Okunmuyide: Confederalism as Nigeria’s realistic federalis (Culled from The Guardian) ONE hundred years after an imposed amalgamation of two dis-similar protectorates, 53 years of political independence, several military coup d’etat, 30-month civil war, 30 years of military rule, fourth-running republic and many failed political conferences, Nigeria is conferring again on the best form of government for guaranteeing her political unity. This is happening while Boko Haram and the amorphous “Fulani herdsmen” have turned the north into a security disaster zone, the Niger Delta militants are adjusting their operational tactics to fit their commercial objectives, MASSOB group hoisted the Biafran flag in the Enugu Government house on 08/03/14 (44 years after the civil war!), the pre-Confab communique of the Southern Leaders’ and the Northern Elders’ Forum are diametrically opposed, the Niger Delta governments insist on “Resource Control” and the southwest governments demand “Regional Autonomy”! Nigeria’s parliamentary, military dictatorship, unitary, federal-unitary and presidential-federal political forms of government have failed to deliver the minimum public benefits, regardless of the quality of their operators, because they are inherently defective in aligning the appropriate political structure with the country’s socio-economic objectives and strategy. Rather, they have excerbated her political vulnerability to the increasing pressure of the centrifugal forces:Massob, OPC, the Middle belt, Egbesu, Niger-Delta, Arewa, Ogoni, Ijaw, Urhobo, Itshekiri, Berom and Hausa-Fulani in Nigeria’s “Kashmir” Plateau, Zongo-Katafs, Boko Haram etc along with a tickling time-bomb: religious intolerance. The Americans, despite their excellent socio-economic and political infrastructure, seek to reduce their 25.3 per cent federal cost of governance compared to Nigeria’s 52.68 per cent! Nigeria is the only country with a poorly developed socio-economic infrastructure and in her extremely low per-capita-income category that operates the presidential form of government. The present 75:25 ratio between recurrent and capital components of the national budget (despite the $ trillions required to cover infrastructural deficits for which Nigeria daily hunts for foreign direct investment) will certainly worsen to 80:20 or even 90:10 within the next five years if a timely solution to its incongruous governance structure is not provided through Confederalism. Meanwhile, the World Bank has rated Nigeria among the world’s five countries that comprise two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor, along with India, China, Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of Congo. And, the “Global Competitiveness 2012/3 Report in 2011 showed that Nigeria with an estimated 2.32 per cent of world population had a GDP(PPP)/capita of only 0.52 per cent of the world’s total! Measuring the economies’ global economic competitiveness on 12 key performance pillars that were broken into three key sub-aggregates: factor-driven, efficiency-driven, and innovation-driven, Nigeria was classified as a factor-driven (Stage 1) economy with an agriculture-32 per cent- manufacturing-three per cent-non-manufacturing-39 per cent-and-services-26 per cent structure. African countries in the efficiency-driven (Stage 2) economies are Cape Verde, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland. Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, Gabon and Libya were/are graduating from Nigeria’s bloc of stage one economies, that is, “in transition to Stage two economies.” Thus out of the 144 countries covered by the report, Nigeria’s overall Global competitiveness Index score by sustainability indicators is 115, that is in the lowest quartile! Furthermore, the ratings for Nigeria on each of the 12 pillars of performance in global competitiveness are as follows: (public) health and primary education, 142; infrastructure 130, institutions,117, higher education and training 113, technological readiness 112, goods’ market efficiency88, innovation 78, financial market development 68, business sophistication 66, labour market efficiency 55, macro-economic environment, 39 and market size 33. Thus, Nigeria was above average in only five of these 12 pillars: macro-economic environment, labour market efficiency, financial market development, market size and business sophistication. Also, except Mali and Botswana in Nigeria’s league of the manufacturing sector’s poor contribution to the GDP, all other African countries out-performed her: Gabon, Sierra-leone, Mauritania and Libya four per cent, Guinea, Gambia and Ethiopia five per cent, Ghana and Rwanda, six per cent, Cape Verde and Chad, seven per cent, Benin, Uganda, Kenya and Namibia, eight per cent, Zambia and Burundi, nine pre cent, Malawi and Tanzania, 10 per cent, Liberia, Senegal and South Africa, 13 per cent, Egypt, 