Dr Nestor Nzeribe
Only a directionless country governed by intellectual docility adopts a dysfunctional approach to governance like we do easily here in Nigeria. Effective and result oriented management of a nation’s affairs never has been made an emotional thing, except in a situation where out of presumption, you believe that you may have your cake and eat it too!
To grow a nation that is firmly established on the foundations of political stability and economic viability, you must be ready to not just build hospitals for the sick but also jails for law breakers. And if with rational ease you direct the sick to the hospitals for attention, you must also neither be overwhelmed nor deterred by either title, position or relationship from ensuring that criminals never escaped the long arm of the laws they had broken.
The recent Local Governments’ funds allocation judgement delivered by the Supreme Court of Nigeria and the fuel subsidy removal or retention controversy might have presented very different scenarios at a cursory glance. But looking deeper into both reveals a number of parallels. There is first, the lacklustre attitude of political leaders towards both the implementation of policies and compliance with the laws that govern processes. And then second, is this wholesale sense of exclusive entitlement to our collective wealth, which the Nigerian political leadership elite who exploit lavish privileges, have unlawfully cultivated and infused into the system.
If well intentioned policy systems when put in place gets hijacked by crooks, is it not expected that by a quick and decisive enforcement of laws, the guilty are punished? And if the focus is not on doing the job of bringing criminals to book, but a resort to endless distortions that will end up destroying the original purpose of the system because it is much easier to do so, is that sustainable? Apart from the local government funds judgement and the ill-advised termination of the petroleum products subsidy regime that came before it, certainly, there are a host of other unsavoury examples of ill-concieved policy alterations to point to.
In Nigeria, presidents and governors while their tenure lasts are under immunity from legal prosecution for wrongdoing, but not when they leave office. Till date, apart from the few cases of corrupt enrichment preferred against a few ex governors, a host of them and all the past presidents who brazenly breached some of our laws while in office, are today happily enjoying the aftermath of such offences in their peace. And another good number of them have been rewarded with appointment as Ministers. Some have even won election as national law makers. Because of the antecedents of those involved, is it not a little wonder that law making in Nigeria has become very financially rewarding?
A country that is ever shy of sorting out her crooks sends only but one clear but ugly message to the world out there. That crookery is a highly rewarding national culture, and everyone benefits from it one way or another, becomes the undeniable impression. Some analysts have often pointed to the fact that sorting out the crooks might take further money, effort and time. But we do know that credible nations and systems can only be built and established on the principles of law and order. And apart from adherence to rule of law, there is no other route to building a system that is self sustainable.
Except the loss of core national values, identity and direction, nothing else that is progressive or admirable can ever be achieved if we continue to rely on adhoc political or complex judicial interventions as corrective measures to the fraudulent distortion or contradiction of the very essence of our original policy objectives. Our only way out is to courageously institutionalize the practice of calling the saboteurs who seeks to abort carefully thought out policies to order. But if the former, and not the latter option remains the rule, we will continue to waste multiple prospects for national progress through policy jettisoning and inelegant summersaults.
The fact is that less than a year after the much hyped about as very “courageous” removal of subsidy on petroleum products was effected, we have taken a secret back-door route to return to it. The only difference now is that the cost has become even more burdensome. But before it was halted we all decried the effects of corruption on the policy which had grown to become a monster due to a weak governance system. Of course everyone, but those with the responsibility of taking the final decision on it, knew that the policy was a necessity. But in deciding how to remedy the situation, we targeted the entire arrangement wholesale in an act of thoughtless acquiescence to criminality. We felt that it was easier to cut off the head as a cure for its stubborn aches than to labour to know the cause of headaches and seek a permanent cure for it. We chose a decision that will allow criminals enjoy the proceeds of crime while a double burden of deprivation and pain rests on their victims. Even the subsidy criminals whose names got published by a previous government just a few years ago, have all effortlessly evaded prosecution, thereby creating an attractive incentive for new ones to join the nefarious trade.
