Nigeria And the Search for Constitutional Democracy

 

Lecture delivered by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, at the Inaugural Chief Anthony  Enahoro Memorial Lecture, Benin Club, Benin City, Thursday, November 24, 2011.

PROTOCOL

Chief Anthony Enahoro was a noble human being.  A veritable reference point for the new Nigeria we all yearn for. One of the finest statesmen and patriots of his time, he was both son and founding father of our nation. Not many men can claim this unique status. With regard to his contributions to Nigeria, he has few peers.  This man was the best of us.  Yet, in too many instances, the way our nation has evolved has not done honor to his contributions.  Chief Anthony Enahoro was a light given unto us.  Though he is no longer here, the light of his patriotic wisdom continues to shine through the dark mist to show us the path we must tread.

In this address today, I hope to do justice to this heroic man’s legacy by following that light and moving us a few steps toward the Nigeria to which he devoted his life.

 

It is an honour to talk about the issues that shaped the life and times of this patriot, nationalist, federalist, and sentinel of the democratic rights of all Nigerians. This man was the modern version of Horatius at the bridge, an emblematic hero who suffered the wounds of a man single-handedly fighting the onslaught of anti-democratic invaders while too many other purported leaders who betrayed the trust of the people and gained great personal profit by joining  with the forces of inequality and false privilege.

As I look at the nation today, I am moved by strong emotion. Anyone of us who loves justice and fairness, anyone who loves the people, must feel a hard churning inside. The nation is at the edge of the precipice and is balanced on its weaker foot. What happened to that nation of hope and promise we were so many years ago? Then we seemed on the path to true federalism. The Naira was strong, the economy seemed ready to provide broad prosperity for the many and our youth received a fine education to complement the sense of pride they felt in their energetic hearts. What derailed us so badly?

Now those times appear so remote that it seems we are talking about more than a different time. It is as if, we are discussing a different country.  The years have not been kind to Nigeria’s development because we have not been kind to ourselves and the ideals we espouse as a nation.

If spouting fine sounding words were enough to repair the broken furniture, Nigeria would be the finest of nations. Many people have grasped the reins of national power but few have used that power on behalf of the nation. Despite their oppression of the nation, these same people always drip sweet words about democracy and just government. They even dare to lament that Nigeria’s problem is one of leadership and do it with such apparent sincerity that you begin to forget that this same person is one of those who had been in power and who has led us into the crippled state we are in.

For them, this is all a confidence game on the people. Theirs are but false words from false prophets. When they speak about bad leadership they think their indirect confession will wipe the slate clean so that they can resume to commit further transgressions of mean governance against us. Don’t mind them. In the end, they know in their barren hearts that they have fouled the nation.  By their words they seek to trick us but by their deeds we shall know them and their deeds condemn them fully.

As leaders of Nigeria, they have done to our nation what foreign enemies could not do. They have littered our history with setback and false starts and have turned our future into one of distant, uncertain potential. They treat Nigeria not like a nation; they do not even treat it like a geographic expression.  They treat it like a big cow with a large udder that they yank and pull at will until they have squeezed from her all the milk, leaving nothing to suckle her 160 million starving calves. This history of unbridled selfishness at the center has meant cruelty and desperation all around. This is not the Nigeria of our dreams nor is it the Nigeria Chief Enahoro sacrificed his life for.

From his days as a founding member of the Action Group in 1951 and elected member of the Western House of Assembly and Western House of Representatives from 1951-54 and his days as a leading pro-democratic activist and opposition member, Enahoro kept the faith by remaining consistent in his vision for a better Nigeria and fighter for the rights of ethnic nationalities. The motion he moved in 1953 for Nigeria to be self-governing in 1956 remains in our memories as one of the most courageous acts of patriotism.

Unfortunately, the Nigeria he envisioned never came to fruition until he died. Thirty years ago, our oil revenues could have been used as the launching pad for economic development that would have thrust us to the forefront of emerging nations. Today, our oil revenues are barely enough to keep us at subsistence. We once exported food to other nations; now if we don’t import food, we would have riots and be starved within months. There are fewer manufacturing jobs now than 25 years ago but we have doubled the population. Then the people had hope. Today, while Nigerians are a resilient and innovative people, many believe they are running out of options. They don’t see the glass as half full. For them there is no glass and no water.  There is nothing but a bare table. They are thirsty but this system has reduced them to wining and dining on the dust of frustration and the grapes of impoverishment.

