- Anyaoku’s timely intervention in the search for sustainable national development
At the inaugural lecture of the new Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy, two of Nigeria’s foremost leaders; former President Olusegun Obasanjo and one-time Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, had a chance to examine a frequently asked question in the country. Indeed, Chief Obasanjo himself repeated the question at the lecture: “When are we going to be able to practice federalism in a way that promotes healthy competition among the states for the benefit of its citizens?”
While he focused on why the presidential system of government fathered under his watch as military dictator in the late 1970s is not working, Chief Anyaoku threw his searchlight on what he called flawed federalism in the country. He called for a new constitution that restores a federal system of viable federating units, such as existed in the years before the creation of the current quasi-unitary model by successions of military dictators between 1966 and 1999.
So profound are Chief Anyaoku’s diagnosis and prescription for the country’s economic and political ailments that they deserve copious quotation: “In this age of rising global move away from the use of fossil fuel, and particularly in this period of continuing fall in the price of crude oil, the constitution must enable the country to plan and pursue a non-crude-oil-based economic development. It must also address the issue of concentration of power at the centre, which fuels the de-stabilising competition for the control of the centre between the country’s diverse ethnic and religious groups …
“The six federating regions should have responsibility over their fiscal matters, law and order (including the police), education, health, power (to be shared with the centre), transportation (roads & inland waterways), and economic development (investments, agriculture) … The federally-generated revenue should be allocated on the following basis: 40 percent to be retained by the Federal Government for its substantially reduced responsibilities with up to 15percent of revenue derived from minerals (solid & liquid) going to the mineral-producing areas for addressing the resultant environmental damage; 60 percent to be shared equally among the six federating regions.”
While most of these suggestions are on the mark, some are likely to be found controversial even by advocates of federal governance. For example, the issue of making solid and liquid minerals a federal responsibility will take away from the power of regions to raise funds. For Chief Anyaoku’s call to end a culture of rent collecting as sources of running governments at all levels to be effective, the proposed autonomous regional governments should be empowered to raise revenues that they can share with the central government on an agreed basis as it was in the pre-1966 era. Instructively, the range of powers reserved in Anyaoku’s paper for the central government is wide enough to neutralise the fear that restoring federalism is a recipe for disintegration. Similarly, the suggestion that existing states can be retained as development centres in the proposed regions should be reassuring to those who are enamoured of the special identity provided by such states.
Chief Anyaoku’s intervention could not have come at a better time; the beginning of a regime of change that includes a manifesto by the Buhari/All Progressives Congress (APC) government to “initiate action to amend our constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties and responsibilities to states and local governments in order to entrench true federalism and the federal spirit.”
Given a resurgence of interest in the 8th National Assembly in amendment of the 1999 Constitution, the two houses and the executive should seize the opportunity of profound recommendations from Chief Anyaoku and many others in the past to embark on wholesale review of the constitution, with a view to providing a document that is negotiated by citizens and their representatives for the purpose of returning federalism to the country.
There is no better time to take bold steps to rid Nigeria of the baggage it has carried for decades: political and bureaucratic corruption, widespread alienation of citizens from governance; ineffectual governance at all levels; nation-wide underdevelopment; and periodic threat to peace, stability, and unity in the country.
