By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

A mere four years after emerging from a civil war, in 1974, Nigeria was at the beginning of an oil boom. Then, as today, the country was in the middle of a debate about fiscal federalism and revenue allocation. Unlike today, however, there were significant differences: the country was under military rule and the men leading the debate were all soldiers. In the fifty years since then, the structure of this debate and the geo-political symmetries that define it have evolved only a little.

The immediate spark for the debate fifty years ago was the publication of the statutory allocations to the twelve states of the federation then for the fiscal year 1974-75. With a population of 2.5 million, Mid-West State received 139.9 million Naira or 23.7% of the allocation. Rivers State, whose population was 1.5 million, received 101.1 million Naira.

Isawa Elaigwu, semi-official biographer of Yakubu Gowon, the army general who was Nigeria’s military head of state at the time observed about this that “while both Rivers and Midwestern States, comprising 7.3% (4 million) of the country’s total population, shared between themselves 40.83% (N241.00 million) of the total allocation to the states, the ten other states which accounted for 92.7% (51.6 million) of the country’s population, shared among themselves 59.17% (349.2m) of the statutory allocation.”

Usman Faruk, the Commissioner of Police who governed the North-Western State was unhappy with the dissension over the sharing of the allocation because, he said, all of them in the Supreme Military Council then agreed it. Joseph Gomwalk, another Commissioner of Police and then military governor of Gowon’s own Benue-Plateau State; and Jacob Esuene, who governed the South-Eastern State called for a more objective system of revenue allocation. If they knew what such a system looked like, they didn’t say. Kwara’s military governor, David Bamigboye as well as General Abba Kyari of the North-East went on record to call for a review of the allocation formula. For their part, Oluwole Rotimi and Mobolaji Johnson, military governors respectively of the Western and Lagos States advocated for “a revenue allocation formula that would guarantee responsible and stable government for Nigeria.”

Nigeria’s search for a workable federalism in many ways can be reduced to the search for precisely such a formula. It has proved elusive. If anything, it may have got even more so. In the 36 years between 1946 and 1980, spanning the colonial and post-colonial periods and including  military as well as elected civilian regimes, the country burnt through the reports of at least eight blue ribbon panels on the question of fiscal federalism.

On the eve of independence in 1958, the report of Raisman Commission recommended the creation of a Distributable Pool Account (DPA) into which was to be paid 30% of revenue from mineral rents and royalties and from import duties. The regions retained 50% of the revenue from mineral rents and royalties from their region while the central government took 20%. 70% of the revenue from import duties went to the central government.

Six years later and four years after independence, the Binns Fiscal Commission increased the DPA share of the income from import duties from 30 to 35% at the expense of the share of the central government. Importantly, the report set its face against the principle of derivation, replacing it with that it called the principle of “financial comparability.” On this basis, it recommended the sharing of the DPA receipts as follows: Northern Region 42%; Eastern Region 30%; Western Region 20%; and Mid-Western Region 8%. Lagos was then the federal capital. Up to this point, the fiscal balance largely favoured the regions who contributed resources to the central government.

  In 1968, Nigeria’s post-colonial crisis of state legitimacy had already exploded into a year-old civil war. Under pressure from both the economic costs of the war as well as its structural antecedents, Yakubu Gowon, the war-time Supreme Commander (as he was then known), called upon Chief I.O Dina, a former history lecturer at the University College Ibadan, to lead what the regime called an Interim Revenue Allocation Review Committee.

The legacy of the Dina Committee recommendations was very far reaching and suited the regimental mood of the military. The Committee addressed frontally the issue of taxation and public goods. It recommended a centralization of taxation as well as the harmonization of the produce marketing boards which were until then mostly regional. The Dina Committee also recommended a centralization of the funding of higher education and the replacement of the DPA with what it called a State Joint Account. Additionally, the committee recommended that states should retain 100% of rent from onshore extractive operations on the basis of derivation and also receive another 10% of royalties revenue as derivation.

Even in the midst of an existential conflict at the time, the fuss that followed in the wake of the Dina Committee report was deafening. Officially, the Federal Military Government rejected the Dina Committee Report. In reality, Isawa Elaigwu recalls that “….Gowon did not raise dust over the issue but quietly implemented most aspect of this report through the back door at the appropriate time.” The result is that the Dina Committee Report has been quite influential in shaping Nigeria’s version of federalism.

