Nigeria should have 7 states and 84 local administrative districts, instead of 36 states and 774-and-rising local government areas. The combined total of state assemblymen and local councillors in the new setup should be at least 66% lower that the comparable figure for today.
There should be 25% fewer total federal legislators in a single parliamentary chamber, rather than two.
The “Federal Capital Territory” should extend no further than the limits of the current Abuja Municipal Area Council; the rest of the current FCT should be transferred to the most appropriate of the 7 proposed states. The new, reduced, FCT would be one of four geographically dispersed cities we should designate ‘federal territories’ and keep unaffiliated to any of the 7 states.
Redesigning internal boundaries is much less contentious than determining the rights and privileges of “indigenes” and “non-indigenes” in any given area. Then there is the even more dangerous question (in certain parts of the country) of exactly who qualifies as an “indigene”. It is a delicate thing, this debate over constitutional reform and broader restructuring.
The dominant theme in Nigerian politics since the 1950s has been the pervasive, reciprocal fear that other socio-cultural groups would become powerful enough to “dominate” or “marginalize” your own group. Fear makes substantive reform next to impossible, as citizens are more afraid of fellow citizens than they are of a non-performing government or under-performing economy. It is consequently easy for a few to exercise unchecked politico-economic power over many. The defensive walls we citizens raise against each other are the unshakeable platforms on which politicians, militicians and plutocrats securely stand to make the invisible deals that rob the rest of us of our right to choose our governments (directly) and their policies (indirectly). The British colonialists exploited our inability to create a unified response.
Mutual fear is both cause and symptom, as we Nigerians have also struggled to correctly identify what constitute our REAL interests as citizens, communities, ethno-cultural groups and as a federal republic. We ignore the crucial, while investing energy and resources in self-defeating initiatives. I am no fan of external interventions, but the energy we spent fighting each other in the one major and many minor wars of the 1960s could have been better used fighting Apartheid or forming the first blocks of a sub-regional bulwark against the rise of “Mobutus” in West and Central Africa, and against the manipulations of great powers prosecuting their Cold War on African soil. We lost what could have been a huge trading partner (i.e. a potentially very wealthy Congo-Kinshasa) and gained a million lives lost to fratricidal conflict.
It is bad enough that we were excluded from the process of constitution-drafting, worse that even if we were included, we quite probably would have endorsed the decisions they made anyway, mistaking their interests for ours. So we did not have the democratic power to check our leaders, and may not have used the power effectively had it been given us.
This is important, because in the absence of institutional checks on instinctive behaviour, human beings will seek to maximize their own individual, rational self-interests. It has been a longstanding issue in the land of the Niger-Benue Confluence, predating colonialism, but I will restrict this post to “constitutional” issues since the Amalgamation.
Statistical micro-minorities with interests distinct from the broader population have controlled Nigeria’s constitution-drafting and approval processes in Nigeria since 1914, free to act on their impulses as there were no substantive democratic checks on their decision-making.
Our first constitutions were drafted by British colonial governors and approved by British parliaments. These averred that we the people had no right to control our governance, and no right to a mechanism for holding our government accountable for decisions and actions that affected us profoundly. The nascent colonial army and police were made responsible for defending a sequence of illegitimate regimes against any revolt by the people and for enforcing those regimes’ will on the people. Sound familiar?
The constitutional conferences in the 1950s, ahead of Independence, revolved around indisputably great men who nevertheless deeply distrusted each other, doubted the “Nigerian project”, and had no vision or conception of what “Nigeria” was or what “Nigeria” meant beyond the fact that it existed and shouldn’t be ruled by the British. They ultimately drafted a constitution that did much to protect their respective exclusive spheres of power from extra-regional and intra-regional rivals, but did little or nothing to create a new social contract to bind ALL of the diverse peoples of “Nigeria” to a common purpose.
