Essay
NAL Dialogue by Professor Godini G. Darah (FNAL)
12th September, 2024
The Bloody Birth of Colonial Nigeria
THE process of restructuring Nigeria’s political system has been going on since the 1914 amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates by the British colonial conquerors. The political act of restructuring, reorganizing, reconstituting or overhauling of the Nigerian polity has been a recurrent exercise. The 2014 National Conference in Abuja was the 17th in the history of Nigeria.
The British imperial invaders applied violence and military might to subdue and defeat resistance to their take-over of the Nigerian territory. The stories of the bloody encounters and massacres are well narrated in history books. Among the notorious cases are the dethronement and deportation of patriotic monarchs and merchant potentates such as King Kosoko of Lagos, King Pepple (Perekule) of Bonny, Jaja of Opobo, Kings Koko of Nembe, Ossai Ossai of Aboh, Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi of Benin and his ally, Ovie Oghwe of Agbarha-Otor (Urhobo). Other victims of the British “operation take-over Nigeria” are Nana Olomu of Itsekiri, Madam Tinubu of Lagos/Egba. In the last decade of the 19th century, British conquerors rampaged through all lands of the Yoruba, Nupe, Igala, Gbagyi (Gwari) Ebira, Idoma, Junkun and other areas of the Niger-Benue Valleys. Popular resistance uprisings like the Ekumeku in Asaba division, the Aro in central Igbo areas, and the anti-taxation revolts of the 1920s in Warri Province, Owerri Province, and Iseyin districts of Oyo were brutally suppressed.
The British blood-letting atrocities in northern Nigeria were the most horrendous. From the 1880s the gendarmes of the Royal Niger Company commanded by Captain Frederick Lugard waged killing raids in the provinces of Sokoto, Zaria, Adamawa, and Borno. Royal majesties were not spared, e.g. Aliyu Dan Sidi, the Emir of Zaria was exiled to Lokoja by Lugard because the Emir composed poems to protest British occupation of Hausaland. In March 1906, Lugard’s terrorists drowned in blood thousands of anti-British militants of the Satiru peasant revolt in Sokoto Province. Hundreds of the survivors, especially women and children, were evicted and enslaved.
God Was Not Involved in the British Blood-shedding:
Those who say that God had a purpose for cloning Nigerian peoples into a single country are guilty of blasphemy. God had no hand in the killing of innocent natives and the stealing of their lands and resources to build the Nigerian colony. Rather, as illustrated above, Nigeria was created by British military adventurers and capitalist plutocrats to generate maximum profit from the exploitation of human and natural resources. The economic motives for colonizing Nigeria were clear from the beginning. The British appointed Consul John Beecroft in 1849 to police commodity trade and sign treaties with the indigenous peoples along the coast and its immediate hinterlands. The Royal Niger Company (RNC) headed by Tubman Goldie had a monopoly charter covering all of the Niger Delta up to the upper reaches of the Rivers Niger and Benue. In 1885, the Oil Rivers Protectorate was established as the first political block of a future Nigerian colony. In 1900, the British government revoked the charter of the RNC and took over its businesses and assets. Meanwhile, Captain Frederick Lugard had been sent to Uganda in East Africa and Hong Hong (China) to subdue anti-colonial uprisings there. Soon after, massacre-master Lugard was appointed High Commissioner for the Northern Provinces. In 1914, the Northern and Southern Protectorates were amalgamated into a single British colony, with Lugard as Governor-General till 1922.
Concepts of Restructuring and Federalism:
At this point it is helpful to explain the twin-terms of “restructuring” and “federalism”. In the context of our dialogue, restructuring refers to the current nation-wide clamour to reorganize and upgrade Nigeria’s political system to make it compatible with the essential features of federal governance, that is, fair, equitable, just, and inclusive. For “federalism” we are relying on the classical definition given by the American scholar, Professor Kenneth Wheare in the 1940s. According to Wheare,
…the fundamental and distinguishing characteristic of a federal system is that neither the central nor the regional governments are subordinate to each other, but rather, the two are coordinate and independent.
