By Ikeazor Akaraiwe[1]
“There are many other issues plaguing Nigeria, notably corruption. But corruption is watered by the fact that Nigeria is not yet a nation and corruption is tolerated when the corrupt belongs to our own region or religion.”
1.0. Introduction: The fulcrum of this paper, an executive summary if you like, revolves around the following three main thoughts, in no particular order, as the way forward for Nigeria:
- Introduction
The fulcrum of this paper, an executive summary if you like, revolves around the following three main thoughts, in no particular order, as the way forward for Nigeria:
A. Statesmen and Stateswomen Redeemers of which there is a remarkable lack in Nigeria.
B. Proportional Representation (In replacement of the current winner-takes-all electoral system in an ethnically diverse nation of no less than 450 distinct ethnic nationalities).
C. Return to the 1st Republic principle of devolution of powers from the centre to the Federating Units.
2.0. Peculiarities and Idiosyncrasies
Nigeria may be the only nation in the entire world with three culturally and linguistically different ethnic nationalities having populations of between forty and seventy million each; and “minority” ethnic nationalities of between two and fifteen million each!
Hausa in Nigeria – 69.2m (13.4m in Niger Republic)
Yoruba in Nigeria – 48.8m (1.6m in Benin and 425,600 in Ghana)
Igbo – 42m
Fulani – 20m
Ijaw – 15m
Tiv – 5m
Edo – 4.7m
Igala – 2m
Ebirra – 2m;
to mention but a few.
In other words, Nigeria has ethnic groups, same size with the entire populations of Zambia (19.45m), Gambia (2.64m), Liberia (5.193m), and Sierra Leone (8.421m) and almost all nations of Europe. Some of these ethnic groups are classified as minority ethnic groups in Nigeria.
With very few exceptions, Europe’s ethnic nationalities all occupy a different country. If Nigeria were in Europe, arguably, many of her ethnic nationalities would be different countries! However, this observation is not to canvas a partition of Nigeria but to chart a way forward.
For example:
- Finland, more than 80% comprised of the Finnish ethnic nationality, has a population of 5.5m.
- Sweden, more than 80% comprised of the Swedish ethnic nationality, has a population of 10.6m.
- Norway, more than 80% comprised of the Norwegian ethnic nationality has a population of 5.4m.
- France with a population of 67.75m is more than 80% comprised of the French.
- Germany with a population of 83.2m
both have similar characteristics of being comprised overwhelmingly by the French and German ‘tribes’, with microscopic minorities of other ethnic nationalities.
Even the United Kingdom of Great Britain with a population of 67m and the following ethnic nationalities: Wales (3.2m), Scotland (5.4m), Northern Ireland (1.9m) and England (56.5m) opted for confederation in her unwritten constitution.
Rather than agitations for partition, African countries of similar peculiarities could confederate as Great Britain did. Those who no longer wish to confederate could do the civilised thing by challenging their continued stay in the confederation through the ballot box like Scotland.
I deem this background necessary for a lucid understanding of the way forward for Nigeria.
3.0. Statesmen and Stateswomen Redeemers of which there is a remarkable lack in Nigeria.
The progress of Nigeria has been about as swift as a house divided against itself can be. Almost every well-conceived policy appears implemented to give a disproportionate advantage to one section of the country depending on who the rulers are. Physical infrastructure which may bring progress to the entire nation may be implemented in breach of best location for maximum economic output for geopolitical reasons!
Worse, Nigeria suffers a remarkable absence of statesmen who could have fashioned a nation out of the so many different ethnic nationalities. Nigeria is thus yet to attain to E pluribus unum – Out of Many, One. While it is arguable that no nation has ever attained fully to this, on a scale of 1 – 10, Nigeria is very possibly at the lowest possible scale on the road towards attainment of this goal! I disagree with those who suggest that the fate of Yugoslavia is evidence that this venture is impossible.
A Statesman (Stateswoman) is a wise, skillful, and respected figure or political leader.[2] While Nigeria abounds with tribal and religious statespersons, there is a scarcity of such persons with a pan-Nigerian outlook across the regions and religions.
It was Barack Obama who said, while on a state visit to Ghana in 2009, that Africa needed stronger institutions and not more strong men. We will only add that while systems and institutions are necessary, Nigeria needs able men and women to handle the systems and institutions to guarantee stable and profitable nationhood.
It is the current abject scarcity of such men and women in the public space in Nigeria that is the biggest threat to Nigeria’s future as a successful nation. How this came to be, may be the subject of another discussion. It is this abject scarcity in the civil space that has in fact thrown up former military rulers as Presidents of Nigeria, with the effect that two out of four democratically elected leaders who have completed their terms of office have been ex-Generals.
Fix this, and you fix Nigeria. The other two thoughts in this paper may come to fruition only if there are statesmen and stateswomen; selfless believers in a Nigeria of equal opportunity for all regions and religions.
