Nigeria at 59: Why nostalgia for First Republic persists —Adeyeye

Senator Adedayo Adeyeye represents Ekiti South in the upper chamber of the National Assembly. In thi interview with TAIWO AMODU, the former national publicity secretary of Afenifere, former Minister of State, Works explains the genesis of the subsisting mutual distrust and suspicions among the federating ethnic units in Nigeria after 59 years of independence, among other issues.

 

NIGERIA at 59: Let us start with your appraisal of our sojourn as a nation in its infancy in 1960 till date. How have we fared?

It is a journey laced with mixed blessings. There was rapid economic development of the country in the First Republic.  In the 1960s, the Western Region was the fastest growing economy in the entire country, closely followed by the Eastern and Northern Nigeria. If you are to look at all those regions as development units, it was the fastest growing. The Western Region was the first to have a television station, not only in Africa, but most of the developing countries. Television was a luxury then, but Western Region was able to muster enough resources to have a television station. The region could afford the Cocoa House, free education, a minimum wage that was higher than the national one and all those things. Let me tell you, there was healthy competition among the regions. When Western Region moved in one direction, the North and the East would follow. And sometimes, when they moved in a positive direction, the West and the East will follow. They tried to copy themselves and to move happily.  Chief Obafemi Awolowo established the Premier Hotel in Ibadan, the East established Presidential in Enugu and at the same time Hamdala Hotel in Kaduna. Awo established the University of Ife, Ahmadu Bello University was being established and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. This was a nation in which graduates would leave the ivory tower and they would have jobs immediately. And there was true federalism.

I have studied the Independence Constitution of 1960 because I am a person who has been concerned about the structure of Nigeria for a long time. I was in the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO). I was in the Afenifere. It has been my preoccupation to see how we arrived at this. We have a structure that is clogging our movement to development. The structure that we are currently operating is a clog in the wheel of progress.

So, how did we get here? I have studied the 1960 Constitution, which is the real negotiation thing that our forefathers negotiated with the British, the Indians and Pakistan. The Constitution is the basis upon which Nigeria was created. In that constitution, we have the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, closely followed by the Constitutions of the Northern, Eastern Western Regions— in alphabetical order. They did it like that. The constitution of the Western Region wasn’t the same as the constitution of the Eastern Region, neither was it the same with the constitution of Northern Region. Every region designed a constitution that would suit its peculiar situation.

I give you an example. The Western Region had a bicameral legislature, comprising the House of Chiefs and the House of Assembly which was to give expression to the reality of the situation in the region. We have monarchies, the traditional institutions that the people respect and you need to accommodate it in the modern system. So we had the House of Chiefs.

The Northern region also had a House of Chiefs which was to be in conformity with the reality of the situation of the region because we have the Emirs and you couldn’t exclude them from governance. But the mode of the election into the House of Chiefs was different in the Western region from that of the North. The Eastern region had a unicameral legislation, no House of Chiefs. The powers of appropriations of the Ministry of Finance in the regions were different and all of them were operating parliamentary system. But there were a lot of things that were different which were basically in conformity with the reality of the peculiar situation of each of the regions. They took that into account in making a constitution for themselves.

We are a diverse country and we must reflect that in our constitution and that Independence Constitution is the best we have ever made because it was physically negotiated, thoroughly examined and people were satisfied and it was taken back to the people and they ratified it.

So, they make the constitution for themselves, they can in all honesty say, we the people made this constitution for ourselves. And it worked for them. Yes, there was crisis in the Western Region and all that but in a democracy, aren’t we having crisis now? If we had allowed it, it would correct itself. Governors have been impeached in this democratic dispensation.  In the past, that would have been an excuse for the military to take over. What happened in the Western region was a quarrel between the Premier, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola and his former leader, Obafemi Awolowo, who was the Leader of Opposition at the federal level . That was all. There was crisis in the Western Region House of Assembly and they decided to organise a coup. Have we not seen more now or worst? But that was an excuse for the military to seize power. And they went ahead, believing in the misconstrued notion that unity equals uniformity. If you have uniformity of everything in the country, you can have unity. It is the exact opposite because we must respect our diversity and then you give allowance to each person to operate within its own sphere.  With full freedom, he will be ready to accommodate others at the meeting at the central point.

