restructuring that will say, there are certain thing that just has to be done differently, I want that to happen.
For example, in Nigeria today, Ogun state has the largest number of industries, but when the money is being distributed from the federation account, the state is placed about the 25th position. These are indices that have been taken several years back and probably not in relation with what you contribute to the federal purse.
“For me, that is restructuring and maybe reforming the revenue allocation formula, or people calling for state police. I have said I will support state police, but that does not mean we will not have federal police. “It is just about making amend in some areas, but not things that will uproot our existence as a nation and those things that divide us.
We should talk more and dwell more on things that hit us as a nation. It is even in diversity that we have our strength.”
In his reaction to the call for the nation’s restructuring, and former Political Adviser to ex-President Shehu Shagari, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai, said restructuring Nigeria would not solve the nation’s problems if certain issues in the system were not adequately addressed.
He, advises that the nation must embrace the parliamentary system of government in order to address the perceived imbalance in the country.
“But my opinion is that if you are not careful, restructuring is not the answer to what they are agitating for. My opinion is that what is giving rise to all these agitations is the power that is concentrated in the central government, headed by an executive president.
As long as we have the same arrangement, no matter what you do, unless the power at the centre is rearranged in such a way that this concentration of power in the hands of the Federal Government, controlled by the President, is reduced, you are not solving the problem,” he said.
On his part, the National Chairman of the APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, said the issue of restructuring is not the party’s priority for now.
He said that President Muhammadu Buhari administration is currently focused on rebuilding the economy, creating jobs and ensuring the security of lives and property.
He explained that because the issue was important, the party would at the appropriate time; make its position on the issue of restructuring public. The Senate President, Bukola Saraki said calling for restructuring now may create a distraction at this stage of the country’s political experience.
He suggested that the country should make do with constitutional amendment, which he feels is less controversial.
“We have been doing constitution amendment for many years, yet we don’t amend it. Let us amend the ones that we all agree that need to be amended.
If not that the former president, for whatever reason, did not assent to the last amendment, we would have been done with that. My view is that let us do those less controversial ones. After that, the second phase of the amendment we will bring new issues, possibly issue like restructuring,” Saraki said. He said a committee is already in place to commence the job of amending the constitution.
“We have set up a committee headed by the Deputy Senate President. They have started meeting. We gave them a clear mandate. As you are aware, in the 7th Assembly a lot of work was done, the National Assembly passed it but it did not get the assent of the former President,” he said.
As the agitation for restructuring continue to gather momentum , the question on the lips of political observers and analysts is how practicable is the issue of restructuring and whether it is actually going to be the lasting solutionto Nigeria’s endemic problems.
Only time will tell.
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