Daily Independent Online.
*
Tuesday, August 24, 2004.
A governor and
his dying pet
By Vincent Obia
Correspondent, Lagos
When Lagos State Governor Bola Tinubu
assembled the 17 governors of Nigeria’s southern states, October 10,
2000, to kick-start the Southern Governors’ Forum (SGF), one commentator
said Tinubu had just caught 16 eagles. If you have ever tried, you will know
that eagles are very hard to catch, being fast, strong, and living a life of
aloneness. Usually, the best one can hope for is to see the abandoned nest of
an eagle.
Well, Tinubu did not catch any eagles that
fine October afternoon, but, obviously, the aloneness of the eagle quite aptly
describes the characters that assembled at the Akodo Beach Resort in Lagos that
day.
Only four years after the inauguration of
SGF, the earth seems to be moving under the association, leaving its flanks to
crumble like flimsy cardboard boxes. The forum’s problems are
multifarious. Issues of true federalism dominated Tinubu’s message to his
colleagues at the first meeting in Lagos, and they formed the basis of a
10-point resolution of the southern governors during their second summit in
Enugu, January 10,2001. The theme of those discourses earned SGF vertical and
horizontal attacks, apparently, marking its march to oblivion.
The SGF, unlike the Northern Governors
Forum before it, has not held its quarterly meeting since 2003, and the
governors who pronounced a unanimous aye to the fulcrum of Tinubu’s
inaugural address in October, 2000, are today singing in discordant tones. Not
that the issues raised and agreed in that event - resource control,
derivation, distribution of the Value Added Tax, fiscal federalism, true
federalism, etc - no longer bother their peoples, “But these
governors have sold their hearts to the enemies of the people’s cause,”
says Ijaw Monitoring Group co-ordinator Joseph Evah. “And the best way
they can demonstrate their allegiance is to embark on ceaseless, multifaceted
assault on the cause and the progenitor of SGF.”
Evah says all active voices of the
south’s stand on true federalism have received various doses of the
“enemy missile.” According to the former national publicity
secretary of Ijaw National Congress (INC), “Chief James Ibori (Delta
State governor) is yoked with a controversial ex-convict case, Victor Attah
(Akwa Ibom governor) is hated from on high, Bayelsa State governor Diepreye
Alamieyeseigha is threatened with ICPC (Independent Corrupt Practices and Other
Related Offences Commission).”
But Tinubu seems to be receiving the
hottest attack. He has consistently received the sharp side of the northern
governors’ tongues for spearheading agitations for fiscal federalism, a
demand that tends to put a hot knife through many in that part of the country.
“Tinubu, under the guise of Southern
Governors' Forum, continues to mount pressure on the Federal Government to
change the indices used in the allocation of Value Added Tax (VAT) to states
for his belief that most VAT proceeds are generated in Lagos. But it should be
noted that VAT is a consumption tax and not a production tax. The Northern
governors were right when they resolved at the end of their meeting in Kaduna
that the current indices used in the distribution of VAT revenue should be
maintained,” wrote Auwalu's Umar, a northerner, after the initial two
summits of the SGF. He accused the Lagos governor of force-footing governors of
the South South and South East states onto a South West agenda. However,
Patrick Nagbatan, an Ogoni youth leader, believes, “calling the core
demands of the southern governors’ meeting, like fiscal federalism, a
South West idea is just political naivety. The world knows that the South South
people are the greatest victims of Nigeria’s skewed resource ownership
and allocation formula.”
Observers have identified lingering
squabbles between Tinubu and Nigeria’s powerful chief executive, Chief
Olusegun Obasanjo, as the major factor behind SGF’s ill fate. But the
whole thing seems steeped in history. The south has always been a place where
everyone plays alone, a place where boundaries are very conspicuous, says
Coalition of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) secretary, Mr. Mazi Okwu. The
fate of SGF is yet another throwback to Nigeria’s colonial legacy. There
was one north with which the east and the west were expected to relate individually.
Now, says Evah, “There is Obasanjo
and the northern governors with whom Tinubu, the only standing leader of SGF,
is supposed to negotiate. This is the association’s funeral.
“But, certainly, not the internment
of SGF’s message.”
