Restructuring: The message and the messenger   By Tayo Ogunbiyi

Of late, former Vice-President, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, has been in the news crusading for the restructuring of the country’s political system. Though many had commended him for this new passion, one would want to take the genuineness of the former Vice-President’s current clamour for restructuring with a pinch of salt. Like every typical Nigerian politician, Atiku might certainly have his eyes on something else. How come he is seeing the necessity for restructuring at this very point in time? Did I hear you say he has a right to the timing of his new found political conviction? Alright, others equally have a right to scrutinize the timing as well as the accuracy of such conviction.

Alhaji Atiku was a Vice –President of the country for eight years. He has always been a ‘powerful’ political figure since the early 1990s. But, I stand to be corrected; all this while he has never been as convinced as he currently is of the need to restructure the Nigerian federation. Curiously, it is not that we have not been having serious socio-economic and political issues as we currently have in the country. There have always been various kinds of agitations among the various nationalities bothering on struggle for political and economic relevance in the country.

My perception of Atiku is that of a calculating, shrewd and self-seeking politician who cannot really be trusted. His political antecedents, especially, since the current democratic dispensation does not show him as a man of deep conviction. He seems more of a man in tune with the Machiavelli political school of thought. In the wake of his political travails under the Obasanjo presidency, a few people rightly or wrongly sympathized with him as a victim of political persecution.

The defunct Action Congress, AC, probably, made him the party’s presidential candidate based on such sentiment. A relative newcomer to the party, Atiku, was offered an unbelievable lifeline by the defunct AC to redeem his political image. He contested the 2007 presidential election on the stable of the party but lost to late Umar Yaradua of the PDP. The manner in which Atiku eventually dumped the AC (later ACN) speaks volumes of his penchant for political opportunism.

As soon as it became obvious to him that he was not going to fulfill his aspiration of contesting for the 2015 presidential election in the PDP, Atiku jumped ship again. This time around, the newly formed APC, an offshoot of the ACN which he had earlier dumped became Atiku’s preferred party. Presently, the former VP has once again jumped ship as he is back to the PDP.

In one of his restructuring advocacies, Atiku said that a close observation of the present administration’s policies, especially on the issue of the Niger Delta militancy and power sector crisis, would reveal that there was little or no lesson learnt. Hope someone is reading in between the line? I bet we have not heard the last from this foxy Adamawa born politician. There will certainly be more to come from him in the days ahead. I am certain about this. Atiku certainly has more aces up his sleeves!

However, it is not right that one should discard the message because of the messenger. You don’t throw away the baby with the bathe water is a popular African saying. In as much as one firmly believes that Atiku has some ulterior motives in his call for the restructuring of the federation, it is, nevertheless, crucial to state that our federal system is long overdue for restructuring.

The distinctive feature of a federation is the constitutional dissection of powers between the central government and the federating units. In a unitary system, total powers flow from the centre while in a federation, powers are detached between the centre and states. Federalism is supposed to be a mutually evolved system where none of the federating units is inferior to another but each deriving its powers and exercising them within the framework of the constitution. Federalism is normally considered a better political option in view of certain factors.

For instance, it is politically expedient  for a country with a huge land mass, big and heterogeneous population, incomprehensible cultural and language diversities  to operate a federal system of government as a way of accommodating the diverse ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic interests in the country. In other words, federalism becomes the viable option for a nation like Nigeria with diverse interests, as previously mentioned, to exist in a mutually binding framework. It is not an avenue for one federating unit to bully the other. It is not an avenue for the wife of a president or a governor or even a local government chairman to become reckless. It is not a system for states governors to become school children while presidents act as their headmasters. No! Rather, it is a system that calls for mutual respect and fairness among the federating units.

Unfortunately, because over the years, Nigeria has practiced the wrong version of federalism, individuals and institutions that advocate the practice of true federalism are often labeled as rascals, rebels or in some cases secessionists. It is pleasing to note that eminent individuals and organisations in the country have, in the past and in recent time, been canvassing the enthronement of true federalism in the country.

The way forward is for us to evolve a new constitution that will truly reflect the principles and spirit of true federalism. The present Constitution is lopsided in its power sharing at the expense of the states. For instance, Part one of the Second Schedule of the Constitution listed 68 items in the Exclusive Legislative List on which only the central government has control, while in Part two, it listed 30 items in the Concurrent Legislative List on which both the central and states could exercise control.

 In a true federal arrangement, there should be no need for local government creation to require consequential provision of the National Assembly. The inclusion of Police, Mines and Minerals, Railways, Stamp Duties, Taxation of Incomes, and Value Added Tax (VAT) in the Exclusive list is also uneven.Similarly, a situation where states wait endlessly for the federal government to fix so called federal roads in their domains should be discouraged.

Equally, it is imperative that a new revenue sharing formula, that will be fair to all federating units, is put in place. It is only in a unitary system that such an uneven arrangement in which the federal government takes 52 per cent of the total revenue while the federating units –states and local governments-share the rest. In a proper federation, what the central government does is to focus on central federal matters like foreign affairs, currency, maritime shipping, and defence.

Ogunbiyi is of the Ministry of Information & Strategy, Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos.