I stand for a restructured Nigeria – Fidel Albert

From a Facebook post

“California is the 6th largest economy in the World. Its economy is larger than that of France and Brazil. The little problem is that California is not a Country. It is a State in the United States of America (USA).”

This is the reason we demand restructuring of Nigeria: California is the 6th largest economy in the World. Its economy is larger than that of France and Brazil. The little problem is that California is not a Country. It is a State in the United States of America (USA). It has little offshore oil, yet its economy is larger than States in the US that are famous for their oil reserves, like Texas.California generates much of its revenue from non-oil products. It found a way to absorb and domesticate much of the intellectual output from its premier university, Stanford University, into saleable products within its economy.

As a matter of fact, much of California’s economy is built around Stanford University. So with this, Silicon Valley developed… Now with Silicon Valley came Companies like Apple, eBay, Cisco, Lockheed, Hewlett Packard (HP), Google, Netflix, Facebook, Oracle, Tesla…and the list goes on and on ad infinitum.

These are multibillion-dollar companies. The yearly budget of any one of these companies might be larger than the entire yearly budget of, say for example, Akwa Ibom State.

I’m taking about companies that are richer than countries. They are all in California. But that is just in the technology industry where the technologies and inventions spewing out of Stanford are caught mid-air and converted to money spinning enterprises.

But there is also the entertainment industry in California. Yes, Hollywood is in California. The US movies industry contributes about $504 billion to USA’s GDP. Hollywood, as you know, contributes over 70% of that figure.

Most iconic movie studios are in Hollywood. As a matter of fact, the “Big Eight” consisting of 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Paramount Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, United Artists, Universal Studios and Warner Bros are, or were, all in Hollywood. These again, are multi-billion dollar companies generating revenue for California.

Despite the above, California also thrives on agriculture. As at 2014, California had nothing less than 77,000 farms and ranches raking in about $55 billion in revenue yearly. It produces over 400 agricultural commodities, a large chunk of which it exports. It is the leader in producing exotic fruits in America. Its wine industry is unique. California wine is drunk with relish the world over…

This is just one State in America. You see, California actually had a choice of sitting back and striving to get a piece of the revenue generated from Texas’ oil. It could have depended solely on Federal allocation to survive so that every month end, it will send its Commissioner of Finance to Washington DC to receive monthly allocation so that it can barely pay salaries of its workers and nothing more.

Then San Francisco would resemble Ajegunle in Lagos. And there certainly would not be those beautiful sights and sounds that make California what it is today.   California gives to the centre and, because of its wealth, despises the idea of depending on it for survival.

That is America. The local government, the government closest to the grassroots, is deliberately made the strongest level of government. Items like variances (adaptation of state law to local conditions,) public works (yes, public works!!), contracts for public works, licensing of public accommodations, assessable improvements, basic public services are all left for local county governments to handle.

The State handles weightier matters like Property Law, Education, Commerce Laws of Ownership and Exchange, Banking and Credit Laws, Labour Law and Professional Licensure, Insurance Laws, and Electoral Laws, including Parties and Civil Service Laws. Items that the Federal Government, the centre, handles affecting the States are actually very negligible.

Nigeria on the contrary will never do well unless we restructure. We pretend to have a Federal system but we are actually operating a unique form of unitary government, and it is weighing the polity down. Can you imagine a country where the school curriculum is regulated by a national central body and states have no powers to vary or amend their curriculum?

You would think this is not a problem until you understand that Nigerians spend over ONE TRILLION NAIRA every year to study abroad. You see, the reason why you have Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Oxford, etc. is not only for academic excellence of the citizens of the countries which have these schools. No. They invest in their institutions so that they can earn revenue from foreign students from countries like Nigeria which has destroyed its educational system.

How many car manufacturing companies would we have in Owerri near the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO) where students are constantly doing and selling their research products to burgeoning engineering and manufacturing companies?

“As you are reading this, do not forget that without Harvard University, there would not have been Facebook, and this our interface would have been impossible.”

Do your research, most of the World-class products we buy today off the shelf, at great cost, were invented by University Students. As you are reading this, do not forget that without Harvard University, there would not have been Facebook, and this our interface would have been impossible.

But our Students in Nigeria are not entirely without inventions. We invented the Pyrates Confraternity, the Black Axe, the Eiye, the Vikings and what not!! Students resume school with guns and bullets, rather than books and scholastic ideas, as though academic institutions were a War College. Lecturers fly colours as do students. And when the turf war begins, people die in droves.

So every year, all sorts of characters are vomited from Nigerian Universities to take their place in Nigerian Society. So you have Judges, Lawyers, Engineers, Doctors and so forth, whose first and primary allegiance is to their cult group, before the country. The multiplier effect of this is a treatise for another day.

But suffice to say that as long as this problem persist, let’s forget about Silicon Valley in Nigeria, because there will never be a Stanford University here to provide an infinite supply of ideas and prodigies to feed the invention value-chain!

Nigeria cannot wake up from its slumber today because it cannot lift its head. The entire weight of its existence is concentrated in its head. From the viewpoint of government, the weight is in Abuja. From the viewpoint of revenue source, the weight is in the Niger-Delta. We need to urgently restructure and evenly distribute this pressure points and weights to diffuse tension in Nigeria.

We need to revisit the exclusive legislative list in the Constitution and systematically reduce the responsibilities of the Federal Government vis-a-vis the States. 

Resources have to be handed back to the States that generated them, but place an obligation on each State to contribute an agreed percentage to the common federal purse to service obligations of the Federal Government. L&S