“Na So This Restructuring Thing Be?”
– Femi Mimiko, mni
“Na So This Restructuring Thing Be?”
– Femi Mimiko, mni
A short response to a perspective canvassed elsewhere, anonymously, on the nature of the structural changes requisite for stability in Nigeria. The arguments in the said piece are evident from this rebuttal:?
This is banal! First, the writer doesn’t seem to understand the Restructuring argument. To think that the so-called Local Government (LG) autonomy is an element in the Restructuring advocacy, is to betray a lack of understanding of the nature of a FUNCTIONAL FEDERAL SYSTEM that it is all about. ‘LG autonomy’ only goes to further consolidate the dominant position of the central government vis a vis the federating units. That does not amount to Federalism. It is indeed its very antithesis. It, therefore, constitutes contradiction in terms to at once express commitment to Federalism, and advocate autonomy (from the federating units) for LGAs.
Secondly, the National Assembly, as presently constituted, with a heavily skewed representation pattern, itself has to be reconstituted. Representation is based on LGAs (and States), which creation wasn’t informed by any set of objective criteria. For instance, two States in the Southwest (Ondo and Osun) have comparable populations and land mass. The one has 18 LGAs, the other, 30! Similar absurdities are replicated across the nation, in for instance, Lagos and Kano States, which started out with 20 LGAs each. Today, Kano, and Jigawa that was created out of it, have between them, 71 LGAs. Lagos still has 20! Do these make any sense? Yet, number of LGAs is a key element for determining membership strength in the House of Representatives; and what quantum of revenue from the distributable pool, every State goes home with.
Again, the country set out in 1960 with three presumably co-equal Regions. Today, one of the three has 19 States, while the other two combined have 17. Can anything be more lopsided? These are realities that define the framework with which Nigeria is governed. They are the little flies in the apothecary’s oil that damage its integrity. They are the things that make the argument for recasting the country’s structure of governance unimpeachable! For, there is no way you can have, across board, the type of commitment to such a contraption, requisite for national stability and development. Alienation or estrangement will inevitably underpin its operations. Such are the frustrations that drive the types of instability we witness today.
The specific implication of the foregoing is that the National Assembly deriving from this form of patently skewed and unfair construct does NOT qualify to serve as the platform for actualising Restructuring.
Restructuring is a holistic and comprehensive exercise directed at moving governance considerably away from the centre to the federating units (States/Regions/Provinces); providing a fairer basis for representation; evolving a rational revenue allocation framework (not formula); and emplacing a more functional security architecture, predicated upon the right of the constitutive governments of the federation to, each run a police formation for law enforcement in its own domain. It also involves dismantling a 1999 Constitution (as amended) that puts all of 68 critical items on the exclusive legislative list, as against the 23 or so in the 1960/1963 Constitution, forcefully overthrown by military coupists in 1966.
These are the very difficult questions Nigerians must have the courage to ask, and seek answers to; otherwise the existential threat encircling the country may end up engulfing it. Significantly, it comes to a time when it becomes too late to effect these changes. It is so evident, that time is getting nearer – underscoring the urgency of these matters!
@FemiMimiko mni
May 20, 2021
