My Take on Restructuring

My Take on Restructuring The resurgence of the restructuring debate in our public space is assuming a dimension akin to the translation of French dialogue de sourd : meaning, dialogue of the deaf. At the risk of sounding impolite, those agitating for their enclaves to be transformed into either states or local governments are beginning to sound like broken record. While those agitating for the devolution of more functions and fiscal powers to the states are quacking like ducks. At face value, it would seem like their demands are germane and genuine, but on close scrutiny, they don't hold water. Since they are anchored on our dwindling oil revenue. For those with sound knowledge of international economic system, it is obvious that the post-COVID-19 world economy would be driven by renewable energy instead of fossil fuel. During the COVID-19 pandemic fossil fuel was cheaper than my favourite Blue Label Johnny Walker in any duty free shop. What that signposts is that it is high time we stopped building our dreams and aspirations on oil revenue. Obviously, as we are presently structured, 36 states/FCT and 774 local governments, how many states or local governments can survive without federal allocation? How well are the states performing those functions contained in the Concurrent Legislative List? Apart from Lagos State, how many other states have significant internally generated revenues? If the answers to these questions isn't anything to celebrate, apart from putting more pressure on our lean national revenue, what difference would more states or local governments make to the federation? For the promoters of power devolution, how significant and impactful is our national budget on education, health, and infrastructure? Would giving states exclusive right over those sectors also mean having sufficient revenue to handle the problems of the sectors? If the answer is no doesn't that suggest we need to stop quacking about devolution and begin to interrogate issues differently. In that respect, given our enormous natural endowment, shouldn't we add how the subnational governments can generate more revenues to the restructuring debate? For those who are interested in opting out of the federation of Nigeria for whatever reasons, let's confabulate, how viable is your current geopolitical zone? What's the contribution of the zone to Nigeria's GDP? If you're from the South South, assume for a moment that the oil wells are dried up, what is the zone's contribution to GDP? The answers to these questions are available on the National Bureau of Statistics Yearly Report and the Central Bank Annual Report. Undoubtedly, anyone who peruses the aforementioned documents would renunciate the call for a break up of the federation in whatever nomenclature and begin to insist that we add how we can make the six geopolitical zones more viable and less dependent on the federal government to the restructuring debate. There is no perfect form of federalism in the whole wide world. Also, there is nothing like true federalism in theory and praxis. Especially, if we define true federalism as the sharing of functions and fiscal powers between the central government and the federating units on equal footings. That's not federalism, but a loose confederacy. In federalism, the balance of fiscal powers and functions are skewed in favour of the central government. Empirically speaking, it is the political actors that make any kind of federalism look seemingly perfect or otherwise. The American, Canadian and New Zealand federal systems supply ample evidence in this regard. If we may recall, it was the inherent weaknesses of our so-called true federalism that led to the current centralized federal structure. We wanted a strong Center with an Executive President to diffuse regional irredentism and enhance national integration. This is what those calling for restructuring and devolution seem to have forgotten. However, from my interrogation, our problem is not with our federal structure, but with those who drive and operate the structure. To put it succinctly, the commercialization of politics by our political leaders at all levels of governance is our major problem. That's what drives bad governance and its manifest consequences such as deplorable infrastructure, insecurity and weaponized mass poverty. The nation building crises we are facing now are caused by poor invertebrate leadership at all levels of governance. And that should be expected, because other countries passed through similar trajectory at one stage or the another. But they didn't overcome their leadership problems by changing their constitutions or restructuring their political systems frequently. What did they do? They did so many different kinds of things, which I would examine another day. But the most striking thing they did across Western Europe is better illustrated with Great Britain. In Britain, civil society organizations used every available and acceptable means to push their political leaders to do the right things over a long period of time. That's also how they succeeded in building strong institutions. Every milestone they achieved was added to the Constitution. They didn't discard the Constitution for a new one, rather they kept amending the Constitution to accommodate new challenges and exigencies whenever nation building crises demanded it. Those familiar with the history of Northern Ireland and IRA and how the struggle ended would agree with me that there is no issues we cannot resolve with the right kind of political leadership. The lesson we can draw from Britain and other older federations is that a strong and virile civil society is the catalysis for good governance. Therefore, how to galvanize the citizenry across the six geopolitical zones to take action against corrupt and inept political leaders should also be added to the restructuring debate. Another important component of good governance that's to be added to the restructuring debate is how we can build strong institutions to checkmate our greedy political leaders from sticking their itchy fingers into our collective pot of soup. No amount of restructuring would do us any good, if we do not have strong virile civil society organizations that are capable of mobilizing the citizenry to use the power of the ballot to effect a change of government. No amount of restructuring would take us to the promised land if the federating units do not generate more revenue internally than what they get from the federation account. In the light of the above, we need to refocus the ongoing restructuring debate away from the consequences of bad governance to what would promote good governance, strong institutions and national integration. Felix Akpan PhD