When Nigeria gained independence on October 1,1960, it made appreciable progress under the British-inherited parliamentary Federal Government of 4 regions with Prime Minister, Tafawa Belewa as the head of government.
But on January 15, 1966, the military struck and ended the First Republic and introduced a long spell or military rule, which imposed the unitary command structure and the original four regions have today been balkanised into 36 mostly unviable states with 774 local government areas.
Although Nigeria returned to the American-style Presidential system of democracy in 1999, a military -oriented constitution appears to have hobbled Nigeria and it is on the basis of this that many are clamouring for the restructuring of the country back to a true federal arrangement. This, according to the proponents will enable the states as constituents unit to develop at their own pace instead of the current situation where the states go cap-in-hand begging for the powerful centre to collect allocations from oil wealth.
This current arrangement is blamed for the alleged laziness by the states and Federal Government leading to lack of diversity in productivity as the nation’s leaders depend almost entirely on crude oil. This lack of vision is perhaps also responsible for massive waste and corruption in the system.
Reacting to the current trajectory of the nation, former Nigerian Ambassador to Switzerland Humphrey Orjiako in his seminal book ‘Nigeria: The Forsaken Road to Nationhood and Development’, captured the political and economic trajectory and a compelling narrative of when and how Nigeria got it wrong and the concomitant crises the nation is confronted with. He also suggested redemptive steps Nigeria must take to find its way out of the quagmire.
“Over-centralisation of power is a cardinal culprit in stymieing Nigeria’s prospects for economic growth and development, as well as an important factor in decelerating her pace of advancement to nationhood.
“At the same time, there is no case made in this regard, that unitary rule of a vast, multi-national country from a distant, all powerful centre is the sole villain in our present state of under –performance and general undervelopment. However, the arguments needs to be made that unitary rule constitute a spring source, or at least, provides weighty reinforcement for a myriad of other challenges which our nation-building project has met along the way” he wrote.
‘It’s not a true independence’
Also contributing, a public affairs analyst, Katch Ononuju said Nigeria was yet to attain full independence but is only celebrating 59th anniversary of the walking away of Britain not independence. He argued that only the south was partially independent, stressing that the north did not gain independence.
“If today no Hausa man is emir anywhere in Hausa land, how can you call that independence? If today northern Nigeria is home to the highest concentration of children without access to education than anywhere else on earth, how can you say that is independence? If today Nigeria’s democracy is being hammered the way the judiciary is currently suffering, how can you call that independence?” He asked.
“Independence”, he noted, “is an environment where everybody’s aspirations are respected, where the rule of law is supreme because it is a democracy. So we need to come together and then solve those nagging problems that we have. I want us as Nigerians to commit ourselves to a serious soul search; I don’t want to be deceived by the rhetoric of independence.”
On the quest for restructuring, Ononuju said it is the only panacea to peace and prosperity of the country.
“Restructuring is the only way to go forward. Restructuring means one thing- we transited from a dictatorship under the military into a democracy, the laws we are using are the laws written by the military for the military. There is need for us to sit and restructure the laws to be able to accommodate our new civilian democracy.
“Those who feel advantage at what the military had done cannot suddenly continue to force us to live under unitary designed manual given to us by the military that is why things don’t seem to be moving,” he said.
The Publicity Secretary of the Pan-Yoruba cultural organisation, Afenifere, Yinka Odumakin told BDSUNDAY that it is unfortunate that at 59 Nigeria’s best moments are in the past, adding that it is a structural problem from which other variables flow.
“It is the structure of Nigeria that will not allow good leaders to emerge. It is like if you go to a motor park and you are looking for a professor as chairman it is only touts that will be chairman in a motor park. That is the story of Nigeria. The structure does not allow our best to emerge.
“That is why today, leadership is not about development, it is not about progress, it is about largesse sharing, it is about banditry,” he said.
He pointed out that in First Republic “when we had proper federalism, you had a situation where our best were able to come to the fore. But today our politics has become a criminal project and it’s about the structure we are running, which is about grabbing,” he said.
He warned that if Nigeria does not restructure, it will disintegrate even as he gave examples of countries such as former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia that have disintegrated completely.
“So it is either we restructure or we disintegrate. But we will continue to push for restructuring so that we will save Nigeria from imminent collapse,” he added.
What manner of restructuring?
Elder statesman and veteran politician from the north, Tanko Yakassai, in an interview with BDSUNDAY, said that the nation made progress between 1960 and 1966 but lost its way when the military truncated the democratic order in 1966.
“If you compare Nigeria of 1960 to 1966 and from 1966 till date, you find out that at the beginning we were well on course developing our country using our resources with good results. But in 1966, we missed the road because of the military. Now the military has one inherent weakness because they come to power without a plan as to what to do with power,” he said.
On the clamour for the restructuring of the country to reflect a true federal arrangement, the 93-year-old politician advised Nigerians not to be deceived by such slogans, adding that the proponents have not defined restructuring in a context that is acceptable to everybody.
“I just want to know the context of this restructuring, let it be defined. Former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Emeka Anyaoku, attempted to define it when he suggested we go back to the 1963 Constitution but I don’t think that has been generally accepted.
“Now there is no consensus on that so what I want is for the advocates of restructuring Nigeria to publish their blueprint of what Nigeria will look like after the restructuring. That will be the basis upon which I will make up my mind to support them or not,” he said.