4.0. Proportional Representation
In a country of such diversity as Nigeria, the winner-takes-all electoral system in an ethnically and religiously diverse and conscious nation of no less than 450 distinct ethnic nationalities, is a recipe for disaster.
Proportional Representation[3].[4] as you know, is an electoral system in which the distribution of seats corresponds closely with the proportion of the total votes cast for each party. For example, if a party gained 40% of the total votes, a perfectly proportional system would allow them to gain 40% of the seats.
Proportional Representation ensures minority groups a measure of representation proportionate to their electoral support quite unlike majority or plurality systems which effectively reward strong parties and penalise weak ones by providing the representation of a whole constituency to a single candidate who may have received fewer than half of the votes cast (as is the case, for example, in the United States).
Systems of proportional representation have been adopted in many countries, including Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
Taking the just concluded presidential elections in Nigeria for example, out of ninety-three million registered voters, the four frontrunners scored, in disputed results still undergoing litigation at the time of this writing, a total of 21, 883, 672 (Twenty-One Million Eight Hundred and Eighty-Three Thousand, Six Hundred and Seventy-Two) votes as follows:
Bola Tinubu (All Progressive Congress) = stated to have scored – 8,805,420 (eight million eight hundred and five thousand four hundred and twenty) votes or 40% of total votes cast;
Atiku Abubakar (Peoples Democratic Party) = stated to have scored – 6,984,290 (six million nine hundred and eighty-four thousand two hundred and ninety) votes or about 30% of total votes cast;
Peter Obi (Labour Party) = stated to have scored – 6,093, 962 (six million and ninety-three thousand nine hundred and sixty-six) votes or about 27% of total votes cast;
and
Rabiu Kwankwaso (New Nigeria Peoples Party) = stated to have scored – 1,496,671 (one million four hundred and ninety-six thousand six hundred and seventy-one) votes or 6% of total votes cast, with a plethora of other smaller parties taking up the balance.
However, under the winner-takes-all presidential system adopted by Nigeria, Mr. Tinubu and his APC takes the entire government and controls parliament in a manner quite disproportionate with his 40% showing of votes cast. The 60% voters who did not vote for him but splintered their votes among other parties do not matter.
When you consider that region and religion play a role in the choices by voters, you will understand that absence of proportional representation in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-ideological country like Nigeria is a recipe for disillusionment and subversive activity.
Tinubu and the APC are not the cause, of course. Rather, it is the military-inherited Constitution of the “Federal Republic of Nigeria” (and civilian acquiescence) whose decision makers were not elected and final outcome not subjected to a referendum, yet containing the fiction “WE THE PEOPLE” suggesting rather fraudulently that the people of Nigeria agreed to that constitution, that is to blame.
By the way, the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) has been amended several times with cosmetic changes rather than the required Root Cause Analysis-based amendments. How does a nation make progress without leaders willing and able to tackle these self-evident challenges of nationalism? It was for this reason I started this discussion with the need for Statesmen Redeemers.
5.0. The 1st Republic principle of devolution of powers from the centre to the federating units.
In 2010, the Open Society Justice Initiative sponsored us to the United Nations at New York pursuant to the question of whether the yearly bloody riots in Jos, Plateau State were genocidal or fallout of elections. My view was that the riots had evolved from reactions to the capricious creation of sub-federating units (Jos-North LGA in particular) by the Babangida military junta to outright genocide. This capriciousness by several military rulers was also evident in the creation of States, federating units being created in turn according to the benevolence or malevolence of military dictators.
One of the four outstanding memories for me on this trip to the United Nations were the comments on Federalism in Africa by Dr. Francis Deng, the UN Under-Secretary-General for the Prevention of Genocide. Under-S-G Deng, a Sudanese, expressed his frustration that the hope that Federalism was panacea for the numerous problems experienced by Africa’s multi-ethnic nations, seemed to be disappointed in Nigeria.
Pivotal Problem with Nigeria’s Federalism
I recall telling the Under Secretary-General that the problem with Nigeria’s federalism was
- that it was more in name than in reality; and
- that military rule had recreated Nigeria into a mostly unitary state fashioned after the command culture of the military.
I told him further, that the military command culture, of necessity, abrogated the federal principle in order to control the Federating Units from the centre, and that this control included appointments, removals and transfers of military governors of the federating units, expropriation of the resources of the federating units and even the creation of federating units.
The Religious Element
Nigeria is probably the only country in the world with two major religions, Christianity, and Islam, almost evenly divided (no less than one hundred million adherents apiece). Before India’s partition in the last half century into about eight nations including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, and India, she was another with Hindu and Islam. That Nigeria has not gone the way of early India is remarkable, but the internal contradictions fostered thereby have kept the nation in a state of motion without movement.
What Is The Way Forward For Nigeria?
The way forward for Nigeria, of necessity, must examine the problems associated with hundreds of sometimes mutually suspicious ethnic nationalities jostling for space as one nation.
