3rd December, 2012
By Akin Owolabi
Nigeria, for reasons not traceable to rationality, has, since Lord Lugard’s amalgamation of the Southern and Northern protectorates in 1914, beaten the path of devolution in its pursuit of national developmental process. Growth by devolution, like the flawed big-bang theory of creation, is like racing towards disintegration and eventual extinction since the centre would progressively lose cohesion. Niger-area, synthesised as Nigeria, still parades features and cleavages of the marriage of convenience which connote that the entity called a country will ever remain a mere geographic expression.
The home truth is that Nigeria is yet to further the cause of integration but is fanning the embers of disunity and dismemberment. This absurdity is currently playing out at the ongoing constitution review exercise. If the information is correct, there are as many as 57 requests for the creation of new states on the card of the review committee. This is not just staggering but antithetical to known developmental models. It pictures a country that has not begun to crawl even after 52 years of independence. Many may argue that 52 years is still too short a yardstick in the life of a country but it is long enough to indicate future direction.
Two major growth models are aggregation and devolution. The United States of America is a good example of a country which followed the aggregation model. It started with 13 Atlantic States at inception in 18th Century and through negotiations, purchases and military might has aggregated to 52 federating states. Yet America is the world’s symbol of strength and democracy, and is home to representatives of peoples all over the world, prosperous and rich to boot. Nigeria may not be that long in history but is disturbingly blurred in vision and askew in perspective. At every point in its chequered history, Nigeria has displayed the iron mixed with moistened clay characteristics of the immense image dream of King Nebuchadnezzar of ancient Babylon. And as iron and clay cannot mix so Nigeria has refused to blend in every material particular. The North is roaring, raging, fuming, and bombing over its temporary loss of the reins of Nigerian power. Everything possible must be done to reverse the power equation in its favour. After all, all is fair in war. The East, though pliant to some extent, is not without group ambition in spite that the South-South is providentially in power. The West is still strategising in view of Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight-year stint.
Conversely, Nigeria started as southern and northern protectorates in 1914 and exploded as at today to 36 plus one states. The explosion is yet to abate. The various 1940/50s constitutional conferences midwife by British colonial overlord fractionalised the fledgling country into three regions, retaining the vast Northern Protectorate, with much larger landmass than the combination of the two southern regions. Yet such lopsidedness did not prevent the political leaders opposed to the West to carve out a fourth region from the West.
Contemporary Nigerian story, not history per se, has it that more states came with utmost ease through military fiats. Nigeria under General Yakubu Gowon broke the country into 12 states to break the subsumed ethnic homogeneity of then Eastern Region preparatory to the 1967-1970 Nigerian civil war that claimed nearly one million young souls. And that deft move pitched the Efik/Ibibio and Ikwere Etche/Kalabari/Ijaw nationalities against the majority group – Ibo – during the hostilities.
It was the turn of Murtala/Obasanjo administration to tinker with mother Nigeria, balkanising it into a 19-state structure. Obasanjo succeeded in making his homestead, Abeokuta, a state capital and Ogun a state. Interestingly, it took just a committee to recommend and a decree to accept and give teeth to get states crafted.
The Babangida/Abacha junta was in its prime with states creation. The General Ibrahim Babangida regime raised the stakes within eight years to 24 and 30 respectively. Dark goggled Sani Abacha pushed the number to the present level. And in all this, the Federal Capital Territory is a lesser state with all the paraphernalia of the office of a governor sitting as minister. This is the gift the Murtala/Obasanjo regime bequeathed Nigeria on the recommendation of the Akinola Aguda committee commissioned to shift the centre of administration from Lagos.
Each military administration, save Gowon’s, gave Nigeria a new constitution which would take any succeeding civilian administration a lifetime of rigour to even remove/add a clause or comma.
Civilian administration was ushered in more than 13 years ago, yet the so-called democratic setting is still acting crazy with what to add to or subtract from the document a military government packaged without much ado. Legislators in the National Assembly, for the better part of these 13 years have preoccupied themselves with the dos and don’ts of constitutional amendment and the kernel is what states to create and which requests should be jettisoned. State creation that was the pastime of the khaki boys has assumed a frenetic gusto in the so-called democratic milieu. Most of the existing states are bankrupt or unviable while the 744 local governments are a huge drain pipe channelling investible national wealth into individual pockets. In the ongoing process, more would be created. So far, all the provinces of old are now states and the next illogical step would be to make each division or two a state.
At the end of the constitutional amendment exercise, it is a bet that more states, probably the exact number that would bring Nigeria’s at par with the USA’s, would be added to the 36-state structure. It is a better bet that Nigeria would exceed the USA number since the demand so far is more than 50. In all probability, Nigeria would further devolve. Instead of gaining more lands, Nigeria recently lost the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula. What she would not do, or is not in a hurry to do, however, is go after USA developmental goals. Nigeria at 52 is yet to come off the cartographers’ table. This is lamentable, an absurdity through and through. Nigeria prides itself as the giant of Africa but is supine, if not spineless like the weakest invertebrate. It reeks and drips with corruption and all its wealth vanishes, like the logical Afghan dogs that are disappearing, not into extinction but its managers’ private wallets.
What the state creation protagonists of all hues should note is that they are doing Nigeria a monumental disservice. They are about dissipating and frittering away national resources and diverting them into more wrong hands. They are not helping national cohesion as exemplified in the case of the people of old Ondo State who were at peace before Abacha carved out Ekiti. Nationals of the two states soon went for one another’s throats over asset sharing. The wounds inflicted then may have healed but history has taken copious note of the ugly development. Any lesson here?
We must not forget in a hurry what Major Gideon Orkar attempted with the broadcast that heralded his 1990 failed coup by excising some Sahelian states from the entity called Nigeria. Such omen may only exist in the forlorn mind but its possibility may not be farfetched.
•Akin Owolabi, an experienced journalist, lives in Ota, Ogun State