Gowon enjoyed three advantages at the time in his handling of the unitarising tendencies that underpinned the recommendations of the Dina Committee. First, the civil war was an extenuating circumstance. Second, the regimental traditions of military government limited the degree of elite dissension. Third, as a military ruler, he ultimately did not have to suffer any institutional constraints similar to those imposed by a parliament or its equivalent under elected civil rule.

For the current incumbent fifty years later, a civilian seeking to accomplish what would be the most far-reaching restructuring of Nigeria’s fiscal fundamentals in 110 years, none of these advantages exists and he suffers many more debilitations besides.

By some coincidence, in the year that Gowon constituted the Dina Committee, the celebrated Kenya political scientist, Ali Mazrui, explained the challenges of structural stability in post-colonial African states in terms of two underlying crises of state legitimacy and of regime legitimacy.

Fiscal reform on the ambition evinced by the proposals now under consideration in Nigeria assumes the existence of a capable state which enjoys affinity among citizens, an overwhelming percentage of whom should be documented. None of these can be taken for granted in Nigeria. The evidence from across the fields of financial inclusion, electoral participation, and taxation suggests that the proportion of documented Nigerians does not exceed 40%. It will take more than a few convenient ebullitions to address this.

Any government will be challenged in addressing it. An administration that suffers from manifest issues of legitimacy lacks the currency to trade with in this situation. The crisis that afflicts the current proposals is that of a government unwilling to put in the work required to redress deficits of state and governmental legitimacy around the country. To address what is evidently a political problem, the government has chosen instead to escape into self-inflicted technocratic gobbledygook.

Fiscal governance and reform is not as complex as the administration and its mouthpieces would like to suggest. Taxation is more than mechanical computation. It is the centrepiece of the social compact between a state and its citizens. With considered inadvertence, the administration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu has done itself a world of good by inspiring these increasingly raucous debates about the state of that compact in Nigeria or the lack of it. It will be best served by listening to the debate in humility while it learns.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected]

Irokopost TV’s explosive interview with Prof. Chidi Odinkalu where the Fletcher School of Law professor dissects the case of Afe Babalola and Dele Farotimi beyond what he wrote in his viral essay.

In it, Odinkalu also narrates how former Governor Nasir El-Rufai wanted to abduct him and give him the same treatment Afe Babalola is giving to Dele Farotimi. The former Nigerian Human Rights Commission Chairman challenges the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister Nyesom Wike in a way Mr. Wike may find irresistible.

Odinkalu chastises Dr. Reuben Abati for mistreating his AriseTV colleague, Ojey Okpe, and advises Abati on how to make amends.

He also weighs in on Simon Ekpa and the state of the Biafran Movement, Evangelist Ebuka Obi and his case against Blogger Ijele, and many other issues.

Watch the video below.

By Abimbola Adelakun

Contrary to assertions by some so-called experts who have been prattling all week that Dele Farotimi wrote what he could not logically substantiate in his book Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System, this was a pre-meditated confrontation. Having depleted the legal means to get justice, he wrote to re-litigate the case in the court of public opinion. He seems calculatedly driven by the Yoruba proverb that says no one dies at the same spot they uttered blasphemy. In the time between your speaking and being punished, much can happen to change social dynamics. From the potpourri of events in the past week, Farotimi got what he wanted. One cannot say the same for Afe Babalola who, by now, would have realised that giving a traducer what they want is not the most prudent battle move. My reading is that Farotimi knew Babalola’s peculiar weakness and worked it to advantage. I will get to that momentarily.

The blowback from this case is another instance that hopefully teaches our elites to rein in their tendency to exploit the warped Nigerian justice system that allows criminal defamation as a legal recourse. Criminal defamation might be legal, but it is unjust. It is a law that exists to regulate the differentials of power and access, one of the many ways rich people further privatise public resources. Since lawmakers are too compromised to expunge the law and law enforcers incapable of the reflexivity that will enlighten them on the stupidity of using state resources to fight an individual over another’s integrity, the best we can do for now is pressure the entitled “big man” not to take that path. In a criminal case, the prosecutor investigates to convict. The Nigerian police, perennially short of resources, spares no expense when sent to prosecute criminal defamation on behalf of another narcissist. Why should the state do that on behalf of an ordinary individual? Babalola, especially, is a man of ample resources, who can afford to fight for his reputation on his own dime.