The way forward is not partition or secession. It is a return to the pre-independent principle of federalism [rooted in regionalism, as typified by England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland] and as compacted by the founding fathers and the British colonialists who all took the disparate differences of the ethnic nationalities making up Nigeria into cognisance.
I do not advocate a return to the three regions at independence in 1960 but a return to the principle, wherein the Federating Units controlled their resources and paid taxes of fifty percent (50%) revenues to the Central Government. Income from mineral resources have been reduced to about 13% by the military and was once as low as 3% from the independence 50%.
In Nigeria, there is hardly any Federating Unit without some form of resource, many of which are privately and illegally mined. The illegal mining of these solid minerals and general privatization of the commonwealth of the people will greatly reduce if Federating Units were required to generate their own income and pay taxes rather the current hand me down free meal predicated upon oil wealth.
Federating Units will be required to think outside the box to earn income if Nigeria went back to the fiscal federalism of the First Republic. And Federating Units which cannot or do not have resources of their own can be constitutionally required to merge with other Federating Units to aggregate resources, because there is no longer any free meal.
These thoughts require statesmanship to implement.
The all-pervasive January 1966 Military Coup
Although it failed in its objective of taking-over power, the January 1966 Military Coup (organised by officers of the ranks of Captain and Major whose average ages were between 25 and 30) continues to haunt Nigeria. Not only did that coup snowball into the July 1966 countercoup and the civil war, it also effectively birthed suspicion by many ethnic groups against the Igbo people, which suspicion and discrimination may be responsible for today’s secessionist agitation by some Igbo.
The January 1966 coup was hijacked by senior officers who, after putting down the coup failed to return power to the political class but took over governance and promulgated the Unification Decree, which effectively converted Federal Nigeria into a unitary, military-command top-down State ignoring the compact by the founding fathers and the fact that the hundreds of competing ethnic nationalities, disparate cultures, and idiosyncrasies could only feel safe and unleash their latent capabilities in a federal commonwealth. The military adventurists retained the nomenclature, Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Nigeria has since then regained several federal features so that today she is a hybrid-unitary-federalist system still at variance with what the founding fathers compacted among themselves and wholly unsuited for the unbundling of the individual energies of her constituent peoples.
The Buhari administration, for instance, while purporting to devolve further centralised powers in, for example, Railways and Electricity generation and distribution to Federating Units did not bother to change the revenue allocation formula by which it disproportionately and un-federally corners a humongous proportion of the nation’s resources. Thus, it is arguable if any Federating Unit save Lagos may have the resources to implement this cynical devolution of powers.
The command culture of the military may have been okay for a brief period but alas, unwittingly became a permanent feature for approximately 30 years, and has today ossified and crystalised into the constitution and the consciousness of a people most of whom were born during military rule.
The effect of this command culture-cum arbitrary and unilateral unitarisation of Nigeria was to give the people group with the highest demographics in terms of a common indigenous lingua franca and oftentimes, a common cultural and religious sociology effective control over the rest of the country.
Fiscal Federalism:
Whereas all Federating Units in the 1st Republic controlled their own destinies, certainly their own mineral and other resources and paid a tax of about 50% to the Central Government, military rule commandeered the resources of every part of Nigeria, and allocated revenues to the now many more-often-than-not arbitrarily created Federating Units, without recourse to fiscal federalism. In effect, the country had become largely unitary.
This is the main underbelly of the agitations across the Federation. Nigeria has become a house divided against itself which, as you know, cannot stand. The dissolving of the quasi-independent federating units by military fiat and gradual replacement over about 30 years with 36 States, which by their going cap in hand to Abuja monthly to collect their share of federation resources show that they are provinces of the Central Government, and that the Federal Republic is in name only.
Hundreds of ethnic nationalities and their disparate cultures and resources have effectively been brought under the control of whoever controlled the Central Government. How does this foster nationhood? How does a nation move steadily forward this way?
6.0. Conclusion
There are many other issues plaguing Nigeria, notably corruption. But corruption is watered by the fact that Nigeria is not yet a nation and corruption is tolerated when the corrupt belongs to our own region or religion. Resolving these questions will set us well on the path to resolving the corruption conundrum.
Another question to be answered in the case of exploring the way forward for Nigeria is whether a single term in office for Presidents, Governors and Local Council Chairs is not in fact the better ideal for multi-ethnic, multi-religious nascent democracies like Nigeria.
Thank you.
Ikeazor Akaraiwe, Senior Advocate of Nigeria. ikeazor@gmail.com. www.akaraiweandassociates.com, Twitter: @akaraiwelegal
[1] Ikeazor Akaraiwe is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. Convener of We The People and Moderator of the Rule of Law – Nigeria Collective, he was 1st Vice-President of the Nigerian Bar Association between 2008 and 2010.
[2] Merriam-Webster
[3] www.parliament.uk
[4] www.brittanica.com
