Former President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, while addressing the Ghanaian Parliament during a courtesy visit to Ghana in 2009, remarked as follows: “No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, or police can be bought off by drug traffickers. No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the Port Authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy that is tyranny, and now is the time for it to end. Africa doesn’t need strongmen; it needs strong institutions.”
The above statement describes the socio-political and economic climate prevalent in Nigeria today even as politicians jostle for political powers ahead of the 2023 general elections.
Indeed, in the last few days, the polity has been overheated by issues of who will be the next Nigerian president in 2023 and the zone he would come from. The fire was ignited by the southern governors’ forum who in their meeting held in Lagos house marina on Monday 5th July 2023, resolved that the president must come from the south.
“The forum reiterates its commitment to the politics of equity, fairness, and unanimously agreed that the presidency of Nigeria is rotated between southern and northern Nigeria and resolved that the next president of Nigeria should emerge from the south,” Rotimi Akeredolu, Ondo state governor, said on behalf of the Southern Governors Forum (SGF).
A day after issuing the statement, some leaders from the North and interest groups slammed the 17 southern governors for demanding a power shift to the South in 2023. The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG), the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), and Arewa Youths Forum (AYF) all rejected the position that the south should produce the next President, saying the North would not be compelled to yield to an elective position.
Unfortunately, this issue which could be best described as an unnecessary distraction is diverting attention from serious national issues such as insecurity, food shortage, unemployment, inflation, and debt burden.
Read also: Southern governors reject 3% revenue for oil communities in PIB, insist on presidency in 2023
History is replete with facts that in 22 years of unbroken democracy in Nigeria, the zone or state of origin of a servicing Nigerian president did not fare better than other regions both in terms of infrastructural development and economic growth. Olusegun Obasanjo was in office for 8 years, but his state Ogun and his Ota community had the worst infrastructure during his tenure. The same applied to his successors namely; the late Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan.
To date, East-West road the longest and most popular road traversing the entire south-south states as well as Yenagoa, the Bayelsa state capital, which is Jonathan’s home state, never had it so good in his time.
And despite President Muhammadu Buhari’s northern zone, Katsina, his home state, and Kano where his wife hails from are currently threatened by terrorism, banditry, and other forms of criminality. The poverty rate in the zone and the number of out-of-school children remain the highest in the country.
Hence, rather than killing ourselves over who becomes the next president and the zone, he would emerge from, we should as a country, focus attention and resources on developing strong institutions. If this is done as it is the practice in several parts of the world, it becomes immaterial where the president emerges from.
Strong institutions are the backbone of every democracy. Institutions are the governmental systems entrusted with making and enforcing the rules of society, as well as regulating relations with other societies. Democratic institutions are in essence, a set of arrangements for organising the political competition, legitimating rulers, and implementing the rule.
They are the entities that enhance the elements of democracy that such as participation of the people either directly or indirectly, independence of the judiciary, separation of powers, rule of law, the entrenchment of fundamental human rights, free and fair elections, enable freedom of the press, ensure accountability as well as transparency of government officials.
For example, for democracy to thrive, it is essential that the judicial, legislative and executive arms of government be independent and function separately at all times. As a matter of fact, the stronger the judiciary and its inability to be influenced by the executive arm, the better the democracy.
A credible instance is a South African example where the Constitutional Court of South Africa recently gave judgment against former president Jacob Zuma, and he accepted the judgment and today is in jail. Such could only happen in Nigeria if we have strong institutions.
According to the 2018 democracy index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, based on the following democratic factors: electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties; Mauritius is the only African country that qualifies as a full democracy.
Unfortunately, countries such as Nigeria, Benin, Liberia, Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Ivory Coast, and Niger fall under the category of “Hybrid Regimes”. According to the publication, these are nations where consequential irregularities exist during elections, thereby preventing elections from being free and fair.
These nations commonly have governments that apply immense pressure on political opponents, have non-independent judiciaries, widespread corruption, constant harassment of the press, and an anaemic rule of law. These countries possess more pronounced vices than flawed democracies in the realms of underdeveloped political cultures, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance
In several parts of the world, political careers rarely start at the national level. In fact, a very small share of politicians at the sub-national level transition to the national stage as representatives, senators, vice-presidents, or presidents. Therefore, anybody interested in serving the public as an elected official has more opportunities to do so at the local and state levels than at the national level.
Unlike Nigeria, many countries with great diversity in geography, language, culture, and religion, adopt federalism as a form of government. Although, as a nation, we answer the federal republic of Nigeria by name, in actual practice, what we have is a centralized administration.
Every month states and local governments’ executives hurry down to Abuja to collect their share of the federation account. This is what Senator Ike Ekweremadu once described as “feeding bottle democracy”. Although an aberration, the attractiveness of the current system is the reason everybody wants to be president of Nigeria. It is also the reason every zone clamours for the presidency.
While this is going on, outside Nigeria, other countries are reaping the benefits of federalism. These include the United States of America, Canada, Australia, Belgium, and India. They are politically and economically stable.
While it is successful in the above-stated countries, federalism in Nigeria has been bedevilled by myriad problems since it was introduced by the Macpherson Constitution in 1954. Nigeria’s federalist concept has been distorted, consequently impacting negatively on her national development, political stability, and economic growth.
Benefits of Federalism
Among the merits of federalism are that it promotes policy innovation and political participation and accommodates a diversity of opinion. On the subject of policy innovation, US Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis observed in 1932 that “a single courageous state may if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; (for the practice of federalism) and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country”.
What Brandeis meant was that states could harness their constitutional authority to engage in policy innovations that might eventually be diffused to other states and at the national level. For example, a number of New Deal breakthroughs, such as child labour laws, were inspired by US state policies. Prior to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, several states in the United States had already granted women the right to vote. California led the way in establishing standards for fuel emissions and other environmental policies. Recently, the health insurance exchanges ran by Connecticut, Kentucky, Rhode Island, and Washington have served as models for other states seeking to improve the performance of their exchanges.
Another advantage of federalism is that because the federal system creates three levels of government with the capacity to take action, failure to attain the desired policy goal at one level can be offset by successfully securing the support of elected representatives at another level. Thus, individuals, groups, and social movements are encouraged to actively participate and help shape public policy.
One way of ensuring and sustaining strong institutions in Nigeria is by going back to the original concept of federalism or regional government. Federalism in Nigeria can be strengthened to facilitate national development if its leaders can only allow each level of government to be autonomous.
Furthermore, to strengthen federalism in Nigeria, all levels of government should be self-coordinated and independent, there should be state Police, each state should have absolute control of her wealth and resources, a truly independent electoral umpire, strengthening of the Nigerian Constitution to reflect Where’s concept of federalism, rule of law, respect for human rights and strengthening of the judiciary for independent and effective performance are all essential.