I am not trying to say that our past is in every aspect better than our present but I must say that our present is not much better than our past. Because of this lack of progress, the future remains uncertain.  If we keep going as we are, how our future  unfolds will be like a gamble in a casino, it will be as if we have placed our fate on the throw of the dice from the hand of a stranger.

With insecurity erupting in many parts of the nation, with the federal government acting big against little people but little against big people, with hunger among those who should feed, fear among those who should be secure, ignorance among those who should be enlightened, chaos where there should be order, we must start asking ourselves about a new the way forward.

I say the way forward is to peep back to the beginnings of our history.  What you will find is that we left some important business unfinished. During those formative years, we got many important things right but let ourselves get diverted from those good practices. We have been paying a high price ever since.

For instance, do you recall when we had what was called the Ground Pyramid. A massive mountain of groundnuts towered in kano, high and above the land like an estate. It was done in this country.

In the Niger Delta, we had palm produce, which was signposted by the Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR), which is in the state. It was the e first oil in our history. It was the oil of relative prosperity. For the rest of the world, Nigeria became the Mecca of oil palm regeneration. Countries from the Asia-Pacific region came here to learn about oil palm production. Today, the student excels while the master has since forgotten all it knows because it has become intoxicated by another type of oil.

If you fly over the Niger Delta, you cannot help but observe the abundant oil palm trees. It is opportunity and wealth creation going to waste amidst mammoth poverty.

The Niger Delta is home to rubber trees, in stunning numbers. The latex of those trees accounted for employment and income not long ago. Now this aspect of our economy is dormant and forgotten as if it never existed. Not far from the Niger Delta, we had coal in the east with the noticeable economic activity and employment that it helped generate.

In the West, we had cocoa, which was a salary earner for many Nigerians. It brought in significant foreign exchange for the country. What of the cotton fields?

We are today looking at our past as though it belonged to someone else. This energetic mostly self sufficient nation that we see in yesterday’s picture book was us but now we are intoxicated by aroma of the quick revenues of oil.  All of these elements of our former prosperity not only provided jobs and let families and cultures flourish, there were a psychological boost for us as a nation. They provided food on the table, dignity to our workforce, comfort to our old people and hope for our children. They were also showcases to the world.

Imagine if we had progressed as we should have.  We would not only be producing and extracting these natural resources and raw materials. By now, we would have developed impressive constellations of industries allied to these processes. More importantly, we would have matured to establish industries turning these raw materials into finished products for use at home and abroad.  By now, Nigeria should have the enviable status as a net exporter of manufactured goods to the rest of the world. Not only would this have placed us high on the list of nations, it would have generated the type of employment that alleviates urban poverty and the growth of a middle class necessary for the sustenance of democratic government. Instead, we spend our money buying from others what we could easily make for ourselves.  The more we spend in this manner, the more susceptible to another nation’s decisions we become and the more that nation exports is poverty to us.  This also means our democracy cannot advance.  In the midst of grave poverty, democracy is like ice in the desert. It will melt into the sands of oppressive rule and dictatorship.

Today, the United States showcases such iconic firms as Microsoft, Coca Cola, FaceBook, Apple, IBM, which are e-companies and which products have brought prosperity and enriched the lives of its people.

Today, we should be looking at a bourgeoning manufacturing base.  We should not be import crazy. But we are because we have given up the task of productivity as a people.

We had all of these potent tools at our disposal when we had civic purpose and were focused on what kind of nation we wanted to become.

In the colonial era, the political elite held numerous constitutional conferences. We had our contentious issues and they were treated at such conferences that led to the Richards Constitution, the Macpherson Constitution and the Lyttleton Constitution.  These conferences painted the portrait of a nation in constructive dialogue with itself. We wanted to decide how our different ethnic groups could live together in harmony in the context of mutual progress.

At independence, we agreed to be a republic. The need for conferences still arose, since important issues like the revenue sharing, the workers’ relationship with the state, labour crisis and the ever-haunting federal question had not been fully resolved.

We had the western Region crisis, which was made more acute by military intervention. The coming of the military led to questions of the nationhood. The Biafran question arose which we sadly could not resolve in spite of several dialogues.

The coming of the military meant that we had to put our democratic progression into hibernation as we were straitjacketed by the authoritarian command and control ethos of the military that would impose its will on each and every Nigerian through the establishment of a unitary system.

The military elite who wanted to perpetuate themselves in office tried to cloak their dictatorship in federalist cover but the wolf remained what it was despite attempting to don sheep’s clothing. The nation was subjected to this for many years.

