Daily Independent Online.
*
Friday, June 11, 2004.
Snippets on Nigeria’s federalism
By Ahmed Jaji
E-mail: [email protected]
I have had cause to write in the past that the antics
of an average political leader never cease to amaze me. An average politician, when faced with
a problem or controversy, the outcome of which to all intents and purposes, may
not favour him, resorts to shadow-boxing.
He resorts to grandiloquence and selective amnesia. Rightly or wrongly, he is convinced
that what honest conviction prompts, political logic or illogicality
confirms. This attitudinal
disposition also reminds one of a popular lyric in Yoruba about a society that
craves peace and tranquility but whose kings sell hallucinogens like cannabis
and cocaine. The king’s wife
complements the husband by selling what is referred to in local lingo as
“hot drinks”. The
children of the king are also the local toughs known as the “Area
Boys”. It is obvious that
peace and tranquility in this society, though generally desired and desirable,
is going to be a mirage.
Of recent, there have been a lot of commentaries on
the Nigerian Federalism and the impression one was able to form is that, most
of the noise-makers are either not knowledgeable about the issue or they are,
but have opted to be mischievous and in the process confuse the citizenry.
To Daniel Elazar, “there are several varieties
of political arrangements to which the term has properly been
applied.” William Riker has
also posited that “initial difficulty in any discussion of Federalism is
that the meaning of the word has been thoroughly confused by dramatic changes
in the institutions to which it refers.
Hence a word that referred to institutions with an emphasis on local
self-government has come to connote also domination by a gigantic, impersonal
concentration of force”.
At its most rudimentary level of definition,
Federalism is the realization by small and diverse communities coming together
to form a Union, for different reasons, and in the process invests the
resultant Central Government with some functions to perform on behalf of the
constituent units. Kenneth Wheare,
one of the foremost writers on Federalism also wrote: “by the federal
principle I mean the method of dividing powers so that general and regional
governments are each within a sphere, coordinate and independent”.
From the foregoing, it may be safe to view Federalism
as a process rather than design and that the degree of Federalism in any given
society is a function of sociological factors and not necessarily legal
criteria alone. There is no true
federalism anywhere it is being practised and that is why the American variant
is different from that of Australia, Canada, Germany, India etc. Federalism is an attempt to cope with
the problem of power and how it is distributed among the Central government and
the constituent states. However,
power is not desired, ideally, for its own end but as a means of tackling the
problem of scarcity. In all
Federal states, there is a continuous struggle and quest for a balanced and
harmonious working of the Federal Union.
The changing circumstances, the relation between the Federal and State
governments take different shapes.
In every federal system, it is inevitable that there will be tension
between the Central and State governments over the years, and that the balance
of power between the three levels should alter from time to time. Some legal criteria, which are also not
necessarily defining characteristic of federalism like constitutional
delimitation powers, bi-cameral legislature, Independent electoral systems for
both levels of government, multi-party system and a Supreme Court, are now
being used to unnecessarily heat up the system because of the failure to
distinguish between an idea and its institutional manifestations.
The brazen and patently overt manipulation of the
Electoral System in the country makes one to be hesitant to asset that in any
Federal System where party strongholds tend to coincide with ethnic
strongholds, the constituent fragmentation of parties tend to follow ethnic,
rather than ideological, cleavages.
In such a system, majority rule might mean that a major ethnic or
regional block was eliminated from the law making process and from
participating in government at the Central level.
It has been my consistent view in different for a
that the 1999 Constitution was designed by the same “Political
Architects” that mid-wifed the document to serve the interests of the
late maximum ruler, General Sanni Abacha as a civilian President, hence the
extra ordinary powers inherent in the Presidency. The desire to see the back of the military in the governance
of the country beclouded the sense of judgment of the political class and were
not bothered to know the content of the Constitution. The various states
government were also inaugurated without having an inkling of the contents of the
Constitution. The departing
Military regime tinkered with the Constitution having been satisfied that
“a man they can trust” had been elected President and the
Politicians and members of the civil society respectively were satisfied with
the status quo.
The resultant negative effect of this “fait
accompli” is the realization that we now have a thoroughly militarized
constitution and a Leviathan with such enormous powers that he can declare a
state of emergency in any state of the Federation before consulting the
National Assembly for approval.
The objective reality to me, is that through acts of Commission or
omission, actions and/or inactions by the political class (to which I belong)
this present Federal Government has been vested with over-concentration of
powers which now leading to monopolization of powers and as such should not be
taken for granted. Under whatever
guise, the strength of the Federal Government is assured under this
Constitution, both financially and by its monopoly powers.
The Federal Government has refused to restore the
security details withdrawn from a State Governor, even after a court has
ordered it for over three months now.
The Federal Government is at present withholding the monthly financial
allocations of some Local Governments in five states of the Federation for two
months running because of Constitutional disagreements over creation of
additional local governments and there seem to be nothing anybody can do to
compel it to do the right thing other than noise-making.
In conclusion, it bears restating that Federalism is
not a template; it is conditioned by local peculiarities, exigencies and
diversities in unity. Federalism
as a concept can only be a path-finder.
It encourages disagreement, it encourages compromise and most
importantly, it creates room for discussion. It must be stated in passing that this short essay is
designed to simulate serious debate on the nature of our own variant of
Federalism and also to accept the challenge of Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu that writers
should focus more on federalizing issues.
What is the implication of having smaller territorial units as
constituents, relative to a constant and ever-present behemoth known as the
central government in Nigeria? Let
us ponder over this for a while.
• Mallam Jaji, a public affairs analyst, is based in Lagos
