Galvanising elite consensus in Nigeria

On Thursday, the National Institute of Legislative and Democratic Studies convened a methodology workshop on how to galvanise the Nigerian elite for national unity and development.

The convener, Professor Attahiru Jega, argued that Nigeria has one of the most educated, professional and astute elites any country would be proud to have. He however pointed out that the same Nigerian elite is one of the most divisive, fractious and quarrelsome in the world, apparently set on destroying the unity and developmental potential of the country. “We have to find the basis to stop this destructive elite from killing the goose that lays the golden eggs of the nation,” he contended.

The meeting worked hard to sharpen a research instrument developed to survey the positive core values and aspirations the Nigerian elite have and map out a strategy to use them to build the nation and develop its economy.

The objective, in other words, is to orient Nigerians away from the divide and rule politics of brinkmanship they have developed and move them towards the positive values we all know about. For example, there is no member of the Nigerian elite who does not lament about the ravages of corruption and does not wish for good governance and the use of public resources for the public good. Yet, such an elite member steals the country to its pants when they are in power, why? This same person advocates for equal citizenship as embodied in the constitution but when they go home, they try to delegitimise citizens they label as non-indigenes from enjoying the fruits of our common citizenship, why? The entire Nigerian elite also advocates for the deepening of democracy but as politicians systematically empty our democratic processes of its content and transform our political parties into anti-democracy instruments, why?

God forbid, but what if the research results show that the Nigerian elite are determined to destroy the country, steal all of its resources and hope to fly out to other countries to enjoy the fruits they have gained by destroying Nigeria. In other words, is the lack of enlightened self-interest so deep in Nigeria that we the elite are already too far gone along the path of self-destruction?

Let’s think about the fate of our federalism. The basic knowledge is that federal societies develop into federal states when they agree, on the basis of a constitution that they have negotiated, to share power in a way that no component feels marginalised or excluded. In Nigeria, the 1951 Macpherson’s Constitution was adopted on the basis of an elite consensus. The regional elite were suspicious of each other, had no trust in the other, and therefore decided that federalism was the best collective protection for all of them. As it has been explained:

“True federalism implies power sharing, abandoning the notion of any one group dominating all the others, not secession but building interdependence. But we need to work hard on it and not merely pay lip service to unity in diversity.” – Professor Ade Ajayi

The First Republic failed because there was a feeling that true federalism had been seriously undermined by the creation of the Mid-West, the imposition of a state of emergency in the western region, and electoral fraud in 1964, among other political crimes. Since then, the search for true federalism has been on-going, without success. Nigerians have pinned a lot of hope that the Fourth Republic, which was inaugurated on May 29, 1999, would provide an opportunity to craft a constitution that will guarantee true federalism. The preamble of the 1999 Constitution states that:

WE THE PEOPLE of the Federal Republic of Nigeria:

HAVING firmly and solemnly resolved:

TO LIVE in unity and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble Sovereign Nation under God dedicated to the promotion of inter-African solidarity, world peace, international cooperation and understanding:

AND TO PROVIDE for a Constitution for the purpose of promoting the good government and welfare of all persons in our country on the principles of Freedom, Equality and Justice, and for the purpose of consolidating the Unity of our people.

The most serious problem with the 1999 Constitution is that it has not responded to persistent demands for the political restructuring of the country. The basic demands have been for curbs on the powers of the federal government and the enhancement of the powers of states and local governments. The Nigerian military has a responsibility for destroying Nigerian federalism by sacrificing it on the altar of over-centralisation. Nigeria’s geopolitical realities have been completely modified through the subordination of state governments to the federal government. In federal constitutions, the federal and state governments all have constitutionally defined areas in which each level of government is sovereign, as well as areas where both levels have concurrent authority. According to Wheare, the so-called father of federalism, in federal regimes, neither the federal nor regional governments are supreme; the constitution is the only supreme organ.

According to Section 4(5) of the 1999 Constitution however:

“If any law enacted by the House of Assembly of a state is inconsistent with a law validly made by the National Assembly, the law made by the National Assembly shall prevail and that other law shall to the extent of the inconsistency be void.”

There is, therefore, a clear hierarchy between the two levels of government. In terms of the legislative powers of the different levels of government, defined in the Second Schedule of the Constitution, the longest list is the exclusive legislative one, which only the federal legislature can pass laws on. The exclusive legislative list has 68 items, two more than in the 1979 Constitution. The concurrent legislative list, by comparison, has only 30 items. The Exclusive List has all sorts of powers including those on the police, prisons, even marriage – with the exclusion of marriage under Customary and Islamic Law. State governments cannot borrow money abroad without federal approval (item 7) and they cannot regulate labour matters (item 34). Direct taxation – incomes, profits and capital gains, is an exclusive federal preserve (item 59). Even the appointment of judges in the state service is to be made by the state governor on the recommendation of a federal executive body, the National Judicial Council. State governments do not have exclusive competence in any domain. The failure of the 1999 Constitution to address demands for political restructuring and the redistribution of powers has left all the problems of Nigerian history related to fears of political domination intact.

Our constitution defines the purpose of the state as the protection of the security of Nigerians and the pursuit of their welfare. Nigerians, however, know that they have to pay for their own security guards and even the bulk of the Nigerian police personnel are used to provide security, not for the people, but for individuals who can afford to pay for their services. Nigerian citizens are forced to provide their own electricity, with the millions of generators they purchase to power their houses and pollute the atmosphere. Nigerians go to the stream to fetch water or buy it from water vendors. The elite are able to pay for personal boreholes in their houses and the result is that they wipe out underground water sources for future generations. Of course, health and education have largely been private and the state is completely disdainful of chapter two of our constitution that directs it to provide for the welfare of citizens. Nigerians feel the failure of the federal state and worry that the federating states have limited powers of action.

The demands for true federalism must be addressed if Nigerians are to get the assurance that their full participation, safety, and welfare within the state are to be guaranteed. The constitutional conferences organised by the Obasanjo and Jonathan administrations both got their constitutional reform agendas derailed. The present legitimacy crisis facing the Nigerian state should be seen as an opportunity to address the issue of true federalism with the seriousness it deserves.