Nostalgia of true federalism

ONE subject that has been topical in our recent national discourse is the current status of our federalism. The voices on it have been so loud that the need to revisit the kind of federalism we operate cannot and must not be ignored.

All kinds of words have been used to describe what many people see as the lopsidedness of our present federal system. Some have styled it power devolutions, while still some described it as restructuring. However, proponents of the two theses had agreed on one thing; that the political stability of the country depends mainly on the revisit of the present federal structure.

Whereas, I agree both in principle and in practice with the advocates of restructuring, the only area where I disagree with some of the postulates is where they say it is a particular section of the country that is against restructuring in the country for the benefit of power perpetuity in the zone.

Let me state with all sense of clarity that the level of our national political development has reached a stage that no zone can claim dominance over others. For instance, in 18 years of our return to democracy, the southern part of the country has occupied the office of the president for more than two-thirds of the duration, without any voice of dissent from the North. This is because the principle of zoning has come to stay in Nigeria.

Besides, the shout of marginalisation at the federal level has not been less vociferous in any section of the country including the North. Perhaps, except in the area of personnel recruitment, no zone of the country, to the best of my knowledge, has enjoyed noticeable infrastructural advantage over other zones.

The call for secession by a particular zone of the country is certainly not the solution; rather it is borne out of frustration and despondency; which, however, should not be ignored. To me, whether we call it devolution or restructuring, the need for a return to the First Republic federalism can never be overemphasised. The current power centralisation is certainly a military version of federalism, which is not desirable in a democratic federalism.

Fiscal autonomy of the federating units is the beauty of true democracy. It was under this arrangement that the old Western Region under Chief Obafemi Awolowo was able to set infrastructural model in areas of education, agriculture and industry for the country. One could notice that in institutions such as the University of Ife now Obafemi Awolowo University, Liberty Stadium, Ibadan, which the British ace boxing promoter, Jack Solomon, described as the Mini-Wembley Stadium in London because of the facilities provided in that stadium; WNTV, the first Television Station in Africa; the Premier Hotel Ibadan, the first five-star Hotel in Nigeria, the first dualisation of road, Mokola to the State Secretariat, Agodi, Ibadan which was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth II during her first visit to Nigeria in 1956, and not forgetting the farm settlements across the region.

If only because of the healthy rivalry that existed among federating units of that time, both the Northern and the Eastern regional governments were quick to take a cue from Awolowo’s initiative. That resulted in such institutions like the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium, among others, in the Eastern Region. In the North, we saw such infrastructure like the Ahmadu Bello University, Ahmadu Bello Stadium, and Northern Nigeria Television, among others.

All these were achieved without recourse to the federal government. But the first assault to our federalism was that all those regional projects were forcibly acquired for the Federal Government by the Murtala/Obasanjo regime between 1975 and 1979; and that was the beginning of political imbalance in the country with which we are still battling today.

The regions at that time were allowed to harness their resources according to their respective initiatives for the benefits of their regions. One can imagine the state of unease the region would have found themselves were their natural resources to be under federal revenue. That makes the current agitation in the Niger-Delta region somehow understandable. The only difference is that resource control agitation does not have to go with the destruction of public institutions or any kind of violence.

In my own opinion, for Nigeria to remain stable and united, the centre must be made less attractive; so also should be the cost running government at all levels. The central government should be restricted to such areas like Defence, Currency, Immigration, Foreign Affairs and a few others. In areas of internal security and maintenance of law and order, police should be on the concurrent list whereby state police will operate without any hindrance from the central police. A lot of modern day crimes like kidnapping and its likes can be avoided where there is state police to serve as a kind of vigilante to their respective communities.

Unfortunately, however, the craze for federal attention has reached such a level that even some highly-placed traditional rulers in the country have also ‘gone federal.’ They were demanding a slot in the federal revenue allocation for the maintenance of their headquarters. Before we know anything, they would be demanding for recognition as the fourth tier of government in the country.

If I have taken any serious exception to a unified traditional institution in the country, suffice to say that it is not a personal matter between one or any of the traditional rulers concerned. Rather, it is borne out of the fact that as custodians of custom, culture and tradition of their subjects, they should be content with the preservation of their peculiar cultures and customs without making any attempts to liberalise or nationalise it in the name of national unity of any form. I nurse no personal grudge against anybody.

It is personally painful that what we are operating at the moment is a one-tier functional government. This is because the state government, which is supposed to be the second leg on which true federalism rests, is more or less a lame duck. This is as long as it depends on the federal government for its budgetary obligations to its people.

I make bold to say that in actual sense, the Yoruba political system is the original home of true federalism, dating back to the old Oyo Empire, which lasted for more than six hundred years in history. Each of the traditional Yoruba kingdoms was a federating unit running its administration with local peculiarities. The role of the Alaafin as the Central Government was to defend the Yoruba’s territorial integrity against any external aggression, as was the case in Iganna, Okeho and Kishi, when the Alaafin invited the British for military intervention to halt French aggression. Another was in the area of settling boundary disputes among various Yoruba communities. Few of such cases were boundary disputes between Ede and Ife, which the Alaafin determined at Shasha; between Ibadan and Abeokuta, which the Alaafin settled at Bakatari in favour of Ibadan.

If we all want the Nigerian project to succeed, we must face the start reality of history and empirical postulates of true federalism.

• His Imperial Majesty, Oba (Dr) Adeyemi III, JP, CFR, LL.D. SAP, D.LLTS, DPA, is the Alaafin of Oyo and Permanent Chairman, Oyo State Council of Obas and Chiefs.