BY GEORGE ETAKIBUEBU
On Monday, December 18, 2023, the Economic Confidential, a subsidiary of PR Nigeria, declared in its 2022 report that seven states, including Lagos, Ogun, Rivers, Kaduna, Kwara, Oyo and Edo are the most viable in Nigeria. The Assistant Editor of the Economic Confidential, Zekeri Idakwo, who disclosed this at a press briefing and presentation of the 2022 Annual States Viability Index Report in Abuja, also noted that six other states, including Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom and Katsina states, are unviable because they failed to generate up to 10% of the total allocations received from the Federal Government for 2022. For that reason, they were declared insolvent. It concluded that none of the states can survive outside the monthly allocation from the Federal Government.
“The six states that may not survive without the Federation Account due to their extremely poor internal revenue generation of less than 10% compared to their federal allocations are Bayelsa, Katsina and Akwa Ibom, the home states of former Presidents Goodluck Jonathan, Muhammadu Buhari, and the current Senate President, Godswill Akpabio respectively. Others are Taraba, Yobe and Kebbi states,” the report stated.
While there has been sundry reactions to the report, what the report has thrown up without necessarily anticipating it is the necessity of restructuring the Nigerian political space and the imperative of enthroning fiscal federalism.
At the moment, Nigeria practices what has been derogatorily and variously described as ‘feeding bottle’, ‘lopsided’, ‘master-servant’ or ‘pseudo’ federalism.
As an instance, in the report, oil rich Bayelsa State is at the bottom of the list, having received N273bn and generated N15.9bn, representing just 5.81% of the allocations. This is the stark irony of life. A sad tale of “water, water, everywhere but none to drink.”
If the truth must be told, were Bayelsa State to be in a different clime where the right things are done, it would never be tagged an insolvent state. You ask yourself, how can an oil rich state, a place where crude oil deposit was first discovered in commercial quantity and enjoys the enviable status of hosting the very first oil well at Otuabagi in Ogbia Local Government Area, be tagged insolvent? A state literally “flowing with milk and honey”?
Well, the inconvenient truth is that Bayelsa, like many other Niger Delta states, overflowing with natural resources, especially crude oil, are compelled by law to hand over all the huge earnings from the exploitation of their God-given natural resources to the federal government from where a fraction is returned to them in the name of “allocation” and thus leaving the lion’s share with the Federal Government.
Such an awkwardly skewed, unjust and unfair system that thrives on “robbing Peter to pay Paul” can only stir revulsion in many, more especially, when the associated economic activities of oil exploration leave the environment incurably wounded.
Sadly, this illogical arrangement with its concomitant hardship and backwardness have continued unabated since independence in places like Bayelsa and many more areas in the Niger Delta.
It is, therefore, not entirely unexpected that the Bayelsa State Governor, Senator Douye Diri, took umbrage at the report that labelled his state ‘insolvent’ without interrogating what could possibly be the ‘causative factor’ and how to address it.
Whether we like it or not, it is a crying shame that some incongruous legislations can strip a well-endowed state like Bayelsa bare to the point of it being tagged ‘insolvent.’
With reports like this, it has become crystal clear that Nigeria can no longer run away from restructuring the polity to birth a new Nigeria where true federalism or what is more commonly called fiscal federalism is the norm.
Interestingly, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) rode to power, among other things, on the promise to restructure the polity. The party actually gave Nigerians a flicker of hope that it was seriously pursuing the promise with the setting up of the Mallam Nasir el-Rufai Committee in August 2017. After five months of toiling, the el-Rufai Committee submitted its report on January 25, 2018, to the then National Chairman of the party, Chief John Odigie Oyegun. But for some inexplicable reasons, the APC administration in the last eight years of former President Muhammadu Buhari administration let Nigerians down, dashing their hopes of seeing and living in a restructured country.
The Buhari administration, for reasons yet to be explained, simply allowed the el-Rufai Committee Report to gather dust in some unknown office cabinets.
Nevertheless, in November 2020, el-Rufai doubled down on his call for the restructuring of the country at the 50th anniversary of Arewa House in Kaduna. He made reference to the 2018 recommendations of the APC Committee, which he headed, and noted that there was need to re-organise the country’s constitutional framework in order to give states more control over their resources.
In his words: “I am not aware of any significant constituency that is against the idea that states should exercise consequential powers, assume more responsibilities and control resources to enable them deliver better outcomes for those they govern. This will empower state governments to cease passing the buck to the president and the federal government when most of the problems our citizens face daily as a nation are, and can be solved by improved and focused governance at the states’ levels,” he said.
Today, no one knows the thinking of President Bola Tinubu on the issue of restructuring. But given his renowned antecedents as a democrat and progressive, one can at least hazard a guess that he would not want to go the Buhari way. And that he would not want to ignore the call by the many ethnic socio-cultural organisations, particularly, groups like Afenifere, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, PANDEF and Middle Belt Forum on restructuring and fiscal federalism. And more importantly, he may not want to continue to progress in error with the inherited legacy of a lopsided and feeding-bottle federation.
It must be pointed out that the clamour for political restructuring is not limited to just ethnic groups. As we must have noticed above, el-Rufai is a public figure and we now know where he stands when the topic is restructuring of Nigeria.
Incumbent Governor of Anambra State and former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Prof Charles Chukwuma Soludo, delivering the maiden lecture organised by Ndigbo Lagos Foundation at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs on August 1, 2018 titled: “The political economy of restructuring the Nigerian federation,” argued that “no issue commands a greater, broader consensus in Nigeria today than the need for restructuring the Nigerian federation. Almost the entire Nigerian socio-cultural-political groups (South West/Yoruba Nation; South South; South East/Ndigbo; Middle Belt, and the former Northern Region) have either produced or are working to announce their template for restructuring. Even some political parties, led by the APC, have either announced details of their position on restructuring or made ‘true federalism’ the centre piece of their manifestoes for a better Nigeria.
But Soludo was quick to point out that “it is fair to admit, however, that there is still reasonable disagreement regarding the consistency of the case for restructuring and the nature and content of restructuring.”
This writer agrees as much, too. What is important is to kick start the process even now because, as they say, delay is dangerous.
— George Etakibuebu, a Strategic Communication expert, writes from Lagos