The constituent assemblies and constitutional conferences of the 1970s were influenced by the aftermath of war, and the desire to avoid another one. There were controversies (and a coup) linked to the suspicion of tenure-elongation. Significantly, the 70s also saw the rise of a new class of elite politicians, militicians and plutocrats. These emergent New Big Men slowly and ponderously moved away from the rigid ethno-cultural camps of the 1950s and 1960s, toward a sort of pan-Nigerian grand alliance of Big Men. It took three decades, and quite a bit of (at times violent) intra-Big-Man strife, before the alliance was perfected as the “Peoples Democratic Party” in 1999. The Big Men’s struggle between and within themselves to define their relationships to each other was more influential on the constitutional and structural nature of Nigeria during this period than anything we the people needed or wanted.
Since 1999, there have been three attempts to “review” and/or “amend” our latest constitution. The first two tries took place during the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, and are notable only for the demise of the “Third Term” agenda. The only thing politically consistent about Nigerian Big Men is they inevitably move to bring down (dead or alive) any of their number they perceive to be garnering “too much” power relative to the rest of them; any other circumstance they are content to back “Any Government In Power”.
Nigeria in 2009 is constitutionally and structurally “perfect” for the PDP and the PDP-esque opposition, but quite imperfect for the rest of us. The PDP, which prides itself as Africa’s largest … gathering of Big Men, has controlled the Federal Republic for a decade. Oddly, the PDP in 2009 is assuring us they will review and amend the 1999 constitution. They have setup an 88-member Joint Constitution Review Committee (JCRC), comprised principally of Senators and Representatives. Per Nigerian constitutional tradition, they have promised to consult “stakeholders”. And I do believe (though I can’t find a reference) they have promised their new constitution will be put to a referendum.
They have not explained why we should believe the referendum will be any more democratic than the 2007, 2003, and 1999 elections. In fact the 2007 elections were so discredited, the Senators and Reps do not really have any mandate from Nigerians do deliberate on an issue as sensitive as a constitution, or on any issue at all. Even if we discount the rigging on the day, and the half-sensible, half-dubious tribunal and court decisions that followed, none of the major candidates or political parties in 2007 campaigned on any specific, substantive issue of national restructuring or constitutional reform, so none of the elected officials can claim the voters endorsed the ideas they intend to inject into the JCRC process.
Also unexplained is why we should believe the system can correct itself. A 7-state federation abolishes 29 gubernatorial posts. Sitting governors would lose their second-term birthright, and aspirants would have fewer positions to seek in the future, and would face a lot more competition for those spots, the two things they were trying to avoid when they fought for the creation of smaller states. Virtually all of the vital reforms and restructuring would disadvantage those Nigerians with the greatest ability to influence social, political and economic outcomes in the country. In the absence of a mechanism for citizens to over-ride these interests, why are we supposed to believe this constitution-drafting process will be any different from the other thousand or so we’ve had since 1914? Don’t say “referendum” until you have explained why we should believe it will be any more credible than any of the other elections we’ve had.
This brings us to the most powerful truth of all: It does not matter what constitution we have now, or what constitution we get in the future because at a fundamental level, the Big Men do not give a damn what the constitution says or doesn’t say. Our military-led diarchies needn’t have bothered suspending the constitutions after their coups, as the civilians never complied with the substance and spirit of those documents to begin with. Hilariously, the colonial constitutions gave the British the power to do whatever they wanted regardless of what we the people wanted, which was (in its way) more honest than our latter constitutions. What is a constitution anyway, and what value does it have, if it never reflects our reality in any way that can make an actual difference in our lives?
This is the conundrum, the challenge of our time as Nigerian citizens, the responsibility we have to the generations that follow us.
How can we the people break free of these constraints? How can we debate a proper social contract that can bring us together in the pursuit of our common interests and common goals? And how can we make that document “stick”, make it matter, give it substance and effect, not just in form but in spirit?
I’ll get to that … in the weeks or months ahead.
Stick with me.
PS: Anyone who takes the JCRC seriously should read this summary of their first steps on the road to constitution review. The 88 members have yet to say anything to give us an insight into the constitutional ideas each of them will bring to the table, so we citizens can debate the same. No, the first priority is to jostle for position (and related control of the committee budget).
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