Before the elections of 2015, I supported the call for restructuring and I have written about it and supported various agitations in this regard. Honestly, RESTRUCTURING was one of the Key selling points of our party and it was one of the reasons I invested my resources in advancing it. Although there are arguments about what restructuring really means, I sincerely don’t think that is difficult to understand. At least those who made it a part of our party’s manifesto should come out and tell us what it means to them.
By and large, there is need for those who represent our party in government to accept that it is part of our party’s manifesto and an obligation we owe Nigerians; even as the need for it has become more imperative. Except we intended to make it a tool for deception.
To accentuate the need for restructuring, I want to start by quoting His Excellency, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the National Leader of our great party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). Represented by Dr Wale Edun at the 2017, Annual Dinner of The King’s College Old Boys Association, as the Keynote Speaker and Principal Guest of Honour, our cerebral party leader said that “It would be better to restructure things to attain the correct balance between our collective purpose on one hand and our separate grassroots realities on the other.”. In an in-depth presentation titled: A NEW NIGERIA OR A BETTER ONE:THE FITTING TOOLS OF……, our great leader made some profound suggestions of what can be done in the now. I remember sharing the full details of that presentation in order to give its content a push.
But I am surprised that up till date, the many ingenious ideas he presented are yet to be borrowed by our government, even with the fact that it came from a leading light in our party, who’s statement by any inch cannot be considered as the voice of opposition. At least, I expect those in government who represent our party in that capacity to be respectful enough to accept that it was a part of the manifesto we presented to Nigerians and which made many to believe in us.
But as the ECHOES OF BLOOD FROM THE PLATEAU continues to roar into our ears, I am constrained to make the demand of government to immediately begin a national discussion on restructuring instead of paying deaf ears to its clamour. With the many complaints of state governors that their commissioners of police do not take orders from them, we can see how messy things have become without RESTRUCTURING.
Let nobody tell us that they don’t understand what restructuring means; that is a blatant lie. Before we came to power, our great leaders like Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the likes of Fashola had been in the vanguard of the call for restructuring when we were in opposition and there are documents produced by them to this effect that makes nonsense of that excuse.
At over 40 years of age, I can boldly say that I represent a new generation of Nigerians that must take responsibility for the future of our nation. Anybody expecting me at this age to live a lie and to be silent on national issues is joking. We don’t have opportunity to live this life a second time, hence we must make our lives count for the betterment of our country. The call for restructuring is consistent with best practices in advanced democracies and we cannot continue to hope for progress when we deny that it is a necessity going forward. Our greed for oil money is making us mad and we must STOP this madness and look at the bigger picture.
If a country like the Netherlands with 39,000 square kilometres of land is making over 100 billion dollars annually from agricultural export, we should imagine what we can make out of only Niger State that is about 74,000 square kilometres of land. It is time to reason high and stop this mess. We should be better than this.
I may not have all the answers to restructuring but my earlier position on this debate and that of others can still be considered.
As one of our country’s leaders remarked sometime ago, “a smaller, leaner Federal Government with reduced responsibilities is better. This means devolution of powers and resources to states and local governments.
“State and local governments should control education, health, agriculture, roads and other infrastructure.
“A true federal system will allow the federating states to keep their resources while the Federal Government retains the power of taxation and regulatory authority over standards.
“The result will be a political and governmental system that empowers local authorities and gives them greater autonomy to address peculiar local issues, while enhancing accountability and contributing to the general good of the country”
“Such a robust federal system will reduce the tensions that are built into our current over-centralized system,’’ he said.
If there is indeed anything left for Nigeria and President Buhari to do, it is to institutionalize true federalism.
I do not support separatists and ethnic jingoists but I am in support of the call for the decentralization of Nigeria for effective management and fast tracked development. At the heart of many agitations for secession is the issue of resource control and suppression of true federalism. Our great party and especially President Muhammadu Buhari must find the courage to do this if we are sincere about moving the nation forward in the long run.
I appreciate the ongoing effort by our leaders to diversify the economy, to cleans the system and to retool the nation. But to a make lasting impact, we need to make the nation positively competitive and more creative by allowing potentials of our diversity to become manifest.