Poverty, misery stalk the land
59 years down the line, Nigeria still lacks basic infrastructure such as good road network, quality healthcare services, stable power supply, quality education, among others.
Many Nigerians are still languishing in poverty without hope of where the next meal will come from. This has become alarming as a recent report by the World Poverty Clock shows Nigeria has overtaken India, a country with a population that is seven times larger than Nigeria’s, as the country with the most extreme poor people in the world.
According to the report, 86.9 million Nigerians, representing nearly 50 percent of its estimated 180 million populations, are now living in extreme poverty. This means that with a major population boom—Nigeria will become the world’s third largest country by 2050— and its problem will likely worsen.
This, no doubt, would make near impossible for the United Nations to achieve one of its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aims at putting an end to extreme poverty by 2030.
BDSUNDAY can recall that the struggle to lift more citizens out of extreme poverty is an indictment on successive governments, which have mismanaged the nation’s vast oil wealth through corruption.
Just recently, a report conducted by Steve Hanke, an economist from John Hopkins University in Baltimore, United States, ranked Nigeria as the sixth most miserable country in the world. This can be confirmed by the high poverty level, high level of insecurity and dwindling living standards in the country.
Pat Utomi, a political economist, who alluded to this, said a lot of Nigerians are suffering because the nation is being mismanaged by its elite political class.
“We are not surviving; millions of people are hungry and dying out there. Everywhere in Nigeria is a war zone. If we do not fix this, we are dealing with an existential crisis,” Utomi said.
It is no longer news that corruption, which could be traced way back to the military era, has become endemic in Nigeria’s political system. This is such that out of 175 countries, Nigeria is the 144 least corrupt nations, according to the 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index report of the Transparency International.
All negatives
Statistics show that corruption rank in Nigeria averaged 121.48 from 1996. It reached an all time high of 152 in 2005 and a record low of 52 in 1997. Nigerians have seen several levels of corrupt and sharp practices especially the unimaginable ones recorded during the years of military rule.
For instance, the extent and severity of the corrupt practices that took place during the leadership of the then military head of state, Sani Abacha, who ruled Nigeria for five years (17 November 1993 – 8 June 1998), was only highlighted after his death when it emerged that he embezzled between US$3 and $5 billion of public funds.
In 2014, the US Justice Department revealed that it froze more than US$458 million in illicit funds that Abacha and his conspirators hid around the world. Till date, Nigeria has been fighting to recover the stolen money, but companies linked to the Abacha family have gone to court to prevent repatriation.
In the wake of 1999, Nigerians were very optimistic that the level of accountability and transparency among public office holders would improve, but 20 years down the line, the narrative is yet to change as politicians have continued to loot public funds and launder their ill-gotten wealth through buying of property in countries of choice.
These corrupt officials take bribes, embezzle funds or steal money from the states or Federal Government coffers.
Meanwhile, the ordinary Nigerians, who are the real victims of corruption, languish in penury.
“Presently, many families in Nigeria find it difficult to eat a decent meal on a daily basis,” said Emma Okafor, who further stated that Nigerians are yet to see the dividend of 59 years of independence.
According to him, “Power supply in this part of the world is still very unreliable as small and medium businesses run at a loss due to the heavy spending on diesel and petrol for power generation.”
Speaking in tandem, Oluseyi Afolabi, an engineer told BDSUNDAY in an interview that Nigeria after 59 years of independence still lack the basic infrastructure, especially power.
Afolabi said a lot of people still run generators which make the cost of doing business very high. “The citizens are paying more for services because the service providers are spending monies that they should not on generating power to keep their businesses operational.
“Diesel is about N250 to N260 per liter and using that to generate power is like burning N250 per seconds and the only way to recoup such cost is by imposing the cost on the final consumers. The cost of goods and services are much higher than that of imported products,” she added.
Aside power supply, successive governments have also failed to give its citizens access to good and motorable road network.
It is said that road infrastructure is one of the basic and critical factors that shape the face of development in every economy. This is because it provides access to employment, social, health and education services, which are vital to any developmental agenda.
Afolabi said: “Nigeria lacks the basic infrastructure of power and roads. Our road networks are horrible such that to transport agricultural produce from the rural areas to urban areas becomes an issue because most of them get wasted on the road because trucks get trapped on the bad roads.”
Apart from infrastructure, Nigeria’s electoral system had remained primitive.
BDSUNDAY recalls that there were reports of violence during the campaign season with 260 deaths reported between October 2018 and February 2019, and 39 deaths reported on Election Day. Just days before the election, three electoral offices containing voting materials in Abia, Anambra, and Plateau states were burnt down, in what officials considered an attempt to sabotage the electoral process.
The level of apathy on the side of the electorates has continued to be on the rise as Nigeria, which has a population of about 190 million, only recorded 84 million registered voters (representing about 44 percent), with only 73 million reported to have their voters’ cards.
On the Election Day, voter turnout in 2019 general election was the lowest recorded number in Nigerian history as only 35.6 percent of people voted compared to 43.7 percent of Nigerians who voted in the 2015 General Elections. This level of apathy, pundits attributed to lack of faith in the Nigeria project and a vote of no confidence in the ruling class.
CHUKA UROKO, INNOCENT ODOH, OBINNA EMELIKE, AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE, INIOBONG IWOK and SEYI JOHN SALAU
