- Should the APC government silence or discourage dissent by describing calls for restructuring ‘a tall order’?
The Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, has added his voice to the debate on restructuring the country’s polity. At a conference on “Federalism and the challenges of dynamic equilibrium in Nigeria: towards a national Strategy,” the country’s chief law officer made pronouncements that require the attention of the citizenry.
AGF’s reading of the demand for restructuring is captured, among others, in the following quotations from his paper: a) “There is no true or false federalism, indeed no single, pure, ideal federal model that is universally applicable everywhere; b) federalism provides the institutional framework for managing diversity; c) It is true that Nigeria’s federal system has been experiencing challenges and there have been agitations and prescriptions to reform and modify it; d) we cannot wish away the particular conditions and circumstances that have provided the challenges in our federal system; e) reforming the federal system through constitutional amendment is a tall order that cannot be achieved through advocacy, emotional outburst or provocative rhetoric and demonstrations; f) one thing that is certain is the inevitable implication that abolishing states through restructuring process will translate to the eventual multiplier effect of abolishing the state houses of assembly.”
The AGF’s sermonic lecture is the second intervention from members of President Muhammadu Buhari’s two-year old All Progressives Congress (APC) government. The first one announced wholesale consignment of recommendations of the 2014 National Conference to the archive. Whatever might have been the purpose of the AGF’s disputation, his views and the tone raise more questions than answers. And when his treatise attempts to give answers, such answers avoid crucial facts.
First, Mr. Malami’s recommendations are out of sync with the mood of the country. For example, it is inconsistent for a paper that acknowledges challenges in the country’s federal model to also dismiss agitations and demonstrations as unacceptable behaviour in a democracy. Nothing can be more democratic than for communities that feel marginalised and estranged by a constitution that they perceive as deleterious to their cultural values and development to make open demands or demonstrate for needed change.
It is odd that the AGF has ignored that agitation and demonstration are not outlawed by the constitution. Democracy and federalism have grown in other countries—from USA, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, to UAE and Ethiopia, etc— through expression of and openness to new ideas about structure and constitutions of such countries. Most post-military polities around the world created demand for de-militarisation of their polity through overt demand for restructuring and new constitutions acceptable to citizens.
Second, calling demands for restructuring ‘emotional outbursts’ underestimates the logic of the demand for balanced federalism in Nigeria. What is emotional in restating, as those demanding restoration of federalism do, that the country went into independence as one territorial unit on the strength of a constitution that is incontrovertibly federal? What is emotional in re-stating that successions of military dictators re-designed Nigeria’s structure away from federalism into a system that gives most fiscal, economic, and political decision-making powers to a central government at the expense of states that care directly for citizens? What is emotional about citizens asking for a constitution that reflects their wish and vision? Who is being provoked by calls for federalism? Should the AGF have been so worried about what he perceived to be targets of provocation to the extent of making himself liable to charges of emotiveness, by using emotion-laden words: “provocative rhetoric and outburst” at a conference designed to seek national strategy for social justice and political stability in the country?
Admittedly, the Attorney- General’s job requires defending the constitution, but the constitution does not justify stigmatisation of citizens who call for change that they believe can enhance peace and progress in the country. It is a no brainer that communities calling for restructuring see the constitution as the instrument that imposed a quasi-federal constitution designed to military distortion of the country’s federalism even in a post-military polity. The AGF’s reduction of restructuring to ‘downsizing of federal legislature and abolishment of state houses of assembly’ is, surprisingly, simplistic and misleading.
We believe that stigmatising those demanding federalism as provocateurs and calling such demand a tall order—something hard or impossible to accomplish— amount to distracting name calling and fear mongering. Calling for restructuring is not a matter of legalism but one of democratic politics. No impression should be given to suggest that the APC regime is prepared to silence or discourage dissent at the expense of consolidation of democracy in the country.