14 per cent, Zimbabwe, 15 per cent, Lesotho, 16 per cent, Cameroon, 17 per cent, Cote d’Ivoire, 19 per cent and Swaziland, 45 per cent! Moreover, Nigeria has not been blessed with many patriotic leaders, most of whom were/are ferociously engaged in “competitive corruption” (Philip Asiodu, Sunday Sun, 10th March 2014). Despite this malignant malaise, the fact is that even the most patriotic, brilliant, honest, visionary, hands-on manager of resources cannot succeed in managing this country well because of its defective structure of governance and its associated costs relative to the gaps in socio-economic developments required by the citizens. This is a fundamental reason why Nigeria has continued to experience strong governance headwinds. Thus, despite the nominal GDP growth figures in recent years and its latest “re-basing” to $509.9 billion, her GDP per capita of only $2,688 is much lower than Angola’s $ 5,703 and Gabon’s $10,688, that frightfully underscores the possible re-play of the tragically classic case of “Growth without development: the example of Liberia” with severe politico-economic consequences. Notwithstanding the several $ billions earned from exports, about 70 per cent of the population are below the poverty line and unemployment is soaring to extremely high levels. Hence, Nigeria is virtually being crippled by heinous crimes, some of which were hitherto unknown for, example, terrorism, kidnapping-for-ransom, Internet scam, electronic banking fraud, employment-recruitment scam, commercialised religious exploitation etc that are taking heavy tolls on policing, security and recidivism costs as the extremely high human suffering indices are becoming increasingly un-manageable. And, the only known, though hitherto un-tried in Nigeria, feasibly corrective realistic form of federalism that can match our political structure with our national socio-economic objectives and strategy appropriately as well as drastically reduce the central cost of governance for every citizen is Con-federalism. Also it will guarantee Nigeria a strong and durable unity as a multi-lingual, multi-national and multi-religious amalgamation while providing the citizenry what has been critically lacking: socio-economic development and enormous scope for deepening the practice of democracy. It has been successfully used in Switzerland for several decades, although what is being proposed is a modest, lower-cost adaptation of the Swiss confederacy rather than its total adoption. It is better than the parliamentary form of government and its allied “regional autonomy” as the latter’s accentuation of the centrifugal political forces hastened the collapse of the first republic and because of the several political complexities that have developed across the country since then. It will guarantee political stability because governance in the zones will be more focused on development and positive competition among the states in each zone to permit continuity and peace to radiate from the center rather than the incessant conflicts between the states/regions and the centre. Hence, it neutralises the centrifugal political forces through power/resources/responsibility/accountability devolution that will assure that every state and zone, without any risk of marginalisation or exclusion, will participate permanently in the political leadership by right, not as a favour or concession from any region/zone. Its de-personalisation of leadership in favour of a permanently collective national leadership through consensual decision-making is an enduringly strong benefit that strengthens the basis of the national unity from the con-federal service centre. It eliminates ethnicity-cum-religious-differences and acrimonious/divisive party politicking from national-level politics in addition to enthroning the ‘national interest’ in policy and strategy formulation and decision-making. It guarantees peace, security and continuity in governance at the center as well as stabilises policies and relationships between the confederal country and the rest of the world as it will end the national-stability-endangering and socio- economic-growth-debilitating political tensions that occur internally and externally before and after the National-Assembly-cum-Presidential elections. It will permanently lay to rest the pervasive ghost of electoral fraud/rigging that has always endangered democracy in Nigeria through the “do-or-die” struggle by political parties to win the single-candidate prime-ministership/presidential election as the confederal council will comprise nine candidates of different political parties from the zones as a solid platform for the pluralistic democracy that best matches Nigeria’s multi-lingual-tribal-religious structure. To be continued tomorrow•
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 18:47:11 +0000
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