Very questionable in the management of the affairs of a nation too, is to subject your policies to the whims and mercy of criminals, by the refusal or inability to effect the enforcement of your laws when that is needed to demonstrate both determination and the strengths of the State. If you let criminal conducts overwhelm and sabotage your policies at will, forcing you to always either withdraw your programmes or distort them out of context, you exhibit a weakness that transmits the wrong signals. At the end you become a failed state because the resources and benefits that are supposedly meant for raising the welfare of the poor and vast majority, are hijacked by a criminally minded few who knows that they are untouchable to the State.
That Nigeria could not combat the fuel subsidy crooks, but rather brutally shot down the entire regime without consideration for its original intentions and attendant chain of economic benefits, is a massive failure of governance. It is a failure that did not reflect the invincibility of the fuel subsidy crooks as we have been programmed to think, but the weakness and inadequacy of government. And that the termination took full effect before any relief measures were initiated makes it twice thoughtless. It is also a terrible betrayal of the trust of the country’s poor masses whose interests if vulnerable, the government should be the one protecting from the onslaught of strong criminals both high and low.
In development, funding is almost everything. Today, following some defeaning clamouring from populist quarters, the Nigerian Supreme Court in its wisdom has almost completely stripped the states of the federation of powers over the local governments. And those are all powers the states legitimately have under the amended 1999 Nigerian Constitution, but may have serially abused. The questions trailing this decision are indeed multifarious. Why can we not combat the flagrant abuses frontally by a more resourceful, efficient and responsible law enforcement and governance system? Why are we not thinking about shifting emphasis away from “feeding bottle federalism” , apologies to Ike Ekweremadu, to a rather productive and more contributive system that elevates production above free collection?
Instead of decentralizing as it seems now, the recent Supreme Court judgement may soon lead us to handing over the conduct of local government elections to the national electoral body, INEC, as some are already calling for. When we further yield to such populist requests, the consequences will include a more centralization of an already over-centralized governance system. And we are still not done talking about how powers could further be devolved from the center to the component or federating units at the same time. Can we then say that we have made any real progress? One step forward and two backwards, it will amount to! Yet in addition to the foregoing, those hailing the recent judgement appear not to have considered a myriad of other implications of the recent judgement on the waning health of our federalism. The States under the present Constitution create local governments and their Houses of Assembly are to make laws that govern local government administration. It is certainly not difficult foresee a huge constitutional row ahead!
Except we are ready to embrace the novelty of a constitutionally enshrined three-tiered federal system full scale, the Supreme Court’s judgement may prove difficult to enforce. But operationally, can there be more than two tiers in a federation? And even if we all agree to go against the norm, will we also retain the current number of local governments with the existing lopsidedness? Some states in a section of the country by the advantage of military fiat, have much more local government areas than the rest, thereby making them receive more funding allocations. This is an unhealthy situation that soon may throw up new local governments’ size controversies in the country.
On a cautionary note, it is important that the present administration of His Excellency, president Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, slows down a little bit in its hurried efforts to carry out certain structural adjustments. A safer and better way to do what he is trying to do by influencing the National Assembly and the judiciary as some analysts are alleging is, to revisit the Report of the 2014 National Conference. The Confab Report of 2014 contains a good number of important recommendations that were all agreed to by a consensus of all the participating ethnicities. For a political resolution of a number of controversial issues, in line with the current experimentations of Mr president, it may prove more accurate and acceptable than judicial pronouncements which might be viewed with suspicion. That 2014 Confab Report is still within easy reach. But if the president is worried about who takes the credit, he can as well convoke a National Conference of his own. However, it is likely that on a number of issues, obtaining a consensus agreement today, may not come as easily as it did ten years ago.
The bottomline to all my arguments here is that if finally we have agreed to do it, let the restructuring excercise go the entire hog, in such a manner that will lead to a holistic development of Nigeria, and serve every part well.