What the Yoruba is offering to the #Confab First, the defining of federating units in the Nigerian Federation should be made rational by being based on the nationalities that make up Nigeria. To this end we will set forth at the National Conference our suggestions of rational federating units – including, significantly, that our own Yoruba nation, and other similarly large or sizeable nations, shall each form a federating unit in the Nigerian federation, that smaller nations shall combine to form federating units, and that each federating unit shall have constitutional competence to design its own internal administration, pursue its socio-economic progress in its own way and at its own pace, have its own security outfit, and make its own kind of contribution to the over-all prosperity of Nigeria. Secondly, all of these would involve that the configuration of powers, resource allocation and resource control in the Nigerian federation shall be substantially re-adjusted, in the direction of devolution from the federal center to the federating units. We Yoruba have long been virtually unanimous that this kind of restructuring is the only arrangement that can make Nigeria workable and harmonious, and that can open the door to progress and prosperity for all peoples of Nigeria. Happily and fortunately, a clear majority of Nigeria peoples now endorses this proposal. These include: the Ijaw, Efiki-Ibibio, Edo, Ogoni, Uhrobo, Itsekiri, Gbayi. It is unthinkable that any Nigerian individual or group would continue to advocate that the monstrosity that has been concocted gradually since 1966 should be preserved in the structure and management of the Nigerian federation, but unfortunately the Fulani, Hausa, Kanuri, Nupe and their Igbo ally still want the status quo. We started in 1951 as a federation of three Regions, with each Region enjoying considerable powers to plan and achieve its own socio-economic development in its own way and at its own pace, with sensibly adjusted revenue allocation systems, and with considerable Regional resource control. Under that system, each federating unit achieved notable progress in its own way and thereby contributed to the general prosperity of Nigeria. All that we needed to make the federation perfect was to grant to the groups of small nationalities in each of the three Regions their own federating unit – so that, in all, there would be a Hausa-Fulani Region, a North-Eastern Region, a Middle Belt Region, a Yoruba Western Region, a Mid-West Region, an Igbo Eastern Region, and a Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers Region. However, the people controlling federal power (Fulani, Hausa and the Igbo) stubbornly rejected this wisdom. Instead, in the years since independence, they have gradually destroyed the idea of regional or local freedom and heaped all power, all resources, and all resource control in the hands of the Federal Government. And the result today is an unruly and grossly inefficient Federal Government, chaotic federal intrusion into everything, the belief of people who control the federal establishment that it is their right and prerogative to use federal power to rig elections all over Nigeria, the collapse of regional and local initiative and morale, the fearful escalation of poverty, crimes, insecurity, various kinds of inter-group conflicts, terrorism, and the growing likelihood that Nigeria itself will soon implode. Yoruba people, are no longer prepared to continue to live in this chaos, poverty, insecurity, and conflicts. No Yoruba person sitting at the Nigerian National Conference should think of returning home with any decisions that aim to preserve the current structure and conditions of the Nigerian federation and that exclude decisions for restructuring and re-ordering of the Nigerian federation. To this end, the Yoruba Constitutional Conference, held in Ibadan on Wednesday, February 12, crafted the following clause into its final communique: “That should the aforementioned (the proposals for restructuring the Nigerian federation) be unacceptable to other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria, we Yoruba shall interpret this to mean our forceful rejection from the present Nigerian State”. Thus, the proposals for the reconstruction of the Nigerian federation have ceased to be mere proposals. They have become the condition for the continued membership of the Yoruba nation in the Nigerian federation. – Diran Apata.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 13:04:43 +0000
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