RESTRUCTURING: A PANACEA FOR NIGERIA’S DEVELOPMENT AND COHESION

BY SAM OMATSEYE

KEY NOTE ADDRESS AT THE NIGERIAN BAR ASSOCIATION, JOS BRANCH LAW WEEK

 

When I was told that the topic of this address was Restructuring: A Panacea For Nigeria’s Development and Cohesion, I mused on the word sequence of the second part of the topic. That is, development and cohesion. I thought the word order needed to be redeveloped to make sentence cohere. I thought it should have been reversed. Cohesion before development. How do we develop without cohesion? As Amos said in the Bible, Can two walk together unless they be agreed?

 

We shall go into this later, but suffice to say that the reason this year’s hallmark of discourse and tempest of controversy have smoldered without let or remission is that those who advocate restructuring believe that without it Nigeria will be mired in the 20th century without a foot forward. Those who have been known to oppose it are those who are irritated that the opponents are not allowing them to make the progress that the present dispensation has guaranteed. It is a contest between paralysis and paralysis.

I wonder why the word panacea was thrown into the topic. It made my mind travel back to earlier in the year when I was giving a talk at the University of Ibadan and a young female student asked the question, “sir, if we have restructuring,” she began, “Does it mean we have solved all our problems?” That is where the word panacea comes. Even as developed as the countries of the western world are, we still hear protests about the inequalities and inequities of the country as they are. Those who say they want BREXIT were voting for some sort of restructuring of their country. Those who voted for the provocateur in chief in the United States, the toupee-happy Donald Trump went to the vote to append their distrust against the system as they saw it. In our terms, they are not changing the federal structure, but they are angry that even though they may love the structure of their country, the nation has not provided for them the elixir of good feeling that the richest country on earth should offer. Ditto to Austria, even Germany and France where commonsense prevailed over bigotry.

So, I want to start on a cautionary note that the call for restructuring, while necessary and even inevitable, should not be associated with the quality of el dorado.

How did I respond to the female student at Ibadan? I said she just asked a good question, but I referred to a Russian anarchist in Turgenev’s novel, Fathers and Sons, in which the anarchist called Basarov was asked what would he replace the system with when it was brought down. His reply was, let us bring it down first. After that, we shall figure out what to replace it with. That I think is the mindset of those of us who believe we need to restructure. The difference with Turgenev’s anarchist is that I don’t believe the system should be dismantled before it is redeemed. What I seek is a revolution with kid gloves.

I will state that one of the reasons we are in the middle of this rut of controversy is that Nigerians have never had the opportunity to collectively decide what country we wanted. When it seemed we had something, it was ushered in for us in the context of the military. When the Constituent Assembly was inaugurated during the time of the gap-toothed General Ibrahim Babangida, he gave off what was then known as “no-go areas.” Today, we are still circling comically around the no-go areas.

Yet, if we are to focus on the subject of restructuring proper, we would agree that some sort of restructuring has always taken place since Lord Lugard helped to birth what has become Known as Nigeria today. We had quite a few constitutions. We had the Clifford constitution, which was criticized for its restricted participation, though it gave rein to anti-feudal umbrage for endorsing the council of chiefs. Some progress was made with the introduction of the Richards Constitution which set the stage for a regional structure. The Southern and Northern Protectorates had been resolved into one and it was time to recognize the main strands of that country with a law. We had the Macpherson and the Lyttleton constitutions in tow.

From the point of view of the colonial masters, they had prepared a country into one and, in their own lights, sealed it with the Independence constitution.

Yet in the country they brought together, there were histories that they ignored. In the north, they did not take cognizance of the tension unfettered by the 1804 Jihad spearheaded by Uthman Dan Fodio. Though the jihad created a political behemoth that stretched from Sokoto to part of what we call the Yorubaland today, they did not understand that in Borno had thrived a caliphate that even enjoyed a dynasty, the Saifawa Dynasty, that lasted a thousand years.  And within even the Sokoto Caliphate and the Borno kingdom thrived tendencies and peoples who were not always at peace with the establishment.

In the south, they had forced on the Igbos what they called warrant chiefs in clear disdain for the republican virtues and provenance of its people. They were imposing rules  and ideologies and lifestyles that made sense to themselves and the people they had “pacified.” Even though one of their western poets Rudyard Kipling, had said, “east is east, west is west, and never the twain shall meet,” they presumed that the Igbo of the east and the Yoruba of the west would just hug, kiss and make love.

