Restructuring: How National Assembly can help out

RESTRUCTURING is the fad out there right now. The political circle bubbles each time that word props up. Some sections rise with livid anger and some with excitement. Some interpret it to mean devolution of powers, others call it true federalism and yet some call it resource control.

And those meanings also have geopolitical orientations. The South-East wants restructuring to correct years of marginalisation. The South-South wants restructuring to guarantee resource control and the South-West believes that restructuring would guarantee federalism as seen in the First Republic. The North has not really got hold of that word and thus resorts to a staccato of opinions on this agenda. Some of its leaders call for its rejection while others seek clear definitions.

Whatever the meaning you choose to adduce to this word, the end product should guarantee a measure of fiscal autonomy for the states/regions, ensure they are not encumbered in developing the resources located within their bases and make wealth therefrom. It should ensure that the states/regions make financial gains and remit an agreed percentage of the proceeds to the central government for overall development of the nation.

A number of measures, largely half-baked have been toyed with in attempts to circumvent the restructuring agenda. The military organised the different constitutional conferences; the Political Bureau and constituent assemblies with almost all ending in still births.

Starting from the General Ibrahim Babangida era to the late General Sani Abacha’s Constituent assembly of 1994-1995 and then former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s National Political Reforms Conference and the 2014 National Conference held by former President Goodluck Jonathan, the conferences preferred one way forward or the other for the country. But none has really being implemented.

Now that the restructuring agenda has seized the polity you would think it is the best opportunity for the National Assembly to shine. And it should if its handlers get their priorities right.

Nothing in our law books stops the National Assembly from rewriting the Constitution wholesale. Nothing. The procedures for amending the constitution are clearly spelt out in the body of that ground norm and once the legislature and the stakeholders fulfill the conditions the law is made.

So rather than allow Nigerians continue to jeer at each other based on geopolitical differences over the intendment of restructuring, can’t the National Assembly do the needful by taking up the mantle?

Initial efforts aimed at amending the Constitution really took off in that spirit. You would recall that between year 2000 and 2001, a committee set up by the Federal Government went round the zones. It was working hand in hand with the Assembly we were told but eventually that did not go enough.

Right now, the Constitution amendment Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives have again hit the road in a bid to amend the 1999 Constitution. It should be a paradise won, not lost. Starting from the Fifth Assembly, the National Assembly was seen to have taken a direct approach at the review exercise but that effort also got truncated via the Third Term virus in 2006. The bill died at the

Second Reading stage in the Senate, prompting the House of Representatives to jettison it to avoid a futile effort.

Everyone had thought that the constitution amendment process was jinxed until the Sixth Assembly came through with key amendments in 2010.  But the lawmakers appeared to have been bogged down by the incremental approach adopted in the wake of the aborted effort of the Fifth Assembly.

Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who had been in the saddle since the Sixth Assembly had proposed an incremental approach to avoida situation where only one item would lead to what they call throwing away the baby and the birth water.

But that approach has only ensured that constitution amendment remains on the agenda of successive National Assemblies. It is fast emerging as a franchise. It has been time consuming and money guzzling. Between the Sixth and Seventh Assemblies, the national legislature spent about N8 billion on the exercise where the two chambers budgeted N1 billion per annum.

If we are to be fair to the taxpayer, such a huge investment should yield good respite for constitution review agitators.

But thus far, the National Assembly has only really succeeded in effecting major amendments to the Constitution in 2010 with some minor corrections effected on two other occasions. It appears however that the incremental amendment process adopted following the failure of the 2006 exercise should be jettisoned at this stage to pave the way for a total review of the nation’s law book. Now is the time to fundamentally review all constitutional impediments to development, which form the bedrock of the agitations for restructuring.

For instance, there is nothing that stops the National Assembly from reviewing the reports of all conferences held in recent times and coming up with a body of law that would  help grow a 21st Century Nigerian nation.

Nothing should stop the lawmakers from reviewing the unitary setting at the local government level. The lawmakers can either institute federalism at that level by properly creating a third tier of government or they could delete the councils from the Constitution to create a two tier government.