The second issue I mentioned in part one of this piece is the contentious but urgently required political restructuring which will return the country to a proper and functioning federation. I want to urge President Muhammadu Buhari to initiate the process of restructuring Nigeria now. There is no better time to do it than now: the National Assembly wants to edit the defective 1999 Constitution, the federating units are clamouring for structural changes, several are agitating for new and equitable revenue-sharing formula and fiscal federalism, all of which patriotic and well-meaning Nigerians have been advocating for a long time. Even the President’s own party, the All Progressives Congress, already has a blueprint for achieving political restructuring, apart from other subsisting recommendations from the 2014 National Conference, to guide the exercise. So, what else are we waiting for?
What has delayed positive action in this direction is, unfortunately, the President Buhari’s inflexible posture and unspoken opposition to the idea. And knowing how unyielding he could be, no one around him, not even the APC whose blueprint he has in his possession, has mustered the guts to broach the issue with him. But this is by far the best, most appropriate and most auspicious time to undertake the action since he is not seeking re-election. All that the government need do is leverage the current national momentum and positive enthusiasm, send a bill to the National Assembly for a holistic and comprehensive political surgery that would give us a proper federal system, instead of allowing the national legislators to waste valuable time and expend our fast dwindling resources on another fruitless and unedifying effort trying to panel-beat a patently bad unitarist constitution.
We have had enough of this fake federation and dubious democracy, it is time we did something drastic, a necessary and overdue surgical reconstruction of this defective and non-performing federal political architecture. Restructure Nigeria now, reduce the almightiness of the federal behemoth to make it lean and efficient, and give more responsibility, power and resources to the federating units.
The need for political restructuring cannot be more urgent than now, for the pandemic and the varied responses to it at different levels of government have exposed the inadequacies of our defective structural makeup. The Buhari government is currently the greatest impediment to restructuring! His rigid and uncompromising character is a required virtue when matters of principle are concerned, but clearly counterproductive, unhelpful and possibly destructive in politics, where negotiation, deal-making, compromises and flexibility are the essential tools. Rigidity is clearly unhelpful in governing a huge conglomerate nation-state of hundreds of competing ethno-linguistic groups, each with its own history and culture and aspiration, which have to be carefully managed to in order to keep the nation-state together and functioning smoothly to the advantage of all. A complex nation where popular aspirations are ignored is without question a candidate for fatal disintegration. Whether the President is aware of it or not, there is already a groundswell of patriotic agitation for political restructuring, the inevitability of which even former President Olusegun Obasanjo, a staunch opponent, has come to accept.
This cannot be suppressed for much longer, for it would amount to careless postponement of the evil day when peaceful agitation may become a violent eruption. Since 2015, Buhari has been a major impediment, even though his party, the APC, had restructuring or returning the country to a proper federation as an electoral mantra. Notwithstanding his party’s position, he seems to personally favour retention of the hugely defective, lopsided and debilitating unitarist architecture, perhaps because it is the preference of powerful elements in his Northern constituency. Both his attitude and body language abhor any suggestion for restructuring. When he is not berating the proponents at home and abroad as uninformed, he simply ignores them, treating public opinion as a mere inconvenience. This is the quintessential Muhammadu Buhari: rigid, unyielding and seemingly unperturbed by anything he does not want. Here is what General Ibrahim Babangida said about General Buhari after overthrowing him in August 1985:
“Let me at this point attempt to make you understand the premise upon which it became necessary to change the leadership. The principles of discussion, consultation, and cooperation which should have guided decision-making process of the Supreme Military Council and the Federal Executive Council were disregarded soon after the government settled down in 1984. Where some of us thought it appropriate to give a little more time, anticipating a conducive atmosphere that would develop, in which affairs of state could be attended to with greater sense of responsibility, it became increasingly clear that such expectation could not be fulfilled.”
And now the clincher:
“Regrettably, it turned out that Major-General Buhari was too rigid and uncompromising in his attitude to issues of national significance. Efforts to make him understand that a diverse polity like Nigeria required recognition and appreciation of differences in both cultural and individual conceptions only served to aggravate these attitudes”.
Is this not precisely what is playing out under his democratic government? He gives validity to the aphorism that old dogs don’t learn new tricks! What has changed? Even as a democratically elected civilian leader, Buhari’s congenital inflexibility still comes out in bold relief in his attitude towards public aspirations. But I believe he can, and he should, change that attitude, else the accusation of insensitivity to public opinion regarding how the nation can run well will continue to stick to him after office. And history would record his failure to seize the right moment to do the needful. When bowing out of the federal government of General Yakubu on 30th June 1971, Chief Obafemi Awolowo paid glowing tributes to General Yakubu Gowon’s humanity and leadership, and said emphatically: “But it is his wisdom in correcting the structural imbalance of our great Federation that sets him apart from and far above all Nigerian rulers before him.” This was a reference to the creation of the twelve states in 1967.
The question is, how will President Buhari prefer to be remembered: for his wisdom and courage in doing the needful, or for pandering to the whims of the Northern power elites who have always derived disproportionate benefits from a defective federation. The choice is his alone to make. But one thing is sure, the real and unvarnished history of his tenure and achievements will surely be written not by him or his aides, but by us, so they would not have the luxury of putting a spin on it. President Buhari is, after all, not Winston Churchill, who reportedly boasted that history would be fair to him because he intended to write it! And he wrote it, with his own spin on it, in his gargantuan six-volume memoirs titles The Second World War.
It is up to President Buhari to peacefully restructure so that it does not experience a violent one. As I write, MASSOB, IPOB, Niger Delta militants, Boko Haram terrorists, kidnap syndicates, bandits, cattle-rustlers and sundry self-determination groups already trying to forcibly restructure, and pushing us inexorably towards the edge of the precipice.
Concluded
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Alade Fawole is a Professor of International Relations at the Obafemi Awolowo University, (OAU), Ile-Ife.
This is a very educating article sir. I pray General Muhammad Buhari aides get to read this.