But they were not so naïve. One of them Harry Willink headed a commission in 1958 that developed the report of minorities, especially in the Niger Delta and wanted the new nation to take cognizance of their conditions.

At independence, the euphoria did not find its feet but we were at each other’s throats early. It confirmed many people’s view who say, along with Chief Obafemi Awolowo, that “Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression.” This cartographic illusion has haunted the nation since.

Another level of restructuring also happened to the three regions, when the Midwest was created and excised from the western region. It was a restructuring that Chief Awolowo did not approve of because he wanted other regions to also have parts of them enjoy federal autonomy as well. It was restructuring as vendetta, he rightly contended. It was a way to clip his wings.

But that same restructuring was at the heart of Biafra, and we shall get into this later. But during the civil war, General Gowon also broke Nigeria into 12 states. Some say the real reason was to immolate Biafra for the greater good of one Nigeria. With Rivers State created, two things were accomplished. Gowon ossified Biafra as a landlocked state without access to water and protein, which made it vulnerable to mass starvation. Two, it could lay no legitimate claim to oil as a resource base to prosecute the war. Again, restructuring happened out of the force of circumstance. Shall we not say it was restructuring as opportunism? If we wanted such other excuse, we did not have them for Murtala Muhammed’s step in breaking us into 19 states or Babangida into the present structure.

But to say that restructuring is about creation of states is an error. Different people have defined it in different ways. Some want it to mean a severance of their ethnic nationality from Nigeria, some want it as a way to get the nation to understand that all should be fair to all else, some see it as a way to take the oil for themselves, others see it as a way to take the oil from those who have it, or at least dictate to them how the oil should be mined and distributed. Some – and that includes some of our political elite – see it as their only path to power.

In all this, we have pride. We have prejudice. We have reason. We have chaos. We have sentiment. All of this is couched by each as an expression of patriotism or a rejection of it.

From the beginning, we are at the crossroads of definitional confusion. We cannot really define what it means, and then it becomes problematic to agree on what should be restructured. It calls to mind when intellectuals of the late 19th century and early 20th century pondered the idea of structuralism. It has traversed such disciplines as political science, sociology, anthropology, psychology, literary criticism, economics and even architecture. Scholars like Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roman Jacobson and Jacques Lacan have elucidated it. Their point was that structure is more important that function. Well, many people calling for restructuring say they want the structure to function, but for it to function it must be the right one.

Structuralists however got into a snag because many scholars started doubting the importance of structure. Everyone can be its own structure and function, and that led to such movements as post-structuralism and post modernism. We have had a lot of confusion since or what Christ described as “distress of nations and perplexity.” I hope that we do not get to s ate where we cannot have a structure.

But nowhere is this confusion more revealing than in allowing the big names of nation to say it in their own words. So, we hear from Tanko Yakassai, we also hear from Wole Soyinka, and we also hear from Emir of kano Lamido Sanusi. The voices of Femi Okurounmu, Mallam Adamu Ciroma, Atiku Abubakar, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Alex Ekwueme, Rotimi Amaechi, Paul Unongo, Ben Nwabueze, Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, Ango Abdullahi, Obong Victor Attah. The irony is that all agree something is wrong. They don’t know or agree on what is right.

It is interesting to see how all of these people are patriots or claim to be patriots but they look at patriotism through different lenses. The ambiguity of their submissions is enough to make the average Nigerian observer wonder. More so when their aversion of ill will is only counterbalanced by their profession of love for their fellow citizens of a different faith and tribe. They seem to be saying: “I love you, but I love myself more. But I love you all the same. If you don’t love me as much as I want you to love me then I will withdraw my love for you. And then, maybe, we can head for the boxing ring.”

It recalls to mind the lines of the late Arab poet Mahmud Darwish: “Don’t ask of me, my love/ the love I once had for you.”

Yet in the voices of these men, and they are all men, the temperaments are not the same. A Tanko Yakassai declaims with an unmistakable truculence only counterpoised with an Nwabueze whose fidelity to restructuring bears the underlying angst of Biafra. A hard-charging Ango Abdullahi clearly enjoys his tirades. A Wole Soyinka, with syntactic rebellion, makes no bones about the negotiability of the Nigeria state and society.

