Lately, Nigerian leaders have shown how detached from reality they are. They have continued to cling to delusions, bask in their untenable euphoria, and celebrate gross inadequacies. Rather than pay attention to the systemic challenges plaguing the country and the agnonising cries for restructuring, they have remained aloof while carelessly flaunting their ability to resist change even in the face of potent danger. What they have perhaps failed to acknowledge is that their foolishness can be fatal and destructive because the current retarded system operating in Nigeria that they hold strongly to, is headed for the rocks if the right adjustments are not effected.
Over the past few decades, Nigerian leaders, especially those at the federal level, have enjoyed the safety of a flawed system propelled by a fraudulent document known as the military-imposed 1999 constitution. These two anomalies have ensured that Nigeria does not work for ordinary Nigerians but for members of the elite class. What they have failed to remind themselves is that the system is not sustainable, and it will only be a matter of time before it violently implodes.
Just like the passengers and crew members on the famous Titanic ship, Nigerian leaders have convinced themselves that the country is unsinkable hence, they can continue to ignore strong calls for its rejig. The truth, however, is that Nigeria, as presently constituted is asymmetrically structured and stands on an inverted pyramid shape with more power concentrated at the top. This base is clearly not formidable enough, and collapse is inevitable if urgent steps are not taken. For how long will this system be sustained, and at what cost will it be when it eventually caves in? Are Nigerian leaders not seeing the obvious icebergs? Are they too blind to see the dangerous slope to disaster?
It doesn’t take too much to notice that Nigeria is presently hemorrhaging under institutional dysfunctionality. Nothing is holistically working in the country. Not infrastructure, not power, not the economy, not security. The present system has made corruption easier and provided a strong buffer for graft. Despite the inherent wealth in the country, it still has the highest number of poor people in the world. In all of this, Nigerian leaders have stuck to their guns, insisting on a system that is not working. Rather than effect an overhaul of the country, they have treated calls for restructuring with disdain and calls for self-determination with palpable animosity.
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Interestingly, despite making the issue of restructuring a key campaign message when it sought power in 2015, the President Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) maladministration has rebuffed any serious calls for a serious overhaul of the country. Despite the overwhelming agitations, the government will be shamelessly bowing out of power by the end of May without fulfilling a promise it made to Nigerians in its manifesto.
In very clear terms, the APC gang of crooks wrote in their manifesto which can be rightly described as a compilation of failed campaign promises that they will ‘Initiate action to amend our Constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties, and responsibilities to states and local governments to entrench true Federalism and the federal spirit.’
The highly desperate APC did not stop there, they went further to promise to effect several other key changes to the way Nigeria operated to improve a sense of belonging, ownership, and justice among its diverse constituents. The party vowed that it would ‘’begin widespread consultations to amend the Constitution to enable states and local governments to employ State and Community Police to address the peculiar needs of each community. This would mean setting boundaries for federal, state, and Community Police through new criminal justice legislation to replace the criminal code, the penal code, and the Police Act.’ All of this was clearly written in the manifesto they sold to Nigerians. Why then did they renege?
President Buhari who was the beneficiary of the favor gained from these failed promises got into office and avoided commenting on the issue publicly, except for in 2016, when he ignorantly announced in a national broadcast that the problem of the country was not the structure, but the way of doing things. One will wonder why he failed to change the country’s ‘ways of doing things’ since that was the problem, according to him.
Nigerians who felt betrayed by the deceit of the APC-led government did not keep silent, they mounted pressure on the government in the media, and in 2018, Buhari had to reluctantly set up a committee on restructuring, headed by Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai. Ostensibly, he did this because he knew there would be another election in 2019, but Nigerians didn’t bother provided something was already being done about the issue. Sadly, the report from that committee has since been submitted with recommendations and templates, and as expected, the APC has sent them to the dusty archives where they were destined for! Rather than send it to the legislature for serious legislative work and implementation, the APC has simply moved on as if nothing happened.
President Buhari’s action, however, did not come as a surprise to many Nigerians; because his inability to keep to his promise to restructure the country was a demonstration of the all-around failure of his maladministration and manifestoes.
The truth many successive Nigerian leaders know is that Nigeria as a country is a natural federation that will never prosper when it is not organised as one. The founding fathers of the country and even the manipulative British colonial overlords understood and recognised this from the very beginning, and that was why they made great efforts to negotiate constitutions along federal principles. With this in mind, what was clear was that without essentials such as fiscal federalism, resource control, and state police the country was always going to struggle to make headway due to the nature of its existence.
Nigerians must understand that there is nothing left to debate about the structure of the country except to urgently work to restructure it before the economy collapses and the current brewing anarchy implodes into complete state failure. Anybody who has carefully analysed Nigeria will easily agree that the best arrangement for the country is neither the unitary federalism the military leaders imposed on the country nor a confederation that is preached in some quarters, rather it is a real federation with a finely calibrated balance of powers and responsibilities between the central and federating units.
The problems facing the country have clearly shown that the federating units can look after themselves more effectively when they are made to end the reliance on the ‘feeding bottle’ of the central government. All that will be required is for the centre to become less powerful while retaining core sovereign responsibilities such as the armed forces and security services, citizenship, immigration, foreign affairs, and the central bank.
As things stand at the moment in Nigeria, no area of national life is working, and ethnic animosities over the last few weeks have spilled over into wanton bloodletting. The renewed secessionist agitations and separatism, which have taken over the air in Nigeria are the obvious results of this failure.
Nigerian leaders must understand that Nigeria as a country must be negotiated if it is to ever make any progress. All over the world, governments are supposed to be the outcome of the sovereign will of the people and not in any way supposed to be its dictator. Czechoslovakia separated peacefully into Slovakia and the Czech Republic it was obduracy that led to the violent fragmentation of Yugoslavia into six countries at a huge cost to human life.
What the people managing the affairs of Nigeria must now acquaint themselves with is the fact that as things stand at the moment, the restructuring they dread so much will certainly happen, and it will happen soon. Nigeria will surely be restructured either by plan or by default. The former will be peaceful and all-encompassing while the latter will be brutal and catastrophic. A default restructuring will happen, certainly not by choice, but definitely, like an uncontrolled experiment with attendant risks and indefinite outcomes while a planned restructuring will be collaborative, systematic, and redesign of Nigeria, yet keep it whole. The good thing is that Nigerian leaders still have some time to make that choice, or the choice will make itself.
