Democracy & Governance
Federalism And Restructuring: The Choices For Nigerians (2) -By Usman Sarki
Nigerians particularly saw the real motive behind the debates as nothing short of an attempt at creating widespread instability in the country that would result in the destabilisation of the government and ultimate destruction of the federal system that we have been practising for so many years.
“Facts are the most eloquent form of apologetics”– John Buchan
Of late, a cacophony of noises had spread across sections of the country fuelled by media interest reaching a state of frenzy, all in the name of “restructuring” the federal set-up in Nigeria. Hence in the process, “restructuring or dissolution” has been advocated from one extreme, that saw nothing good in what we have today. The middle ground in the advocacy for restructuring, while maintaining a level-head, latched on nevertheless to the hysteria, often bringing to the fore deeply buried sentiments and motives, layered with ethnic, sectional and religious undertones.
The futile debate on “true federalism” and calls for the enthronement of a regional system of government in the country has been met with understandable reticence and skepticism by the vast majority of Nigerians from all sections of the country. Despite the abstruse postulations of the proponents of restructuring, ordinary Nigerians were intelligent and perceptive enough to see through the arguments that were being posited as shallow and devoid of real meaning and content.
Nigerians particularly saw the real motive behind the debates as nothing short of an attempt at creating widespread instability in the country that would result in the destabilisation of the government and ultimate destruction of the federal system that we have been practising for so many years. Those motives were camouflaged under seductive and persuasive arguments and seemingly innocuous formulae like the call to return to the 1967 Constitution or the adoption of the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference.
In the process of the clamour for restructuring, a heady and volatile mix of demands ranging from resource control and derivation, devolution of powers and creation of more states and local government areas, to the establishment of State Police Forces and what not, were advocated. No real or tangible arguments were advanced other than the usual raising of the ethnic and religious dust that Nigerians have become habituated to, in the bourgeois elitist posturing that passes for politics in this country.
It never dawned on the advocates of “true federalism” and restructuring that all those issues have at one point or the other in the past, been discussed and resolved in Nigeria’s political and constitutional history. History, that unerring guide to human conduct and the best instructor about our affairs, was seemingly jettisoned from the discourses or at best turned upside down and put on its head, as it suited the inclinations of those deeply steeped in the agitation for restructuring.
An honest and objective recourse to history would have pointed the way towards a solution to most of the issues and problems that they raised, as history usually does in most circumstances, and would have instructed us on how to prevent the repeat of mistakes that sometimes prove fatal to our progress and collective well-being. Likewise, it is from the lessons of history coupled with calm and mature reflection that we can gather the fruits of wisdom and harvest the benefits of experiences and performances of others in the past, to serve as the signposts for our present and future instruction.
The corrective measures necessary for the progress of societies must be deduced or learned from episodes in history so as to avoid making mistakes that can be easily prevented from the benefit of hindsight. In discussing federalism in Nigeria therefore, a recourse to our country’s history will be of some profit and utility. But first, we must situate the discussion in its proper context by understanding what federalism means.