For instance, Edwin Clark comes across as an economist of inequality and guardian of the treasures of oil. Adamu Ciroma unveils a persona that agrees that Nigeria is not sustainable in its present state. There are a few very profound offerings. They include the writings of Lamido Sanusi, Paul Nnongo and Atiku Abubakar.

One sapient point that has been missed in the cacophony was the point that the western region under Awolowo and the eastern region of the First Republic were at peace with the centre. The centre was not always a scarecrow. It was a desirable thing. As Sanusi reminds us, so good was the centre that when Awolowo was done as premier of the western region, he decided it was time to take the centre. From being a regionalist, he was taking a crack at the centre. When Awolowo was at the centre with Gowon, he never raised a finger for federalism.

The southeast also loved the centre.  They were not taking a crack at the centre. They dominated the civil service and had the best core of the officer corps of the Nigerian army before the civil war. But they changed when the centre cracked. What Sanusi did not say, was that things changed because the military took over on behalf of the northern power bloc, and de-democratised the centre. It began to work for the north and not the west or east or Niger Delta, culminating in June 12. The quest for restructuring began, it shows that no one gives away power and you must take it. The centre allowed violence and the violent took it by force.

Oil played a big part on this role reversal. We can trace this to the pre-independence era when oil was still a small factor in the economy. The British recommended that regions that enjoyed mineral resources should have 50 percent of the resources. The federal could garner only 30 percent. If we look at the country today, virtually every state has mineral resources whether it is bauxite or kaolin or limestone or gold that can turn them into vibrant economies rather than the entities that bear bowls in hand to the centre for monthly bailouts.

The army changed all that, but that was because the cabal ahead of the army represented an oil-free region. The wealth of the Niger Delta became free only for those who had the guns pointed and ready to shoot. Nigeria had changed in the 1960’s from a state with an army to an army with a state. At one time, the regions only had 1.5 percent, including during the Shagari years. It was during Abacha’s regime that a decision of a token 13 percent was taken for the region. Conversations about it has hit paralysis ever since.

Before the jackboot, the different regions had agriculture in high gear. Those were the years of the groundnut pyramid, when Cocoa boomed as export and built a landmark edifice in Ibadan, when we taught a western nation how to make prosperity out of palm produce and our rubber was elite business in the world. Oil was a backdrop then and it was only in drops. When it became a flood, it submerged everything else. We became greasy with wealth. But we occluded a path not only to development but the army made us lose the path to cohesion.

That was why the call for fiscal federalism started to resonate among the disenfranchised. Part of it was because Abiola won an election that was taken from him. The most strident voice over the course of the year came from an unusual source: the man Nnamdi Kanu. But the paradox was he did not call for restructuring. He wanted outright severance. In my columns I called him an ethnic entrepreneur who peddled hate. Yet he had followers, including those not associated usually with cant or extremism. So why would an Nwabueze or a Soludo speak so gleefully about an upstart whose biography did not celebrate industry or even Igbo patriotism to the extent that mere utterances from his lips paralysed the streets of the east?

That is the conundrum made even more trenchant by the assertion by president Buhari that the nation is not negotiable. But Nigeria was not negotiated into being. It was a diktat from a foreign power. Now that we are together, it is important that some voices are saying they are not getting the right shakes in the system, that some part of the country seem to be sovereign while others are glorified subjects. The centre, they say, cannot hold when only one part of the country is at peace with the present arrangement when others are not. As of today, only the northwest has had voices that say the system is good the way it is.

The only voice that spoke with some fire for justice has been Lamido Sanusi, but many in the northwest see his voice as a maverick, not representing the inner core of the region. But the Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal, whose progressive credentials are palpable, had to lend his voice eventually. Hear him:

. “The idea that the north is against restructuring because it benefits most from the current state of things is circumscribed and patently false,” he noted. “The fact that some people continue to parrot such a lie only helps to give credence to the flawed argument. Let us be clear: the north wants restructuring as much as anyone else. “However, as a people we do not easily jump unto the bandwagon because we are always there for the long haul. We believe that any decision we take must be inclusive and respect procedures and processes so that the outcome is sustainable.” “I think we should first, as a country, agree on a mutual definition of the term restructuring. “In my view, if restructuring means taking stock of our arrangement to ensure that no state takes a disproportionate amount of the resources, or most of the available space in the education or job sector, or subjugate the others’ culture or religion. “Or lord it over the other so that the number of the poor and uneducated, whose future is circumscribed by their circumstance is shared proportionately, then we are game. “We all want a country where there is peace and progress, where justice is given, where all lives are safe and people can pursue their legitimate livelihoods wherever they choose. I believe each state in this country has areas of comparative advantage and life is a cycle so that what was once the largest revenue earner can in time become less so while something else takes ascendancy. “As a country we must look to the future and agree on what in the long run will benefit us all.”