We battled through this, and many men and women suffered and the nation saw its fortunes drop steadily. Oil abounded. Due to our lack of economic and fiscal wisdom and discipline, we allowed the easy money from oil to coax us away from all that had been our agricultural pride and what promised to be the start of our manufacturing base. No more groundnut pyramid, no more Cocoa pride, no more palm produce in great flair, no more rubber. We become a mono-cultural economy, relying on oil alone. But we dare not blame the oil and lament over an oil curse. It is not the oil that was wrong, it was us. There are oil- producing nations that have achieved diverse growth and prosperity.  It is wrong to blame the oil which is merely a resource to be used wisely or to be abused. That we have suffered economic dislocation is not a function of the oil, it is a fault of our leadership. We have abused a valuable asset and thus curse ourselves as long as we continue to misuse it.

In 1999, the military after decades of wrong-footed governance, gave us a constitution. Its preamble begins with the hypocritical phrase  “we the people.” The people had little to do with this. The document should bear the preamble “we the self-selected few in the military.” This constitution is the source of so much contention today. Although calling a federal system, the military authors of the document could not get centralized government out of their stomach. What this document asks is that we accept this military hangover, this unitary system and pretend it’s a federalism system. While the military may have the stomach for such a thing, this farce does nothing but give most Nigerians chronic indigestion. Economically, the nation also suffered another hangover from the structural adjustment programme of the Babangida years. SAP haunted us for a long time. Today, we are being saddled with the fraud of subsidy, which has been a central discourse since the introduction of SAP. National leaders have been misleading Nigeria about the cost of petrol and the cost of diesel and of crude oil. The mathematics has been wrong and intended to deceive Nigerians and swindle them out of their rights and patrimony.

The Obasanjo policies only helped to continue the argument that was highlight by the fraudulent line in television adverts that petrol costs less than a bottle of coke.

In short, our economic system is supposed to be open and fair. In fact, it is even more slanted and biased that the political system. We do not operate a free and fair merit-based economy. We operate a feudal economy where those in power decide by the whim of the moment who becomes rich and who stays poor.

All of these woes are because we are no longer a nation in dialogue with itself. The people are not consulted. Decisions are forced on our backs as if we are beasts of hard labor. This contradicts the tenets of democracy, which has at its core the adherence to the views of the people. The people ought to be consulted on the issue of subsidy. We ought to have a referendum on the question not only of oil subsidy but also on sovereign wealth fund as well as the proposed one-term of seven years proposed by President Goodluck Jonathan.

In observing the challenges of the present constitution, we must ask if what we want is a truly federal system that bestows significant power on states or a strong Unitarian model where the central government controls all and the states are merely weak branches attached to a big tree. One of the features is its exclusive list. It includes every important matter from policing to education. Many have said the issue of development ought to be in the hands both of the federal government and the states. As it stands today, the prerogative has been seized by the federal government. This begins with the federal allocation formula which is lopsided in favour of the centre. This has not only stalled development, it has affected recurrent and capital expenditure. This fuels corruption in the centre and makes the system a mockery of development. It gives a winner-takes-all quality to the presidential election. This is wrong. That is why progressives have been calling for fiscal federalism.

We also need to examine the question whether we want a two-tier or three-tier democracy. We recognize only the two-tier system, and that means the state and the federal government should hold the jugular and control the administration.

We also need to look at the parliamentary system of government as compared with the presidential. We have to reexamine the presidential system. Is it not too expensive? Shall not measure its cost implication, workability, people friendliness, transparency and accountability? How well can people be held accountable in the presidential system? In the parliamentary system, it is quicker to hold leaders to account for their erring ways or impunity. In the presidential system as we have practiced it, impunity has often gone unchecked. We need to give the parliamentary system a look.

More importantly, we need an organic dialogue that goes much farther and deeper than merely etching new provisions in a written constitution. A written constitution is a formal document that delineates important legal obligations and rights. However, without something more, that document will be cold and sterile. We need to talk so that we can reach that informal political and economic pact that gives the constitution humane and positive underpinnings. For an aggregation of peoples to become a nation, they must reach the point where each   constituent part knows what it is to contribute to the national enterprise and know what it is to receive from the venture.  The foundation of national building is an agreement of mutual benefit and shared sacrifice.  We need to recognize and enshrine in our political culture those things that link us together in labor and cooperation in a positive mission

When America was formed, the new nation had such an understanding.  The north would provide the manufacturing base and the South the agriculture.  They then fashioned government institutions and policies around this functional reality.  In modern England, there was pact that the nation would be geared to manufacture and the maritime industry. In France, the provinces would feed Paris and Paris would feed modernity and culture to the countryside.

Where is the Nigerian understanding?