 

The military, starting from General Aguiyi Ironsi regime,  administered the nation like a Central garrison command with decrees having suspended the constitution. Now under democracy that is supposed to be representative of peoples aspirations,  the argument has been that we must have a people’s constitution; what is the encumbrance?

It is difficult, because once you have a constitution in operation, everything must come within that framework. Assuming in 1999, General Abdulsalami Abubakar decided before handing over to say, ok, let us have a constituent assembly to make a constitution, give them full freedom and let us subject that constitution to a referendum. Maybe things would have been better. Then with the mood of the nation at that point in time, I knew as national publicity secretary of Afenifere, I knew the mood in the South-West. We wanted full federalism to give us greater latitude in the management of our own affairs in the South- West. We wanted that. We would have gone there to make our argument and many areas of the country, the middle belt even the North would have seen the reason why we needed to go back to what our forefathers negotiated in 1960. But we didn’t have the chance. A group of technocrats may be, assembled by General Abubakar gave us the current constitution that we are operating, because when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was going to be sworn in, they merely gave it to him and they said, this is the constitution. And he swore by that document to uphold it. He swore by it. The same thing was repeated for National Assembly members as well as all the governors. Now, having created that grund norm, we need to now operate everything within that constitution and to now make a radical alteration becomes impossible.

 

Why is it difficult? I know that the first item in the manifesto of your party is power devolution to the federating states?

Thank you very much. It becomes difficult unless you aren’t talking of a radical restructuring like I am advocating in which there is real power devolution to the federating regions such that will have a semblance, if not total copy, of what we had in 1960. You will need more than the National Assembly and states to do that, because even within the states, there is no meeting of minds.

People are now governors; they are now House of Assembly members; they have elected themselves into some positions which they think is immutable. They can’t change. So, it becomes extremely difficult to do a total, radical change, not just devolution to create a true system.

Let me tell you, in America the most classical example of a federal state, every state in America has its own coat of arms, constitution. In some states, governors are elected for a four-year term, others are elected for a two-year term; others, six-year term. Some states have bicameral legislature, some unicameral. The salary of every state is determined by that state government. There is no uniformity.

When Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, he was earning $30,000.  At that point in time, the governor of New York was earning $200,000. Clinton was going on economy flight because that was what Arkansas could afford for its governor, while the governor of New York could afford to hire private jet. And in many states in America, they will tell you, this thing is allowed in this state. It isn’t allowed in another state. Even to obtain driving license, the regulations are different. And majority of the taxation is collected by the state and local councils.

There is nothing like revenue allocation in America, where states go to the centre to take monthly allocation. Everybody depends on the taxes the states can muster. And that was the situation with us in the First Republic. No region was going to the Federation Account to share money. It is so surprising that this is happening in this country

I had occasion to interview Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1983 as a journalist.  Western Region generated its own money, Eastern Region generated its own money, so there was healthy competition then. Cocoa cultivation was going on rapidly because that was the mainstay of its economy. Western Region was competing with Ghana and Ivory Coast as the largest producer of Cocoa. They took palm oil from Eastern region to Malaysia to tell them that this produce can liberate them from poverty. Groundnut pyramids were in the North and so many things because if you don’t work, you don’t eat. That was the system: every state must produce. Today in America, they see California as the sixth largest economy in the whole world, bigger than many nations. It isn’t the concern of California how they are running anything in Missouri.

So, what I am telling you in essence is that, yes, it is in the manifestoes of the APC, but how is it going to be practicable on ground? This is the problem because we already have a constitution in place, you can’t just start something radical. Set up a Constituent Assembly now and people will say it is illegal. We have a  National Assembly like Dr Goodluck Jonathan did. When he did all those things he did I was a Minister then, he was still bringing everything back to National Assembly. The constitutional conference did a lot in 2015, I read the report, but where is the power to make it into law? It has to be referred to the National Assembly for enactment.

 

We also have provisions that will make amendment difficult: 2/3 majority of state parliament. 

This is the point I am making. What I can advocate is piecemeal amendment of the constitution for greater devolution of power to the states and then to the local government. For example, when I first bought my car in 1981 and I went to Shomolu in Lagos to do registration, the number plate and the number were supplied by local government. It was local government revenue collection. Now, it is Federal Government bypassing even the state. Everything is federalised and there is no source of income for the local government again. All the sources of income for states and local councils have become federalised. How can it become federal?