Nigeria’s former Ambassador to the Phillipines, Dr Yemi Farounbi, in this interview by SAM NWAOKO, reacts to the move by some members of the House of Representatives to return Nigeria to a parliamentary system of government and his thoughts on how the country could be healed of its foundational cracks.
Sixty members of the House of Representatives have begun the process of returning Nigeria to the parliamentary system of government. Is this feasible sir considering the way Nigeria is structured?
It is possible but the question is: Is that the problem? Nigeria is like a computer, it has a hard ware, it has software and it has an operator. The hardware is the federal structure – is it truly federal? Does it reflect a balanced relationship between the centre and the federating units? Or, is it an overburdened centre that we have? In the First Republic, the centre had about 15 or thereabout functions. Today, they have over 68. In the First Republic, the centre had access to about 20 percent of the revenue. Today, the centre controls 53.9 percent. So it is no longer a balanced federation and that is the first thing that we must look at. Activities of government must be played at the level nearest to the people. So there are functions that are being carried out by the Federal Government that properly ought to be carried out by the federating units. Let me give an example: Under the Land Use Act, the land is under the control of the state governor, but we have a Federal Ministry of Agriculture. So, what is it doing? Under that Land Use Act, the land belongs to the state but under that 1999 Constitution, the minerals within the land belong to the Federal Government. So, these are irreconcillable positions that we ought to look at. We have a federation, we have state high court, and we have a federal high court under Federal Government; the Court of Appeal under Federal Government, the Supreme Court under the Federal Government. So, what does the state have in this unitary judicial system? Only a state high court. So, if you have to appeal, you have to appeal to succession of courts controlled by Federal Government. That is not federal. Federalism presupposes a counterbalancing relationship between the centre and the federating units. I think that is the most important problem.
Talking of security, we have a unified security in which the Inspector-General of Police is responsible for the 1 million square kilometres area of Nigeria; 774 local government areas. Does that make sense? Why is it that the local government cannot have a police? Why is it that the state cannot have police? Security must be at the level nearest to the people.
Would altering the constitution and recreating some of its provisions, which the Senate has commenced, not solve some of these problems? How do you think they should go about it?
Properly, what we need is a new constitution that belongs to the people. But, because there is lack of political will by a succession of the political leadership, perhaps what we can do is a succession of amendments. The section on security, don’t just create local government police, also amend the allocations so that the state and local governments can bear these additional responsibilities. Look at power… look at the situation we have in power. Why can’t a local government that is a rural local government cannot generate its own power that is solar or from wind without having to bother itself about that national grid? Of course if it has extra it can sell to the national grid. But everything has to be centre because the transmission company of Nigeria that transmits electricity from all the transmitting centres to the distribution centres is controlled and owned by the Federal Government. These are problematic areas that the federal Government had been given too much responsibility for things that have direct relationship with the lives of the people, yet the Federal Government is so far away from the people. And, because the Federal Government has so much money than it probably needs, the tendency to defraud, to steal this money is high. N500million in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, look at the amount the Accountant General was reported to have stolen. We can go on and on like that. The inclination to steal at the centre is because they are far away from the people that they are supposed to spend the money for. Now, we talk about palliatives, they say they are going to release grains or that senators are being given rice or House of Reps members… you know that it is the local government that has these people; or state government and they are not involved in all of these. So there is a tendency for people to be distributing palliatives to people they don’t know. The local government people know themselves, the state people know themselves; Abuja does not know the people. So, unless we rewire the structure of Nigeria – whether it is presidential or parliamentary – is irrelevant, we must do this to achieve the desired results.
How do we do this ‘rewiring’ sir?
This rewiring can be by succession of amendments, or if we have a leadership that truly loves this country, submit a bill, an executive act to the National Assembly to enact a law for us to put a sovereign national congress together so we can have a negotiated consensus. When Mikhail Gorbachev was the president of the USSR, he negotiated with the people and through the people on behalf of the people the restructuring of the USSR into 50 republics. When Frederick De-Clerk was the president, apartheid as it was in South Africa, he negotiated even his own position with Mandela. He became a vice president to Mandela. So we have to have people who love the country and the people more than the position they occupy. Of course the Nigerian president is easily one of the most powerful in the whole world. Ordinary radio license, he will sign it. Oil blocks, he will approve it. Numerous appointments, he will approve them, so it becomes difficult for human vanities to reduce within your own empire. That is why, unless you have somebody who is selfless enough and who can make the sacrifice, we will never be able to restructure Nigeria. We will never be able to guarantee security, economic development, infrastructural development at the rate at which we are going. We cannot do it.