The nation needs to dialogue. We need to sit down and stop speaking only to ourselves.  Each section of the nation feels aggrieved and each sector blames another section for their injury.  We are all poorer than we should be yet suspect all other sections and peoples for causing our oppression when they, in fact, are in like circumstance.  The sections have been held apart so they cannot talk and reach agreement.  This divide is created so that a few can rule and profit.

It is like a rich man’s banquet.  They open the doors to the beggars only after the food has been consumed. The poor are left to scramble and fight each other for the scraps. This is what is being done to the Nigerian people. It is not an accident; this is by perverse design.

We need to recover our senses and our dignity. We need to begin to ask why we can’t partake of the banquet from the very beginning.

In the Nigeria of today, there is no alternative to open and free dialogue. Nigeria itself is a product of dialogue.  The West wanted independence by 1953 or thereabout when Chief  Enahoro first moved the  motion for independence.  The North felt it was not yet prepared. So, compromised was arrived at. The pre-independence constitutions were products of dialogues borne out of debates and constitutional conferences: from Clifford, Richards to Lyttleton to Macpherson to Independence to republican: all were products of dialogue and debates.

Trouble came when the military, from  the Unification Decree of 1966, unilaterally jettisoned the federal regional structure turning Nigeria into a group of provinces.  That blunder was the opening act of a drama that would unveil an extremely unitary system masquerading as the Nigerian federation, which has brought the country nothing but corruption, stagnation and mass poverty.

Posing as the country’s political messiahs after the civil war, the military sought to create a newbreed of Nigerians somehow clinically innoculated against the virus of ethno-cultural contamination. The loyalty of the truly patriotic Nigerian would be to the totalizing Nigerian State and not any primordial sub-national entity. It was with this goal in mind that the military sought to re-fashion Nigeria in its own centralist image. The no-nonsense soldiers thought that the best way to manage the country’s pluralism was to surbodinate the component parts of the polity to the suffocating control of an all powerful centre – a veritable Leviathan. Ethnicity in particular was seen as a retrogressive, divisive attribute to be systematically absorbed into a centralized and more unifying state structure

By imposing a unitarist state on a naturally federal civil society, the military sought to substitute what they saw as a chaotic and disruptive diversity with a social uniformity, which they thought was necessary to promote law, order, stability and development. Unfortunately, all the supposedly democratic dispensations Nigeria has had since the civil war have been substantially mirror images of over-centralized, unduly bureaucratic and hence inherently corrupt military regimes. The current 1999 constitution, for instance, like that of 1979 unduly skews powers, responsibilities and resources in favour of the centre at the expense of overly dependent and largely unviable states.

Though under Gen. Gowon a modicum of federalism was re-established with the creation of 12 states, military centralisation made a mockery of the whole concept. That stagnation produced the demand for a Sovereign National Conference, by the late Alao Aka-Basorun-led Nigerian Bar Association, during the regime of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida.  Despite his government bringing Nigeria to social, economic and political brink, Babangida still decreed some “no go” areas which he claimed had been settled.  Among these so-called “no-go” areas was the skewed structure that centralised resources, impoverished states, while ensuring corruption and brewing mass poverty.  Until that structure is revamped to accord with fiscal federalism, the structural bottleneck will not ease and Nigeria will not fully develop.

The principal challenge against prosperity in this democracy is Nigeria’s skewed structure which cannot deliver economic development and prosperity.

On the surface, political restructuring appears a political problem.  But it is really an economic problem.  So, the earlier Nigeria is restructured along true federal lines, the better for everybody. So, we must build a consensus around restructuring and give our country a rebirth.

Interestingly, our founding fathers had long before independence identified federalism as the most efficacious mechanism for managing our pluralism to achieve peace and development. Inspired by the success of federalism in addressing the challenges of pluralism in India, Chief Obafemi had as early as 1947 identified a federal constitution as the panacea to the country’s quest for stability and development. In describing Nigeria as ‘a mere geographical expression’ at the time he was writing in 1947, Chief Awolowo was alluding to the plural nature of the polity. Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe wanted us to forget our differences. On his part, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello preferred we seek to understand our differences. The regions enjoyed a large measure of autonomy from the centre. They enjoyed a significant measure of fiscal federalism, retaining at least 50% of revenues derived within their territories. They had their own separate constitutions as well as regional police to ensure security distinct from the national police. The competitive federalism of the era enabled them to make rapid developmental progress at a time when Nigeria was yet to begin to reap huge revenues from petroleum. If we had continued at that pace, the country would by now probably be at par with or even have outstripped the so-called ‘Asian Tigers’ in terms of economic progress.

