5 reasons Nigeria needs urgent restructuring

By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu… The last protest I ever joined in Nigeria was the #OccupyProtest. Which I regret today because it was, to a large extent, foolish. Yet even in its folly, it was more intelligent than the botched TuFace protest. I defended TuFace only because a collective point needed to made to the Nigerian state, against its clampdown on popular freedoms.

“We shall restructure the country, devolve power to the units, with the best practices of federalism and eliminate unintended paralysis of the center”.

That was the APC speaking-talking, in its now dusty, abandoned, 2015 manifesto. Bola Tinubu, that party’s chief tactician, had left the stage as governor of Lagos State popular for his advocacy for resource control. He wanted a restructured Nigeria only when the pool of national wealth was not in the hands of his party.

From several sectarian agitations and, even from social media engagements, there is a consensus on the urgency of a restructured Nigeria. All talk, no agitation. We are pathetically lazy about a subject that should be the point of massive protests to solve Nigeria. Nigeria cannot work under the current adult-breastfeeding arrangement no matter how competent the leader and here is why.

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1. We don’t need a bicameral legislature, wasting some 25 percent of recurrent vote performing charity on a political elite.

2. Our recurrent-capital ratio has been dancing around 70:30. That is, Nigeria spends 70 percent of its resources every year to pay salaries and other overheads; and spends a miserly 30 percent, sometimes less, to develop infrastructure. In other words, about one million people share the 70 percent, and over 160 million others make do with 30! Save me the argument about the multiplier effects of recurrent spending.

3. The major, unstated reason we don’t have robust electricity generation is because electricity is in the Exclusive List. That is, only the federal government can legislate on, and execute electricity. States cannot. Look at education, health, agriculture, etc. These sectors would have been worse off if only the federal government had the powers to run them. Just why is it abominable for a state like Lagos to develop its own power structure? Because Nigeria fears things like secession and state independence. In other words, it fears regional development and creativity. It tethers everyone to a national grid that grinds too slowly.

4. Apart from Lagos, Anambra, and a few others, all other states in this country are lazy. They are not creating wealth: they boast mostly with natural resource, rather than with human capital and enterprise. Others boast of neither, only to go to Abuja every month-end to collect funds sourced from elsewhere. No nation can develop on an Area-boy revenue formula. A federation that privileges wealth sharing over wealth generation.

5. An Owoda federalism is a recipe for ethnic agitations and political instability. It can never guarantee peace because by nature, it is unjust, wasteful, and enables corruption. It sets the country up for pillaging, for a free-for-all in which everyone is fighting to grab their own share and bring it home. It is the reason an Ibori will be celebrated by his people because they feel he stole from Nigeria and not from them. It is the reason Nigeria is an unloved space, not a nation, a nest of selfish pecking and feasting.

 

 

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