Section
14(2)(b) of Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution says security and welfare are
the primary purpose of government. Section 15(3)(a-d) of Chapter 2 of
the Constitution, the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of
State Policy, specifically directs the State to provide facilities for
free movement of people, goods and services; encourage inter-marriage;
and promote associations across ethnicity, linguistic or religious
barriers.
16(1)(a-d) requires the State to harness the
nation’s resources to benefit Nigerians. Section 16(2)(a-d) directs the
State to promote the economy; assure fair distribution of resources;
ensure suitable and adequate shelter, food, minimum living wage, and
pensions; and care for the old, the sick, and the disabled. Right now,
the state of the Nigerian union (without prejudice) is in abject breach
of these provisions. Life in Nigeria is Hobbesian “short, brutish, and
nasty.”
The price of crude oil, that fetches 95
per cent of Nigeria’s foreign earnings, and 80 per cent of government
revenue, is falling like a brick. The 2015 Budget faces N1.3 trillion
cut, and the resulting austerity measures throw everyone into a funk.
The situation looks nearly irredeemable because of Nigeria’s history of
resource misapplication, deteriorating infrastructure, blatant pilfering
of public funds and promotion of parochial ethnic interest over merit.
The
constitution, a classic oxymoron, is unitary in structure, but federal
in name. Part I of its Schedule Two has a comprehensive list of 68 items
on the Federal Exclusive Legislative List: These include commerce, arms
and defence, aviation, broadcasting, marriage, and an imprecise,
omnibus clause: “any matter incidental or supplementary to any matter
mentioned elsewhere in this list.”
Section 80 requires all
revenues or other monies raised or received by the Federation to be paid
into one Consolidated Revenue Fund that can only be spent by an
Appropriation Act of the (Federal) National Assembly. Section 81
empowers only the President to cause to be prepared and sent before the
National Assembly, the estimate of the yearly revenue and expenditure of
the Federation.
Section 1, Part II of Schedule Two, the
Concurrent List, empowers the National Assembly to divide public revenue
between the Federal Government and the States; among the States;
between the states and local government councils; and among local
governments. Still, the revenue allocation formula skews most of the
money to the Federal Government.
In 2104, the three arms of
government –Executive, Legislative and Judiciary – spent N4.6 trillion,
but some 31 autonomous agencies, like the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation, Nigerian Ports Authority and Nigerian Customs Service, that
report only to the President, spent N12 trillion! The Federal
Government also runs the Federal Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs and the
Niger Delta Development Commission, on behalf of oil producing states.
Whoever
emerges president between the Peoples Democratic Party’s incumbent
President Goodluck Jonathan, and a former military Head of State, Maj.
Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), of the All Progressives Congress, will
wield enormous, almost imperial, powers. Everyone, including his
Vice-President, whom he cannot sack, except through a National Assembly
impeachment, will work at his pleasure. Check Section 148(1) of the
Constitution.
Jonathan has the advantage of incumbency, but
bears the cross of an uninspiring scorecard that is under review. People
complain about the security debacle and the tottering economy, and
wonder if he could come up with a radical policy change if reelected:
His bag of tricks is effete, if not exhausted. And he is beholden to a
cabal of buccaneers. But he has upheld the integrity of the electoral
process.
Buhari is not coming to this political equity with
altogether clean hands either. The weight of his human rights abuse, as a
military despot, was heavy as lead, and his economic policies, light as
feather. Critics allege he advocates primordial interests and Islamic
supremacy: That he is the uninstalled 15th torch-bearer, after the Order
of Shehu Uthman dan Fodio. But his admirers vow he is incorruptible,
and will sanitise the polity.
The Hausa/Fulani who threaten
violence if Buhari loses, and Niger Delta natives who promise to lock up
the oil fields if Jonathan is not reelected, must thread with caution.
The North-West has only seven states, the South-South, six. Those 13
states can’t sway the Presidency any which way. They must appeal to the
South-West, South-East, North-Central, and North-East zones with the ace
of two-thirds of all states that determines who gets the oyster. As
they’d say on the streets of Lagos, “Agidi o ran,” you can’t force
issues.
The next President must make tectonic policy shifts.
Prof. Pat Utomi says: “Nigeria is in a mess because we have failed to
structure the political process… We have left the future of our country
in the hands of people who don’t know, don’t care, or don’t want to
care.” He thinks the job of the President is to inspire citizens, and
urgently create an enabling environment to diversify the economy.
Nigerians
need jobs, security, social services, infrastructure – a system that
works for every citizen to activate his talents and achieve his fullest
potential. The government must guarantee the greatest good of the
greatest number, whilst yet safeguarding the interest of the minority.
Finding that mean is the modicum expected of the next President. That
doesn’t sound like too much.
If that America’s Central
Intelligence Agency’s prognostication that Nigeria will splinter in 2015
doesn’t happen, President Jonathan must urgently resolve the Boko Haram
issue. Remember the statement credited to the late leader of the
Yoruba, Obafemi Awolowo, that if the East was allowed to exit Nigeria,
the West would follow. At the recent National Conference, the Lamido of
Adamawa, was reported to have said his people may rejoin their kith in
Cameroon. That he hasn’t refuted this is instructive. The unfolding
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, no doubt, inspired the Boko Haram to
rig its flag and declare a caliphate in Mubi the other day.
The
President must therefore ponder the sinister, far-fetched, theory that
the Boko Haram insurgency is in part a reaction to Ahmadu Bello, who
persuaded Northern Cameroon, now North-East Nigeria, to join the North,
for the Northern Peoples’ Congress to gain majority in the Federal House
of Representatives, and thus form the government at the centre.
But
he limited the spoils to the North-West, and contrived to make the
Sultan of Sokoto, leader of Nigerian Muslims, whereas Islam in the
Kanem-Borno Empire is older than that of Sokoto Caliphate formed by
Fodio in 1804. You will observe that most Boko Haram targets in the
North-East are Christians, to cow the Christians, but mostly Muslim,
institutional and public places in the North-West and elsewhere.
Someone
says Nigeria’s civil service is an abyss of primal chaos, an opaque
maze, whose functionaries have the proverbial stiff upper lip, not
unlike Britain’s Whitehall, after which it was modelled. If a former
Secretary to the Government of the Federation says that governance is
not about achievements, but propaganda, the President will be on a
slippery slope, working with cynical civil servants. But he must
identify the good apples to work with.
Nigerian youths are
disillusioned, in need of credible role models. Many are economic
migrants elsewhere because they can’t actualise their dreams at home.
But, like it or lump it, they are the future of Nigeria, and it is
crucial to effectively engage them. Getting them to buy into Project
Nigeria will be a wee tricky though.
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