BREAKING NEWS! Nigeria’s unity negotiable - Atiku

Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar yesterday renewed his clamour for the restructuring of Nigeria, insisting that the present structure of the federation could be renegotiated without necessarily splitting the country.

He stated that as a result of faulty political structure, Nigeria has failed to produce the right people for 50 years. Abubakar spoke at the public presentation of a book: “Nigerian Federalism: Continuing Quest for Stability and Nation Building” produced by the African Policy Research Institute, Abuja.

The former vice president, who described the current system as a strange federal contraption, posited that those who see restructuring only in terms of the control of resources by the states from where they are derived were missing the point and dodging the issue. According to him, the current economic challenges facing Nigeria had their roots in the bad political structure of the country.

He acknowledged that there were varied opinions about the federal system of government practiced in Nigeria and all positions canvassed were legitimate in a democracy except those that believe that Nigeria cannot be renegotiated.

“What I find odd and somewhat unhelpful is the argument of those who say that we cannot renegotiate our union and who proceed from there to equate every demand for restructuring with attempts to break up the country.

I believe that every form of human relationship is negotiable. Every political relationship is open for negotiations, without pre-set outcomes. As a democrat and businessman, I do not fear negotiations. That is what reasonable human beings do.

This is even more important if a stubborn resistance against negotiations can lead to unsavoury outcomes,” Abubakar said. According to him, those who believe that restructuring would not be to their advantage are not sincere, as restructuring was for the interest of all regions in Nigeria.

He blamed the present structure of government on the 1999 Constitution, bequeathed to the people by the military out of political expediency.

“We must acknowledge that what got us to our current over-centralised and centre-dominated federal system is political expediency and fear, bolstered by the command and control character of military regimes.

But after 50 years of ‘unitary federalism’, we are now in a position to clearly see that it has not worked well. The federating units in the First Republic had their disagreements, but none claimed to lack autonomy of action, and none waited for federal fiscal allocations before it could implement its programmes and pay salaries.

“We have to acknowledge that federalisms are works in progress: there is no ideal federal system or so-called true federalism. Each nation has to work out the best federal system suited for it.

In Nigeria’s case, we must acknowledge that it is disingenuous if not outright dishonest to say that the system is not the problem. If the problem is just the operators, how come we have failed for 50 years to produce the right people? Should we import them from outer space? “A look at our 1999 Constitution, specifically Section 7, which, as the Introduction to this book notes, has 83 legislative items as against 15 for the states (which the Federal Government can also override) shows that there is a huge problem with the system.

I challenge anyone who is against restructuring our federation to show me another well-functioning federal system in the world with that level of lopsided central dominance. Individuals operate within certain structural and institutional constraints.

If all we lack are good operators, as these people argue,would anyone advocate doing away with constitutions altogether so we rely on fantastic individuals to do the right things?

“We must acknowledge that agitations for more states across the country, the clamour for more federal take-over of state institutions, and the clamour for local government autonomy (i.e. autonomy from state governments) are inconsistent with establishing a viable and wellfunctioning federal system. We already have too many weak and unviable states.

What we need are stronger federating units (be they existing states or zones) with a greater share of resources and responsibilities,” he said. The present structure of Nigeria, Abubakar said, can only be said to have worked for the elite and not for any particular section of the country.

He urged the political elite to take deliberate steps to change the structure to a better model that would serve the people better. “We must acknowledge that in federal systems that work, federating units cede certain powers to the centre.

In our strange federal contraption, it is the centre that is creating federating units, giving them money and monopolising most power and resources. Thus, our state governments are no longer performing as federating units.

Rather, they currently seem like dependent provinces of the central government in Abuja. “No section of this country can claim correctly that its people are better served by the current structure of our federation.

When we were not dependent on oil revenues and when the federating units had greater autonomy of action and were largely responsible for their affairs, they, that is our regional governments, did not owe workers their salaries for several months.

They did not shut down schools and universities for several months because of teachers’ strikes and inadequate funding.Take a look at the industries that the regional governments established and ran and the quality of schools that they established, and see if you can see a state government or a group of state governments that have surpassed them since the emergence of our unitary federalism.

“And also ask yourself which of those establishments taken over or established by the federal government since, has performed as well as they did under our pre-1966 federal system,” he said.

Apparently making a case for the agitations for political inclusion by certain groups in the country, Abubakar observed that national unity does not mean the absence of disagreement or agitations, stressing that peaceful agitations indicate vibrant and living relationships.

He said that the key to making national progress was not to muzzle the agitation for political relevance, but to manage those disagreements in peaceful and mature ways.

Abubakar urged political leaders from across the country to come together, discuss, negotiate and make the necessary compromises and sacrifices needed to restructure the federation to make Nigeria a stronger, more united, productive, and competitive country.

Chairman of the event, Chief Chris Uche (SAN) described the book as a huge contribution to nation building, adding that it could not have come at a better time than now when the relationship among the three tiers of government was less than harmonious.

Uche said that the principle of selection of powers, an essential ingredient of federalism was gradually being eroded in the present political dispensation.