What the governor said is quite at odds with the caterwauling of a Tanko Yakassai.

Another voice that has weighed in is the Sultan of Sokoto Abubakar Saad111.

He says: “It is good to sit down and dialogue but there must be respect. I must respect you and you must respect me. And the greatest thing we can do for this country is always reflect on our history.

“Because we didn’t fall from the sky, we came from somewhere. We became Nigeria in 1914 through amalgamation. People are shouting that our coming together as a country in 1914 was mistake, but God doesn’t make mistakes. If God doesn’t want such a thing as Nigeria to happen, nobody could ever have made it happen.”

He goes further:

“I know that many of these groups from the North, West, South-South and South East agitating for this or that have their positions.

“But despite the realities at present, no group has the right to tell anybody you must leave this place or that place if we still live in this country called Nigeria. I say, instead of talking about devolution of power, let’s talk about devolution of economy,” he added.

The voices of Governor Tambuwal and the Sultan are conciliatory and open the door to bring together a concatenation of ideas. It is good men for conversation.

But these voices have to come to terms with others voices. For instance that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The former governor of Lagos State called for a return to the ideals of the 1963 Constitution, which he said guaranteed fiscal federalism, regional autonomy, regional constitutions, and progressive competition among the federating units.

Tinubu said, “Many of the 68 items on the Exclusive Legislative List should be transferred to the Residual Legislative List,” explaining, “This would be in harmony with the 1963 Constitution, again an instance of reaching back to revive something old yet more likely to give us a better Nigeria. That prior constitution granted vast powers to the regions, enabling them to carry out their immense responsibilities as they saw fit.”

Tinubu said, “We cannot become a better Nigeria with an undue concentration of power at the federal level. Competition for federal office will be too intense, akin to a winner-takes-all duel. Those who lose will bristle at the lack of power in the periphery they occupy.

“They will scheme to pester and undermine the strong executive because that is where they want to be. The executive will become so engaged in deflecting their antics that it will not devote its great powers to the issues of progressive governance for which such powers were bestowed.”

He said if Nigeria continued in the current pseudo-federal path, it “will be in a constant state of disequilibrium and irritation. Such a situation augurs toward the maintenance of an unsatisfactory status quo in the political economy. It augurs against reform.” He stressed that the country must restructure “to attain the correct balance between our collective purpose, on one hand, and our separate grassroots realities, on the other.”

What Governor Tambuwal and the Sultan called for is civility. But the counter question is that we never get things done with civility. It is when we roar and bang the table that the other side hears you.

The reality, however, is that we need to go to the table. The key here lies with the president who has not shifted ground on the point that our unity is non-negotiable. Even husbands and wives negotiate their relationships every day. As the philosopher said, those who deserve freedom are those who are ready to fight for it every day.”

It is not easy to give up power. No one gives it up without getting something back or without its back to the wall. What it means is that if the unfairness in the Nigerian state continues, the agitation will grow, and no one can predict what nature it will take. I love Nigeria, but I don’t agree that it is not negotiable. It is desirable when all get their due.

We cannot get by mere institutions without content. Nigeria’s different endeavours at national unity are clear. They include the National Youth Service Corps, to tailor university graduates into the appreciation of the other by spending a year in a “strange” land.

Over four decades of its founding, rather than harmony, the nation is tearing at its ethnic seams. We don’t even have the resources to guarantee a decent living for them in their areas of primary postings. There are other efforts at unity. They include unity schools, Federal Character Commission, the special case for the Niger delta like the formations of NDDB, OMPADEC and presently NDDC. The derivation policy, ministry of Niger Delta, and presidential amnesty programme. In spite of these, suspicions make relationships sour. The herdsmen crisis continues to create tensions with stories of slayings. A philosopher noted that in a true federalism the biggest part of a country is not better than the smallest part of it.

The greatest problem is lack of trust. Trust does not come freely today. there is an African proverb that says, “be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” We have to move from there and abide by Ernest Hemmingway’s words, “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”

That is the model to follow and that is the challenge before us today.