The National Assembly got me wondering the other day.  The lawmakers were reviewing aspects of the 1999 constitution with a view to amending it. It was not the first time in the Fourth Republic that the National Assembly would be undertaking such adventure. Countless times, the parliamentarians have pretended to amend the nation’s Magna Carta but every effort was a kick in the air. The more they tweak the document, the more it throws up its flaws and the more it dawns on Nigerians that what they call the constitution is nothing more than the brainwave of a few military goons and their handpicked civilian apologists.

 It was, therefore, fitting and soothing that the 8th Assembly chose to ‘do something about it’.  The federal lawmakers chose the most auspicious time to tinker the nation’s unwieldy canon. Oh yes, the Nigerian constitution is unwieldy; voluminous and full of contradictions. It badly needs a makeover. Now is the time, most appropriate. The wave of protests, hate speeches, agitations and sundry proclivities to self-rule by various ethnic identities across the country make it imperative to rework the nation’s charter.

With the clattering din on restructuring, you would expect that the key issue of devolution of power would fly on the wings of the moment on the floor of both chambers of the federal parliament. Never! The Senate and the House under whatever spell, did the absurd. They stuck to the old order that has kept this country on the boil since we jettisoned the 1963 constitution. They threw out the clause to devolve powers to the states.

The 1999 constitution (with the first, second and third alterations) recognises that Nigeria is a federation even by its nomenclatural tag: Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. But the same document fails to acknowledge and accord fundamental rights and privileges to the federating units of the loose federation especially with regard to fiscal federalism. The constitution ceded overbearing powers to the centre as the take-all, keep-all custodian of the vast resources in the country. It went further to prescribe allocation of the proceeds of these resources to the states not according to what each state contributes but according to population and number of local governments in each state. This arrangement has remained largely unjust, unfair and insensitive to the demands and dictates of equity. The situation rankles because the premise for resource (read revenue) sharing – population and number of local governments – is dubious. Every census in Nigeria had been censored and the figures are spurious and contentious; same for the number of local governments. It is a huge fraud, for instance, that with its brimming population, Lagos State has only 20 local governments.

Under the jettisoned 1963 constitution, power was devolved to the various regions and each region catered for itself. It made the regions resourceful, innovative and creative. The Mid-Western region, for instance, turned to agriculture and was a major source of palm produce, latex, timber, yam, cassava among others. Every region had something to sustain its economy. That’s what true fiscal federalism does; it makes the federating units responsible and resourceful. It does not create a Frankenstein monster in the central government as we have it today.

In the various agitations for restructuring and devolution of power to federating units, opinions differ as to what should constitute the federating units. Some recommend that each of the six geo-political zones form the units; some advocate a return to regionalism while yet others vote for states as the units. I am an apostle of states as federating units. Making zones or regions the federating units is same of same. Surely, there will still be cries of marginalization among the various states and ethnic groups that make up the zones or regions but such cries peter out considerably when states are the federating units. There is a higher degree of socio-cultural homogeneity among states than we have among zones or regions. This is where I think the Senate missed the point and even the opportunity.

Successive Nigerian leaderships cannot pretend not to have noticed the frustrations of many Nigerians who feel alienated from the current strangely configured arrangement in which resources are rationed in the most irrational manner that lends credence to the axiom that might is right. We cannot, as a nation, continue to live with the illusion that all is well. The centrifugal forces tugging at the heart of the nation and threatening to pull it apart can no longer be ignored. The resurgent call for restructuring of the nation is a clear indexation of the fact that the centre can no longer hold.

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The indices are bold and lucid: growing social discontent; illiquidity of some states because all the states in the country suddenly became indolent and encumbered by Abuja-will-provide inertia; and worst of it all is the false notion that a stint in public office is all you need to become rich. This is the mental indolence and activity lethargy created by a culture of sharing cheap crude oil money from a collective till domiciled in Abuja rather than a culture of productivity, self-discovery and sustainability by the states.

Make no mistake about it, every state in Nigeria has the capacity to grow its economy and become self-sustaining. The biggest asset Nigeria has is her human capital; not crude oil, gas reserve or acres of agrarian soil. No serious nation depends chiefly on receipts from oil and gas to build her economy. Those who made good money from crude oil have long diversified their economies. And by the way, do we not hear the loud sound of the warning bell announcing the inevitable obsolesce of crude oil in the coming years? Vehicles are already running on electrical power and would become the universal fad in a matter of decades. In our time shale displaced crude oil, these days anything is possible because modern man has gone deep into innovation mode, churning out technologies never before imagined.

Enough said; the National Assembly should revisit the issue of devolution of power. It is at the heart of everything wrong with the Federation. It is the fire that fuels the various agitations across the country. If Nigeria is a Federation as the name suggests, then it should have federating units empowered to harness and husband their respective resources, both human and mineral.

President of the Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki, has said that the upper chamber would revisit the matter. He blamed failure to endorse the devolution clause on the strident calls for restructuring, separatist tendencies and hate speeches. I disagree, sir! On the contrary, it is the lack of devolution of powers to states that precipitated the hate speeches and agitations.  The National Assembly should rise beyond the mundane sentiments that have stymied growth and development of the nation and revisit the clause on devolution of powers.

Nigeria would be a smarter and better economy if we stop promoting the indolence of sharing oil proceeds every month. Norway, Israel, Sweden, Malaysia, Singapore, India, China have all broken their respective glass ceilings not by sharing oil money but by harnessing their human capital to do exploits in other fields of human endeavour. Nigeria has an abundance of gifted men and women but the lazy system we created has denied them the opportunity to excel hence they have taken flight to every other part of the world, and are doing exploits from medicine to media, science to sports. 

Devolution of powers to states will make us rediscover ourselves. It will make us turn Yahoo-Yahoo to ICT excellence; it will make us engineer the requisite technology to process our rice, preserve our tomatoes, package the potpourri of economic fruits at our backyards for export. If South Korea can invade our homes with their ICT and electronic products and Japan with their automobiles, we can do same with our own home grown products. Away with this crude oil with its crude corruption!