advertisement

obenox@hotmail.com Italy

ANNOUNCE THIS ARTICLE TO YOUR FRIENDS

POST DIALOGUE NIGERIA AND OBASANJO

s there any run-of-the-mill approach to nation building? No, experimentation and tinkering is it! Since the British colonialists' amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates in 1914, there seems to be no end to attempts at restructuring Nigeria's political system and constitution making. The twin exercises of political restructuring and constitution making are, of course, supposed to be limitless processes until a semblance of an ideal political structure and constitution are obtained.

Nigerians recently embarked on one of those exercises of political and constitutional reforms after many years of popular clamour for them. But unless the sponsors of the on-going National Political Reform Conference (NPRC) shift gears, and quickly too, it may turn out that no sooner the conference wound up its activities than the proponents of a sovereign national conference intensified their campaigns for same. Reasons: No body can ever downplay the importance of the preamble: "We the people........" in any constitution; a constitution is derived from the people and not from the appointees of the ruling class.

Even if the conference goes ahead to subject its agreements to a referendum ( an exercise that is likely to be a hard-sell to the people since they - the people- did not in the first place elect the delegates to represent them in the dialogue), any constitution that emanates therefrom remains an imposition, a decree sort of, and if it bears the usual "We the people..." preamble, this remains a false declaration; the constitution can best be likened to a congenitally-impaired newborn.

To avoid this, the sponsors of the conference have to shift gears. The dialogue delegates must only serve as feelers. With all the working documents submitted to them by the president, and not failing to broach the so-called "no-go areas", the delegates have to articulate and lay bare the problems with Nigeria, discuss them, agree on the way forward and submit their report to the president who must be obliged not to doctor it. Thereafter, the National Assembly in collaboration with the executive arm enacts a law setting up a constitutional conference whose delegates must be directly elected by universal suffrage. The principal working document for the constitutional conference is the product of the NPRC. A constitution that emerges from this process becomes unassailable from any quarters.

advertisement

We are not unaware of the fact that president Obasanjo did not see it expedient to have members elected to the NPRC rather than his selection formula because he was boxed-up. Let the conference delegates be elected and he risks having radicals, separatists, religious extremists and even anarchists flooding the conference. Select the delegates as he did, and the conference and the constitution derived therefrom become very unpopular. Behold the man's dilemma.

Part of Obasanjo's reasons to shut out the "unwanted" elements from the conference was to avoid the broaching of the so-called "settled issues" in our polity. The indivisibility of Nigeria is one of them. Since the end of the Nigerian civil war, not until the excesses of the military regimes of the recent past did people start questioning the rationale behind the continued unity of Nigeria. Before then questioning Nigeria's unity was like committing political suicide. But to what use is Nigeria's unity if in spite of our rich endowment in human and material resources the majority of its inhabitants continue to languish in abject poverty? Life expectancy in a united Nigeria is fast going below half of what it is in the developed world, who would want to condone this for the sake of one Nigeria?

A generation of Nigerians have been wasting in foreign lands dreaming of the day those who usurped political power in their homeland can turn things for good. The quest for one Nigeria must never be made to compromise the pursuit of happiness, well-being, liberty and longevity for those living in the colonialists' creation called Nigeria. One Nigeria must not be a rehashed objective of some of the ruling elites who at any turn are smiling to the foreign banks after milking the nation dry. If the Nigerian federation is well structured, no part of it would want to opt for secession. Which part of the United States of America would want to secede from the country today in spite of the freedom guaranteed by the country's constitution to do so?

Irrespective of your democratic or communist inclinations, you are wont to agree with me that Mikhail Gorbachev's place in history is crowned. But, what if while introducing "Perestroika" and "glasnost" into the Soviet political lexicon he at the same time decreed that "divisibility" of the Soviet empire should be a "no-go" area? The Russians, the Ukrainians, the Uzbeks, those in today's numerous "stan" republics, etc, and even the inhabitants of the Baltic states would today still be depending on communist Soviet food rations for a living. But they are all many times better off today in their respective countries than what they were in the Soviet empire. Even the Baltic States of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia have grown economically viable enough to join the European Union - that bastion of political and economic block whose membership is synonymous with affluence and liberty.

Come back home to Nigeria. If president Obasanjo had declared a free-for-all conference, the possibility is there he may, like Mikhail Gorbachev, wake up one morning and discover that he no longer has a State to preside over. And Obasanjo's place in history thereafter? The level of affluence and liberty, or poverty in chains, attained by the inhabitants of those living in the present entity called Nigeria become the determinant.

The discuss is that it would have been fairer to allow those living in the present enclave called Nigeria through their elected representatives to first agree to live together under a State, and thereafter, agree on the terms for co-existence. No dialogue or constitutional conference has ever exhaustively addressed these fundamental issues and that is why Nigeria continues to flounder. President Obasanjo unlike others before him has decided to take the bull by the horns, he must successfully wrestle it to the ground. It is a role assigned to him by history. Last year, in my article: Nigeria: Phoney Federalism Blues (nigeriaworld.com), I said:

...... that there is the belief that president Obasanjo is seen by many today as the most trusted link between the north and south is the reason why well-meaning Nigerians are reinforcing their calls on him - while he is still in command - to water the grounds for a conference to restructure the country's existing flawed federal structure...