The greater the centralization of resources and responsibilities in a plural society like ours, the greater the opportunities for needless bureaucracy and corruption that are still formidable obstacles to development. The more resources are concentrated in an all powerful center, the more states and local governments are incapacitated to effectively discharge their responsibilities as agents of development. Yet states and the local governments are where the people live. It is when their potentials are unleashed as units of government closed to the people that any meaningful development can be recorded.
A true federal government recognizes that it is the states that give birth to the federal government which exist for their benefit and not vice versa. Such a federation recognizes that the federal government has powers which the states agree to cede to her for common convenience. These powers are in areas of common conveniences like defence, so a joint army, currency, so a common currency and central bank, nationality, so the question of nationality and citizenship.
Historically, politically and culturally, no form of government can better suit us than a federal system. This is because Nigeria is not homogenous in many forms. The common factors, if any in the Nigerian Federation is the diversity.
Our development efforts must take sufficient cognizance of how to effectively carry the grassroots through federalism, because it is central to solving may other related problems.
Although some people have argued that many of our governors are corrupt and that some of our states are not viable. That appears true, but not a good excuse for not decentralizing the country. Given, many governors are corrupt and are stifling the local government system. But rather than see that as excuse for the continued refusal to unleash the nation’s potential we should find a way to solve the problems of corruption at the state and local government levels. And we should encourage the states to think beyond oil and to be more creative.
There is no state in Nigeria that does not have what it takes to develop itself; the only thing missing is the creativity of leadership that is required by governors to turn seeming impossibilities into a reality.
History has shown that we made great progress as a nation when we were under regional government. How come this generation of Nigerian leaders are afraid to venture into that kind of success? Where did we learn this lazy attitude from? Or do we intend to continue to delude ourselves that Nigeria will ever make progress with the kind of structure we currently operate? That is a big lie!
At least from research and history we know that a restructured Nigeria will bring development. Let the sceptics continue, we know better. At least from the history of what former leaders under regional government achieved we know that this unitary system bequeath to us by the military in the name of federalism is a waste of time, life and resources.
Coming from the old East, the many achievements of our former leaders under regional government convinces me that it is better to have true federal states than to have Biafra or to continue to maintain this current type of federalism.
History has it that during the First Republic, the Igbo nation made enviable progress in qualitative and coherent leadership, organizational cohesion, fiscal and industrial development, planning, superb educational system, good governance, integrity in political office, and so forth. In fact, this solid foundation was laid before the inception of the First Republic, courtesy of the Igbo State Union and leaders of thought. Notably, government initiatives adequately encouraged farming and other allied produce for food and export. Thus, items such as rice, yam, cassava, cocoyam, vegetables, palm produce and cashew nuts were readily and ordinarily the mainstay of the economy. It was essentially on these that Eastern Nigerian economy thrived and expanded to become the largest growing economy in Africa, just between 1957 to 1967.
The Eastern Nigerian government had a clear vision which was progressive, and complementary to the nation of the Igbo State Union.
As a result, the Eastern Nigerian Development Corporation (ENDC) was established, which became a tool through which series of development projects emerged , including: University of Nigeria Nsukka, Aba Textile Mills, Shoe Industry Owerri, Nigercem Nkalagu, Enamel Plate Industry Umuahia, golden Guinea Brewery Umuahia, Obudu Cattle Ranch, Glass Company Port Harcourt, Ulonna Farm Settlement, Niger Steel Company Emene, African Continental Bank (ACB), Hotel Presidential Enugu and Port Harcourt, Co-operative Bank of Eastern Nigeria Ltd (Co-operative and Commerce Bank). These and many other developmental strides were achieved within a ten year period 1957-1967.
In like manner, Western Nigeria and Northern Nigeria were prosperous as well.
Our leaders of old under regional government made Nigeria the fastest growing economy within ten years. What is happening now?
Like it or not, there is the need to redefine the Expected Role Performance (ERP) of states going forward.
We need to restructure Nigeria and that is simple.