Without mincing words, the real enemy of Nigeria has been the
Federal Government. What fills the mind with sobriety is not the use of this tag as a masquerade by past successive military regimes to endlessly milk the nation dry but the sustenance of this unpleasant status quo by the civilian successors of the khaki boys at our central level of administration since 1999. Obviously, the human hubris has taken the better part of them, as they have since inherited and nurtured a gargantuan monster as a means of gulping an unfair share of the nation’s resources to the detriment of the citizens who are, indeed, not directly linked to them.
I share the worst fear of every true patriot that Nigeria may never rise beyond its century-old “wobbling and fumbling” in all facets of life, an inglorious feat that is about being ironically celebrated, should the present fake federalism subsist. Like everybody else, I am afraid. The large number of roads, bridges, hospitals, police stations, schools, power installations as well as inexistent federal farmland and farmers for whose sake our government at the centre has always retained the largest chunk of our resources may forever remain the worsening facilities we have always known. I am afraid. Real economic growth and development would ever remain a mirage as long as the bulk of tax proceeds from states and local councils continue to flow into the federal purse. I am afraid. The sheer waste of the largest chunk of our fast depleting oil resources on frivolous luxuries by our too-rich central government may continue while over 90 per cent of the citizens endlessly wallow in abject poverty.
It is not that federalism is unsuitable for Nigeria. It is in fact the very system capable of maintaining the heterogeneous type of society that we have. The problem is the too-familiar systemic imbalance, distortion and manipulation concerned citizens and groups have always complained about. Only the All-knowing can be specific about the beginning of the agitation for restructuring in our country. What beats one’s imagination is the consistent refusal of successive decision-takers at the federal level to yield to the deafening calls for a re-arrangement of power allocation among the three tiers of government in such a manner that would empower state and local governments due to their vantage closeness to the people in need of governmental services. At least, our pre-1966 experience of rapid growth and development courtesy of healthy competition among economically empowered regions is not unknown to these officials as they come and go.
Of course, no Nigerian president, federal lawmaker, minister, past or present, can deny that most, if not all the assets the Federal Government has since thrived on are all handiworks of regional administrations that existed for only six years (1960 to 1966). Yet, they have never and would not likely ever sincerely work for the restructuring of Nigeria. They have always worked against any initiative that would deprive them, under the dubious auspices of the Federal Government of Nigeria, of even a unit of the 54 per cent of the national wealth actually retained for luxuriant and ostentatious living while those networks of roads and bridges, supposedly owned but hardly patronised by the federal administration and its key decision-makers, constitute death traps to the locals and their government officials.
To be candid, the best brain in the globe cannot succeed in facilitating true socio-economic development through the current Nigerian state.
The less than average attainments of respective state and local governments, so far, have been a product of luck. Yes indeed! That wholesale breakdown of law and order emanated lately only with the birth of Boko Haram has not been due to the efficiency of our system that is inherently insecure. A situation whereby a state governor or local government chairman who knows his people and environment inside out is only his territory’s chief security officer in name while the actual authority over local watchmen lies with an Abuja-based ‘spirit’, heard and seen only on radio and television, leaves much to desire. The rot at the Police College Ikeja, recently exposed by Channels Television, is indeed a mere tip of the iceberg. It communicates the gargantuan rot in our various security outfits that stand no chance of genuine transformation as long as the Federal (read enemy) Government, its officials and their private accomplices conscientiously sustain their deceitful pretexts. To deny the necessities of state police in the present day Nigeria on the flimsy excuse of the possibility of partisanship and abuse reminiscent of the First Republic experiment is to maliciously treat the sophistication of contemporary Nigerians as of the same measure with those of the citizens of yore when general political awareness and consciousness were still at their lowest ebb.
The direct casualty is the economy, due to the inability of any state to facilitate real economic development. For instance, Lagos State, the economic hub of Nigeria, with a governor said to be dynamic, progressive and change-driven, in my opinion, is incapable of facilitating genuine economic opportunities that would impact on a significant fraction of its teeming populace. The fact is that the state government, just like any other, is, simply, not in charge of physical security which it must first guarantee to investors; it has no say over the exploitation and use of any of the natural resources within its territories; its capacity to relate with foreign countries, institutions and partners is highly limited.
This is why I pity Fashola, his colleagues as well as the 774 local council chairmen, acting or substantive. Whenever they try to solve one problem, they end up creating many others, perhaps. My reference point, once again, is the helplessness of Fashola in Lagos. When he came up with the widely-criticised restriction on the operation of commercial motorcycles in the state, the natural expectation of many Nigerians, which is actually the standard practice worldwide, is a general tactical professional relocation of most, if not all of the victims by the state government. This much, I am sure, was not unknown or undesirable to the governor and his team as they were equally not unaware of the negative political implications of their policy.
More pitiful is the realisation that, just like any other state in the country, Lagos, its government and indigenes have their enemy in the Federal Government that not only bites more than it can chew but have so far deliberately frustrated every attempt to restructure in favour of fiscal federalism. One sour point is that uncontrolled mass influx into metropolitan cities like Lagos, Ibadan, Kano, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Awka and others are a direct effect of injudicious use of the wealth at the disposal of the Federal Government. As multitudes of unemployed graduates, school drop-outs and large army of unlettered youths and adults add to the density of such cities, the easy attraction for their economic survival is the okada business into which the average new-comer invites his siblings, relations and friends from the village. In the process, millions of citizens turned socio-economic pests, parasites and wastes, courtesy of the government’s ineptitude, get dumped in few cities and towns. Security thus becomes a serious issue in states hitherto noted for peace and serenity. The current precarious case of Oyo and Ogun states is a sour turnaround taking a great toll on the respective state authorities.
Worse-still, the refusal of the Federal Government to reduce its areas and subjects of attention, has hampered its general capacity and efficiency as particularly manifest in its all-time poor management and operations of, for instance, The Nigeria Customs, a fatal error that has wrecked monstrous security challenges on us.
As a way forward, the present federal administration, under a man from a tribe which people have been most afflicted by the imbalance in our socio-economic and political equation, is, to me, a one-time opportunity of change that may never be regained if allowed to pass unutilised. I fear that the 2011 hope and trust reposed in good luck by the citizenry, across all divides, may never recur to placate their desperation and yearning for a just and egalitarian society.
- Rasheed Olokode(solace4real2000@yahoo.com 08066664643)
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