Apparently, this senator did not know that the Conference he was enamored of did not acknowledge the existence of the Peoples and their Nations as the Federating Units since these Nations were not formally represented even as he claimed that their agitations were addressed; after-all, a Yoruba delegate, Chief Olusegun Osoba proudly proclaimed that he was not at the Conference as a Yoruba but as a Nigerian—whatever that meant at the time or means now– without being challenged or corrected by his fellow Yoruba delegates. Under what circumstances, then, could such a Conference be deemed to have addressed Yoruba issues?
By saying that he, Adamu Ailero, doesn’t know why the senate is not asking for the Conference recommendations to be brought to it, he failed to acknowledge that the report itself is available to the public hence, if the senate is serious, all it needs to do is to take this available document and craft out some form of legislative agenda and work on it. It cannot do this because its other name is grandstanding; otherwise, a look at the report would indicate there is nothing in that report that can address the current agitations, the bottom line of which is a fundamental solution to the National Question.
In this publicly available report, the following constitute the core recommendations supposedly to provide solutions to current agitations on the National Question: creation of “self-funding economic agencies”; creation of 18 more states, with special consideration for “equity” between the north and the south; issues about fiscal federalism or resource control was left for some future technical committee to work out; the section of the Land Use Act vesting ownership of mineral resources in the Federal Government, was virtually left intact; states are supposed to have their own police although still under the overall control of Nigeria’s Inspector-general; local governments are to be autonomous of the State Government; states that want to merge may do so; states are allowed to have their own Constitutions; Central control of finances reduced by 10% etc.
A “self-funding economic agency” without its political basis is a non-starter, a priori; and a denial of economic self-actualization, for an economic platform in a center of antagonistic political configuration is a panacea for economic failure. Recommending a self-funding economic agency without fiscal federalism that makes revenue raising and collection regional is nothing more than self-deception. A country in which the states or federating units depend on allocation from the center cannot call itself a Federal system. None of the federations in the world: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, United Arab Emirate, and U.S.A., operates on the model of state dependency on allocations from the center recommended by the 2014 national conference.
A future “technical committee” supposed to work out modalities for fiscal federalism will also have to operate under existing political conditions which are not yet federal in any sense hence the attempt to avoid addressing this fundamental issue by shunting it to some future date.
The Conference already assumed the singularity of the geo-political space called Nigeria and all of its solutions to its problems are relegated to maintaining that singularity while turning issues of Federalism into an administrative convenience even when it is obvious that the problem is exactly in that singularity which again was confirmed by Adamu Aliero’s “non-negotiability” of Nigeria, when indeed, conditions for negotiations are already on the table via the various demands from the North and East.
Promoting the notion that “states are federating Units” is very ridiculous. States, as we have them in Nigeria, are administrative entities, which were not even created by the residents but by military fiat.
A country can have any form of administrative unit, which, by itself does not determine whether it is Unitary or Federal. The Conference asking such states to merge ignored the fact that their creators had only one aim in doing so, that is, to create a very strong center that will presumably sustain the non-negotiability of the Nigerian State. Any merger therefore can only reinforce this notion, which is detrimental to the expected solution.
Inherent in any government is its ability to create and enforce laws for the society usually formalized through the establishment of a governmental force created specifically for that purpose hence the existence of a Police Force, Service or Department.
A Federal System therefore implies, ab initio, this inherent right in each of the components of that Federalism, each component being representative of particular socio-cultural realities such that advocacy for the establishment of a “State Police” as a measure of Nigeria’s Federalism is completely at variance with the nature of Federalism itself since these components, by definition, can establish such forces at any level of governance within their societies. It is the abnormality imported into Nigeria as “Federalism” which drives the calls for the establishment of “State Police” as an expression of its Federalism.
State Police exist because the “State” is a Federating Unit by itself, with an inherent Sovereignty only abridged by its determination to co-exist with other Sovereigns by which fact a limit is placed on their Sovereignty by their own choices. To advocate “state police” without recognizing this inherent right is to deny the Peoples the self-determination that is now the source of these agitations.
In addition, States depend almost entirely on federal allocations to pay their workers’ salaries; and it is this allocation that will be saddled with funding state police. The state police is to be funded from received allocations when the number of states are increased to 54 such that the revenue allocation will have minimal or no change from the existing allocation structure which translates into such state police being underfunded and unable to achieve its maximum potential in terms of training and professional advancement.
Once a state police is under the control of the sole Inspector-General who is responsible only to the President, such arrangement is not stronger than the one that says that the federal government should fund exploitation of mineral resources in states, without any consideration for the centrality of fiscal federalism to a federal system with integrity.
There is no correlation between a state constitution and Federalism. Having a state constitution has nothing to do with Federalism. A state constitution is meaningless outside the definition of the Federating Unit in and of itself. In other words, the issue is not about “state Constitution” but about the Peoples that want to create a Union. Such that if we are talking about federating units being in existence, such federating units are not the states, but the PEOPLES, who are already in existence and can decide to administer themselves as they deem fit, be it as states, regions, cities, etc.
The conference recommendations recognized each state as being able to create its own local government while at the same time ensuring the central Government retaining and disbursing all the funds for the Local Governments created by the states.
That the allocation accruing to the center is to be reduced by 10% ignores the fact that the increase in the number of states would have already made nonsense of the increase as more states will now share in the resources. Reducing or increasing the amount of allocations is not Fiscal Federalism by any stretch of imagination. Such determinations are precisely what is wrong with the unitary system. Fiscal Federalism proceeds from the control of economic and fiscal policies by the communities whereby it is those communities (Federating Units) that will determine what is to go to the Center for its operations–of course all of these will be negotiated.
Derivation, by definition, even as practiced in the First republic, presupposes that the center does not “give”; the “owner” gives and the center “takes”. The issue about Federalism is thus not about reductions or increases in central allocations but ownership of resources.
Self-Determination is self-explanatory; the Nations are the only authority to make a their own existential determination but when senator Adamu Ailero lays emphasis on living together “ and the corporate existence of this country cannot be negotiated. Nigeria must remain one indivisible and indissoluble entity”, he and his colleagues must be told in no uncertain terms that such arrogant finality does not rest with a National Assembly lacking in basic knowledge about itself, but with the Peoples and Nations.
Derivation, by definition, even as practiced in the First republic, presupposes that the center does not “give”; the “owner” gives and the center “takes”. The issue about Federalism is thus not about reductions or increases in central allocations but ownership of resources.
Self-Determination is self-explanatory; the Nations are the only authority to make a their own existential determination but when senator Adamu Ailero lays emphasis on living together “ and the corporate existence of this country cannot be negotiated. Nigeria must remain one indivisible and indissoluble entity”, he and his colleagues must be told in no uncertain terms that such arrogant finality does not rest with a National Assembly lacking in basic knowledge about itself, but with the Peoples and Nations.
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