In Nigeria and across the globe over the last two decades, we have witnessed the resurgence of passionate ethno-regional identities even in countries previously thought to have achieved strong national integration and virtually eradicated the influence of ethnic nationalism. Countries like the defunct Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, for instance, have disintegrated with their previous ethnic components emerging as new nation-states. Established liberal democracies like Britain, Belgium and Canada have had to implement constitutional adjustments to accommodate the grievances of some of their ethno-regional components.

Whatever their perspectives, these leaders realistically admitted our ethno-cultural and regional differences and, after protracted negotiations mediated by the British colonial authorities, arrived at the federal constitution with strong, largely autonomous regions that was the basis for governance in Nigeria at independence. It is a testimony to the correctness of their perspective that the first six years of the country’s independence between 1960 and 1966 is still regarded as the golden era of national development.

This was as a result of the fundamental misconception that the collapse of the First Republic and the eventual drift to anarchy was due to the centrifugal pull caused by excessive ethno-regional autonomy. The truth is that the immediate post –independence republic unraveled largely due to the assault against the country’s democratic and federalist ethos by centralizing, anti-democratic elements bent on dominating the political space irrespective of the public will.

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you today, that because of the multiple issues surrounding our skewed federalism and constitutional flaws, the state of the union of the Nigerian nation is weak. Unless, we move to strengthen it through dialogue and equity, we will remain a nation in mere words.

This calls for sovereign national conference. These calls have been ignored but the outcry l will continue to haunt those in power.  When successive governments have not made any genuine attempts to decentralize power and states suffer from unfunded mandates, we pervert federalism. Almost 13 years into civil democracy and the attendant challenges Nigeria is ripe for a constitution drawn by the people, for the people and of the people which should reflect the aspirations of all Nigerians. The 21-member Presidential Committee on the Review of Outstanding Constitutional Issues, PCROCI, recently set up by President Jonathan falls short. It is a backdoor approach to the issue of national conference. In memory of Chief Enahoro, we must convoke a national conference. It should provide a platform to address our pressing concerns.

Chief Enahoro was involved at every level and at every stage of our national engagement right from the colonial era. He was as a youth stalwart of the Zikist Movement, where he challenged colonial power. He was also involved in federalist issues. We all know he moved the motion for the independence the realization of which we have fallen short of as a people. That is why he had harsh words about our false constitutionality.

Hear him: “Since independence on Oct 1^st, 1960, we have had no fewer than six constitutional reviews and there is another in progress in respect of the 1999 constitution, which you will recall was a ghost constitution when it came into effect. Our constitutions have not, to date, endured not only because they were successively abrogated by military regimes but also because, among other reasons, they were not the handiwork of the people.”

Enahoro believed not only in the equality of citizens but also equality of ethnic components of the country. Our languages are important. Not one language is superior to another in an Enahoro commonwealth.  He said, “The new constitution for Nigeria should therefore make it clear that citizenship of the Union of Nigeria is additional to membership of its component nationalities and not a replacement for those natural allegiances. In this way, we would all fall in line with countries like the United Kingdom, where a man is not less British and loyal to Britain by reason  of being English, Wels h, Scottish or Northern Irish.”

We have to listen to Enahoro, who also consistently called for a return to the parliamentary system.

This sage understood that Nigeria belongs to all of us. If we act as though it is the possession of a few oligarchs who flout the simplest tenets of democracy and federalism we shall continue to falter. We need to go back to move forward, to remember those years of budding triumphs in commerce and politics. We need to go back and pick up this unfinished business so that we may complete it in honor of the great man we celebrate today.

It is important that we improve our economic democracy and political democracy.  These things are not just abstract concepts. We talk not about democracy just to talk about democracy.  We seek these things because they are reliable tools toward a better life.  It is not that democracy is perfect for there is nothing that man does which is perfect.  The real treasure in democracy is that it best promotes cooperation, collaboration and compromise.  In a nation as pluralistic as Nigeria, we cannot advance without embedding these traits in our daily lives and our political ways and means.  Moreover, genuine democracy will eventually banish those leaders who do not have the love of the people or their confidence. It will raise more great men like Chief Enahoro whose every effort was defined by his sense of justice and his desire to improve the lives of all Nigerians. He was a man well advanced of his times yet a champion for the poor and broken who could not champion their own cause.

We all owe it to him, to ourselves and our children to follow the lamp that he lit and move Nigeria to where it will become its better self.

We have to confer we have to talk to one another. We have no other choice. God bless you. God bless this nation of ours, this Nigeria. Thank you.