President Goodluck Jonathan, while receiving the report of the constitutional conference, lauded its proposals and assured Nigerians that it would not be wasted like the ones that presaged it. Implementing many of the over 600 resolutions of the conference would require legislative action, just as a couple of others need only Executive fiat. Now that the National Assembly has returned from its annual vacation and has limited time for legislative duties before the 2015 electioneering season begins, the President should not delay any further in forwarding the outcome of the conference to it.
For more than four months, the Idris Kutigi-led conference was enmeshed in acrimonious debates before it could resolve some of our nagging questions on devolution of power and restructuring of the polity for effective governance. Indeed, ours is a failed federal state and is in dire need of a quick fix.
In line with the universal principles of federalism, the conference resolved that states should be the only federating units just as it made provision for the creation of state police. The removal of the immunity clause in the constitution for criminal offences; setting up of special courts to handle corruption cases; stopping government sponsorship of Christian and Muslim pilgrimages; limiting waste in governance by pegging ministerial appointments at 18 and putting railways and electricity on the Concurrent List are other key achievements.
Nigerians eagerly await parliamentary consent to these issues. Our concern is that pretending or ignoring the potency of our present crisis of nationhood will be detrimental to Nigeria as a corporate entity. As a newspaper, we will remain relentless in advocating true federalism as the appropriate political structure for the country. As no society can survive permanently in perpetual conflict, the immediate implementation of that report remains the only saving grace to bring the country back from the edge.
Interestingly, the President has constituted a Presidential Committee to study and draw up an implementation strategy for the report. The ongoing amendment of the 1999 Constitution also provides a veritable opportunity to incorporate the recommendations in our supreme law. Perhaps, in anticipation of more work to be done, the House of Representatives has amended its sitting schedule to span Monday to Friday, as against the Tuesday to Thursday arrangement it had stuck to, since 1999.
Jonathan should be reminded that this pathetically dysfunctional system exists on borrowed time. At federal, state and local levels, governance has not fared well for 53 years of the country’s independence. This is so because Nigeria is like an edifice erected on quick sand. Our ruling elite have immersed themselves in a cesspool of corruption, creating mass poverty as a result; development in real terms has been elusive, while the country’s secularity is being trifled with. Indeed, Nigeria belongs only to its venal elite.
However, the conference recommendations have offered the country a chance to begin anew the struggle to pull itself from the brink. The lawmakers must be conscious of this fact. The President underscored this when he said, “With the far-reaching recommendations touching on several areas of our national life, I am convinced that this will be a major turning point for Nigeria.” Inaugurated on March 17, Jonathan had charged the 494 delegates to use the assignment to re-launch the country.
But the President should take the first pragmatic step. His immediate implementation of aspects of the report that do not need constitutional re-engineering will inspire the lawmakers. Among them is stopping the funding of pilgrimages. For instance, the Federal Government spent N1.34 billion on pilgrimages in 2012, while emoluments of staff at Christian and Muslim pilgrims welfare agencies gulped N4 billion between 2009 and 2012.
Yet, Section 10 of the Constitution states that “the Government of the Federation or of a State shall not adopt any religion as State religion.” This and other avoidable breaches of our laws by the government that could easily be reversed convince us that the President has a critical role to play in changing our discredited national order.
For decades, the country’s 774 Local Government Areas have served as federating units in apparent violation of the principle of federalism. Today, none of the councils can be said to be a vehicle for rural development as originally intended, despite the monthly allocations from Abuja, because much of the funds in the Joint State/Local Government Account have been siphoned by not a few governors. The December 2013 allocation of N141.3billion to councils, as a third layer of government, gives an insight into the huge funds at their disposal, but without attendant benefit.
Power devolution is inexorable with federalism, and it serves as a paradigm for nations as diverse as Nigeria. It was so until the military terminated the First Republic in 1966. Today, armed robbery, kidnapping, ethnic clashes and other forms of criminality have taken root in our society because the Police Force of about 350,000 personnel is centrally controlled; perennially ill-equipped and patently under-funded.
Just last week, the Lagos State government said it had so far provided 900 vehicles to the state Police Command for its effective security surveillance. Other states have done so too.
President Jonathan needs all the political will he can muster to pull Nigeria back from the brink of self-destruction. Therefore, when he transmits the conference report to the National Assembly, the lawmakers should be guided by patriotism, sense of urgency and the fact that Nigeria as an artificial state cannot survive with its present debilitating structure for too long.