During the First Republic, when we had the regional government, we seemed to have it under control and the country was cruising forward well. At what point did we begin to lose it so much that the country is adrift and has now found itself rudderless?
We lost it with (I think it was) the Unification Decree No 31 under Aguiyi-Ironsi. That decree dissolved the federation, destroyed federalism and instituted a centralised government. Of course I understand that the military has a chain of command. Lieutenant salutes Captain; Captain salutes Major; Major salutes Colonel, Colonel salutes Brigadier and on and on like that but you don’t run an affair of the system like that particularly when they are multi-religious, multi-ethnic or multi-lingual. You have to allow for individual differences and that was what our negotiated 1960 or 1963 constitution allowed for. It allowed the regions to go at their own paces and to see to their own focus of development, to see their own priorities; and they did that and we saw it. We saw their well-being and what they were doing. The North was also growing. They had the groundnut pyramids in the North. They had numerous textile factories then, now we don’t have up to five. They had those textile factories then because they were producing the cotton and beniseed all in the North. They also had the Northern Nigeria Development Company which was established in the First Republic under the Sardauna. The development could be seen. The East was doing their own. They had agro revolution and they had the Nkalagu Cement Factory, started their own bank, and started their own university. The West was doing its own. So, there was no imposition of uniformity of approach. No, you take what was convenient for you and you go at your own pace. But the unification decree which subsequent military regimes perpetuated either in their 1989 or 1999 constitution, you find that the unified Nigeria is not working. I heard series of interviews granted by Professor Ben Nwabueze, whom I understand authored the unification decree, and he regretted that having the centralised constitution we had in 1979 was not good for the country.
You cannot force people to be united. No. people will learn to live together. They will begin to tolerate one another. But when I wear a white dress and I have to force everybody to wear white, they are going to revolt. And I think this is what we need to do now. Parliamentary is just like the software of the computer, we are deciding either to use the java or whatever or any other software, but the hardware of the computer itself is wrong. There are cracks in the building of Nigeria. When you have cracks—cracks in the economic growth, cracks in the religious tolerance, cracks in the infrastructural growth, crack with the security, then you know it has to do with the foundation and the foundation is the structure. It doesn’t matter what kind of bed sheet you use in your room or the colour of your toilet, what matters is that the house must be strong. This house is no longer strong. There are cracks and these cracks can only be carefully taken care of with a restructured Nigeria. You allow the people to make a choice of what they want at their own level. There are centralised things you have to do like defence, common currency, common foreign policy, minimum educational standards and so on. That has to be done at the centre. But what kind of houses should I have, what kind of houses should I build, what language should I use to teach my pupils in the primary and secondary school ought not to be a central problem. Even ordinary marriage is controlled by the centre. These are the problems we have, the centre is over-burdened and now, it has grown beyond the span of control of any human being. It doesn’t really matter who is there, it is not a matter of Tinubu or the fault of whoever may be there, it is a structural problem you have to solve. If somebody must sit in Abuja and bother what happens in security in Kaura Namoda and at the same time in Ikenegbu or at the same time in Ora Igbomina that he doesn’t even know, places that don’t even appear on the map, how possible is that? How do you do that without a proper delegation of functions or the delegation of the responsibility and the delegation of the finances to do it?
People are just saying that they want state police, are they thinking of funding it? Once you take a function away from the centre and bring to the federating unit, you must, at the same time, move the money from the centre to the federating unit. So, it is a fairly complex process that we need to sit down as a people and have what they call a negotiated consensus – all of us. It may take time talking. Before Nigeria came to federalism in the 1951 constitution amended properly in the 1954 constitution, it took them months. They discussed at the district level, they discussed at the divisional level, they discussed at the provinces, then they discussed at the regional level and they now came to Ibadan in 1947/48. They now agreed that giving the complexities of this country, the only way to run this country is a federal system. It is such that if I want to use thatch houses, I should be free to do it. If I don’t want to use thatch houses, I should be free to do it. When you force your own will, that is no longer democracy. Democracy is government of the people by the people for the people. Are we running a federation that is no longer for the people? Listen to what the Council of Traditional Rulers from the North said. The members said they may not be able to hold their people for much longer because they are hungry. If there is hunger in the land, why are we talking to Federal Government? If there is hunger in the land, the land is under the state which should be doing farming – local government and state. Who should have the funds for farming? Local government and states, but who has the funds? Centre! They have money but they don’t have responsibility, they don’t have people and the people are so far away from them that they cannot understand the enormity of the problem that the common people are facing. So, that is why we must look at the structure. People think that the problem is ‘let’s become parliamentary’. That won’t solve the problem. What will solve the problem of Nigeria is delineation – carefully thought-out – of responsibilities between the centre and the federating units.
and then