So, on Friday, Babalola’s legal team held a press conference in Ado Ekiti. Among several things, the lead lawyer Owoseni Ajayi said was: “Those pushing Farotimi are not his friends. By the time they led him to the dungeon, he would realise they were deceiving him. Let me advise his family members to apologise to Aare. Aare Babalola is a builder, not interested in destroying Farotimi.” I was intrigued by what he said it takes for them to call off the police hounds. If someone injured your reputation, and that reputation is truly worth the price you placed on it, why would you not be interested in watching them destroyed? Why would Ajayi, so sure of their victory that he boldly asserted that the only possible conclusion to the case is the dungeon, want to settle for the cheap spectacle of Farotimi’s family members with their clasped hands rolling on the floor and begging?

What sealed the picture for me was an article by Kenneth Ikonne where he, like Ajayi, also urged Farotimi to go “beg” Babalola. According to Ikonne, he had won a preliminary objection against Babalola’s suit—which a lawyer is supposed to do, right? —but he was so intimidated by his own victory against the legal giant that he had to go beg Babalola. While Ikonne’s adulating article drips with flattery, it also unwittingly reveals a kabiyesi-complex. It is an attitude that revels in watching other humans’ heads perpetually bowed in servile reverence so they can repay your self-denigration with overwhelming niceness.

Babalola seems like a man who likes to be liked, an attitude is consistently weakening because you must always play nice. Please note that there is a vast difference between being nice because you are a decent human and niceness as manipulation, a means to seduce others into becoming your subject. People of the latter category will take you to the top of the pinnacle, show you the extent of their power and glory, and nicely offer you a portion if only you would bend obsequious knees before them. If you refuse, they will then kick your calves until you fall on your face.

Babalola is so used to a world where junior lawyers who defeat him in court still come to his Ado Ekiti palace to prostrate before him that Farotimi’s boldness to confront him must have been jarring. He resorted to his standard weapons of warfare, but as he must have also found out in the past week, the battle terrain has changed. Even if he wins the case, what will be the social value of a reputation held up by the courts? If Farotimi begs him as his lawyer and others have enjoined, what is done cannot be undone.

However, this goes down, I commend Farotimi’s boldness. We all agree that the Nigerian judiciary is rotten, but the logic of producing rational evidence has made it virtually impossible to progress beyond merely abstract observations. Until we begin to mention names and point accusing fingers at specific people, the issues will remain intractable. Statistically, Nigerian judges and magistrates are the highest receivers of bribes in 2023, beating even the Customs/Immigration! This is according to the NBS. Those who facilitated these transactions are not ghosts. We have all been witnesses to the several instances where retiring judges have severely deplored the rot in the judiciary. It is amusing to see some people pretending Farotimi revealed what they did not already know.

Our society maintains an overly reverential attitude toward people who have money and power, and are elderly. When a person combines all three, we are virtually cowed before their almighty presence. Otherwise, why can we not ask, if defamation is an offence that supposedly lessens someone’s reputational worth, what exactly would constitute it in the case of persons who have practised law in morally decrepit and with progressively weakened institutions like Nigeria for 60-plus years? Which of the atrocities that presently bedevils the country does not have the hands of the so-called learned class in it? This is not to disparage the legal profession or caricature lawyers, but we cannot talk about what is wrong with Nigeria today without the role lawyers have played in vandalising the temple of justice. From the so-called “legal luminaries” who—through endless frivolous election petitions—rendered democracy incoherent to the ones with the “SAN” appendage to their names who fraternise with politicians, they remade the country in their amoral image.

We were all here when a partner in the firm of a high-profile lawyer solicited the client of another, saying their principal’s political influence would “significantly switch things in favour” of the prospective client. While that woman was disowned and eventually debarred, it was a moment of self-revelation as to how the justice system operates. Big names in the legal system do not necessarily correspond with a deep knowledge of the law. It just means they know which judge to buy and which string to pull. We witnessed a lawmaker publicly admitting that his judge’s wife helped his colleagues win their various cases.

In a serious country, every case that a woman adjudicated would have been recalled and scrutinised, but this is Nigeria. Nothing ever happens here. This is the utterly compromised ecosystem in which Babalola has practised law and thrived to the point he built a magnificent university. He was also a lawyer and confidant to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, whose administration reputation was thoroughly corrupt. Nobody, not even the staunchest of his defenders, has said of Farotimi’s allegations that “it cannot possibly be true”.  What they all say is, “It cannot be proven,” and that is telling enough.

Given the contradictions of his profession, Babalola should have been circumspect enough to not jump into a public contest over his reputation. He seems to me like a man who has invested in being nice just so that he would not be remembered as a villain in Nigeria’s story. Now he is no longer the man with the carefully curated legacy who set out to redeem his image but the one who proved his critic right.