The former Speaker of the House of Representatives said this in a lecture titled, ‘Nigerian Democracy post-1999: Progress, Diversity and National unity’ delivered at the public lecture; magazine launch and awards event organized by Mupun Youths Association held at Zumji Events Centre, Sabon Bariki, Jos on Saturday, 24th September 2022.
“We have 774 of them and they are allocated about 27 per cent of the national revenue that ends up in what is called Joint Account; that is under the stranglehold of state Governors,” he said.
According to him, “Efforts made by the National Assembly to grant local governments autonomy was thwarted by the state Houses of Assembly. Today, only sham elections take place at the local level and trillions of Naira that should be used to provide services to the people at the grassroots are being siphoned. This aberration must also be fixed for progress to be made.
“To worsen the situation, state governments have virtually abdicated their responsibilities. Nowadays, it is not unusual to hear a State Governor lamenting the high unemployment rate in Nigeria and blaming the Federal government for not providing jobs”.
“To them, they are not elected to provide jobs. Very few Governors since 1999 have made some landmark achievements in terms of provision of job opportunities for their citizens. The case is not different in Plateau State. States must also be made to deliver on their mandates in order to give more life to our democracy”, he added.
On Unity, diversity and nation building, Yakubu Dogara stressed that the 1999 constitution has provided the legal framework for achieving national unity in Nigeria, “I recommend that you study the entirety of chapter two of the constitution”.
“But can we say that we are today more united than we were in 1999? The answer is stating the obvious. No leader has kept faith with the provisions of chapter two of the constitution that’s why our journey to nationhood has not only been fractious but painfully slow – that is if at all we have begun the journey”, he further said.
He opined that “Nigeria can never attain nationhood if we fail to deliberately develop the will to come together as a people regardless of our faith and tribe. Sadly, this has not been the case since 1999. There is a lot of work to be done”.
He further said that “No any given people have ever built a State without first attaining nationhood. All talks about the provision of infrastructures, eliminating poverty, provision of qualitative education, peace and security will always come to nought if we fail to deliberately develop a strong national identity for ourselves as Nigerians”.
According to him, “Democracy alone cannot forge this strong national identity for us, we can only employ democracy and its tools to achieve it. Anyone who tells you that we can remain divided and still build a civilization is either a fool himself or is taking you for a fool as he would have no historical parallel to point to”.
Yakubu Dogara further said that “The evidence of our abysmal failure at nation building is right under our noses- the formation or the rise of successionist groups such as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, Niger Delta Frontier Force, Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, Oduduwa People’s Congress among others”.
Speaking further, he said, “Plateau state here is a classic example of our failure to achieve unity in diversity as a nation. For more than two decades now, peace seems to have eluded the people on the Plateau”.
According to him, “Farmer-Herders crisis has bedevilled Nigeria especially Plateau state for some unbroken years now. It has displaced hundreds of thousands of people, damaged local economies, and entrenched ethnic and religious polarization which sadly continues to claim thousands of lives. Successive administrations since 1999 have been unable to tackle this primarily due to ineffective responses”.
He said that it was Akin Oyebode, the renowned Professor of jurisprudence and International Law, who said that unless forces of reaction and ethnocentricity are de-emphasised, Nigeria will not make progress in her efforts toward nationhood.
He posited that Nigeria seemed to have been complicated by a dearth of patriotic and insightful leaders who possessed a well-thought-out strategic plan to change the nation for the better.
“I agree with his recommendation that we need to blunt the rough edges of ethnic and religious idiosyncrasies by putting in place policies based on equality of status and opportunity in furtherance of self-actualisation of every citizen”, he declared.
He stressed that “When some of us rose against the same faith ticket of the APC, it is because we were bothered about the issues we are speaking to here. Insistence on same faith ticket and same faith voting is tantamount to summoning a jihad to collide with a crusade”.
“Those of us on the Plateau know the consequences of this more than anyone else. The people promoting this combustible agenda hate the North and by extension, Nigeria. They want to use religion to weaken the North first for some sinister schemes because our weakness is their strength”, he added.
The former Speaker noted that “Take it or leave it, if Nigeria has a major promise those that will deliver on it will be those of you who will summon the courage to embrace people of other faiths in the spirit of justice equity and Fair play. The truth is that no one will root out Islam just like no one will root out Christianity from the North or Nigeria. If that is the case, why won’t Christians and Muslims work together on the many things we agree upon to make Plateau, the North and Nigeria great?”