So far, all we need and shall be proud to have is a one Nigeria restructured to enhance its viability and good governance for the good of the masses, not a one Nigeria for just the good of the ruling elite. The shortest route to attaining this goal is dialogue, a popular dialogue of give and take. Resorting to the use of force to settle political disagreements is the last resort, even at that, many still do not see it as an option. By the time one side is subdued and the guns stop crackling, the level of distrust and enmity deepens. What we have built in decades we can destroy in one month of fighting. And the rest of the world stays akimbo watching us finish ourselves. By the time we are through with the destruction and carnage, those who have set the world economic order to their own advantage return to continue their mineral exploitation, they cause the United Nations to send in "peace keepers" made mainly of soldiers from the Third World countries; (even such mundane thing as keeping peace in any troubled spot in the world has been infiltrated by the race card; forget the French's "unassimilating" special interests in the Ivory Coast).

Of course, the Brits may not want to risk one cop considering the complexities of Nigeria and the ensuing firing power, after all, this is not a Sierra Leone. And the Yankees? They can comfortably adjust their Middle East policies and ignore our oil until the imbroglio ends; after all, in foreign relations, there are neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies. At the end we are all the losers. So, trouble shooters, beware! But the above scenario must not compel any group(s) in Nigeria to push the other(s) to the wall as one pushed to the wall normally fights back. He must be very callous who would not want to allow the conference redress the injustices meted to the oil producing areas of Nigeria over the years. And it earns no plaudit the argument that requires the people on the Niger Delta to account for the judicious use of the extra revenue accruable to them from the 13% derivation before they (like Oliver Twist) ask for more. It is like rubbing an irritant on an already painful wound.

I may have to limit this discuss or concentrate solely on the kind of political restructuring Nigerians expect from the NPRC.

At this stage of the conference, we expect the committees comprising the models and structure of government, political parties and electoral process to act in concert with other relevant committees to restructure the country and produce a political system such that there shall be lesser attractions to, and less scramble by the less-endowed politicians (contractors) for elective offices and political appointments. They must give us a political structure that must deter any group dictating to the rest who must govern them. The nation must be restructured in a way that such amazing obstacles people raise against the realization of proper census figures, the national identity card scheme, allotting social security numbers or fiscal codes to every Nigerian must be dismantled. The importance of these empirical characteristics are fundamental to national planning and in combating crime. For an example, in countries where it is available, the first document needed by banks to open an account is the fiscal code, stealing money from government coffers and staggering them in multiple, fictitious bank accounts thus gets drastically monitored. The nation must be restructured such that corruption does not continue to hamstring our aspirations for real development.

We expect this conference to put in place a structure that guarantees an educational system that enhances our quest for technological development. Talk of technological development: we are yet on the basement and meanwhile, unable to put our foot on the lift. Our theory-laden educational system is to blame. Or how else can one explain, for an example, the phenomenon that more than three decades after Nigeria changed from the imperial to the metric systems of weights and measures, most Nigerians constrained to measure and weigh in their daily activities still do so in the imperial system? The likely answer is that the colonialists' educational system made a stronger impact on Nigerians than the various post-independence instructional methods. Today, a Nigerian scientist goes to the market, he buys garri or rice in cups or "mudu". In real measures, he does not know the weight of his purchase, and of course, neither does the seller; majority of Nigerians see no need to assess weights and measures, we pay little or no heed to accuracy. In the developed world, a child in the primary school can roughly tell the weight of an object he feels or the distance he cruises. Such knowledge is fundamental to technological development and must be massive and not be meant for a privileged few before it can prop up a popular technological revolution.

Technology is not a miracle, it is not an exclusive preserve of some certain race. Plagiarizing it is not even the ideal. It has to be home-grown. It normally sprouts from one area and spreads to others like wild fire. It cannot come through the federal character syndrome or quota system. An "Aba-Made" technology can quickly and easily be fine-tuned in Maiduguri and perfected in Sango Otta. Less than four decades ago, products manufactured in Japan and none-the-less Taiwan, were frowned at for being inferior compared to those from Europe. Today? A home-grown technology can only spring up when there is the enabling political and infrastructural climate which can only be provided by the State. Ask the Asian Tigers. Nigeria as presently structured can never provide such a climate. Ministers, technocrats, administrators, etc, they all come and go. There are little or no demonstrable improvements because our political system is structurally flawed.

The importance of uninterrupted energy supplies for technological development cannot be over emphasized, but if we can not restructure the present political system, corruption may never allow the recently enacted Power Reform Bill aimed at uninterrupted power supply to succeed?

Political pundits have been confounded by the system of government in practice in Nigeria: federal or unitary; democracy or dictatorship? But you cannot talk of federalism without the accompanying "fiscal" word; and there is no federalism where the State cannot accord some degree of autonomy to each of the federating units such that every group pursues its aspirations based on the cultural, religious, environmental and occupational factors prevalent in the group's area. The choice word, no doubt, for now, is regions; however, we have to be careful not to create new fiefdoms for old and yet-to-emerge demi-gods to continue their kleptomaniac reigns. The NPRC must put in place a system of checks and balances to guide against this. At the regional (if the regions come to be) and central levels of government, democracy must be a system of governance where the majority has the inalienable right to chose who governs them, and those led must have the right to suggest what needs to be done, ask questions regarding to what degree they have been or have not been done, and deserve answers from the leaders. Any thing short of this is dictatorship. The kind of "democracy" and electoral system where whoever has the money and connection can impose himself on us as president, and thenceforth, virtually controls the air we breathe, must be consigned to the history books by the NPRC.

After the NPRC and the constitution emerging from the constitutional conference, Nigeria must remain but never the same again. President Obasanjo would have proved cynics and his critics wrong. Parts of his speech while inaugurating the conference highlighted what seemed like his dreams of a beautiful post-conference Nigeria. Realization of much of those dreams is not a Herculean task, what is needed is the political will on the part of those now steering the ship of state; after all, we are used to listening to idealistic constitutional conference inaugural speeches. Many are fast getting wary and weary of them.