Nigeria’s anti-colonial nationalists and scholars adopted the definition above in their negotiations and encounters with the British colonial authorities. These encounters continued from the 1920s to the eve of independence in 1960. The ideas of federalism encapsulated in these brief definitions guided the British and the Nigerian nationalists in their interactions.
The First Federal Structure: 1939-1960.
Although the British colonial authorities first governed Nigeria as a unified system, they saw the need early enough to create provinces and districts. Lugard’s so-called Indirect Rule system encouraged de-centralisation of administration through the emirate power bases in the North as well as the Warrant Chiefs experiment in the southern provinces. The British colonial bourgeoisie also recognised the need to involve Nigerians in their own governance. This was why Regions were created in 1939, namely, Eastern Nigeria, Northern Nigeria, and Western Nigeria, besides the Colony of Lagos. This federal structure soon exposed certain defects of inequity and imbalance. For example, the territory of the Northern Region was larger than that of the two southern Regions put together.
Another contentious matter concerned the grouping of many minority groups among majority ones in the three regions. The insurgent effort of the marginalized minorities to achieve self-determination animated the political debates of that era. From the 1940s, state creation movements evolved in both the Northern and Southern parts. In the Tiv division in present Benue State, the agitation against allegations of “internal colonialism” advanced to the use of armed resistance. The Nigerian army had to be deployed to contain the armed struggle in that area of the Northern Region.
The Derivation Principle and Fiscal Federalism:
From hindsight, it does appear that the British colonialists took measures to moderate the political system at critical points. Even before elected Regional Governments started in 1951, the British introduced the Derivation Principle in the distribution of public revenue. From 1946, several commissions were set up to review and revise the derivation arrangement with a view to achieving more equity and fairness within the colonial system. The derivation criteria were such that each Region received no less than 50% of revenues derived from its territory. In the case of agricultural produce and customs duties, 100% went to the Region of derivation. In addition each Region also shared in the 30% Distributable Pool Account (DPA) with the federal government. The derivation principle of fiscal federalism was included in the Independence Constitution of 1960 and the Republican one of 1963. There is no space to give details of how the robust derivation arrangement enabled the Regional Governments to accomplish considerable development strides from 1950-1966.
Restructuring, Minorities and the Willink Commission (1957-58)
One landmark event of restructuring during colonial times was the setting up of the Sir Henry Willink Commission to inquire into the fears of minorities and how to allay them. During the Constitutional Conferences in Lagos and London of 1957 and 1958, the minority groups mounted intense campaign to quest for the creation of autonomous regions or states to free themselves from the hegemonic burden of populous and politically powerful ethnic groups within the Regions. The issue could not be resolved through constitutional dialogue, hence the Commission was set up. It toured the entire country and received copious memoranda. Its report released in 1958 disappointed the crusaders for states; the Commission noted that creating new states or regions could delay the transition to independence in 1960. The Commission recommended the establishment of the Niger Delta Development Board (NDDB) for the underdeveloped Ijaw districts of the Niger Delta. However, the self-determination movement scored a point when the Midwestern Region was created through plebiscite in 1963.
Restructuring During Military Regimes (1966-1999).
As a consequence of the frequent coups d’etat in Nigeria, the military elite or militariat emerged as the triumphant ruling class in the country. The military became, by default, the most active agents of political restructuring; vide the state creation exercise of 1967 and the declaration of the rebel Republic of Biafra, the post-Civil War reconstruction of 1970-1978, the creation of 7 new states in 1976, two in 1987, nine in 1991, and six more in 1996, bringing the total to 36 states. The demand for more states remained unabated since 1996.
Military Regimes Killed Derivation and Fiscal Federalism:
Military rule is the direct opposite of democracy and federalism. Thus, in the three decades of military rule, essential elements of federalism were liquidated or mutilated. Fiscal federalism and derivation principle were casualties of the military era. The destructive measures taken by the military include the enactment of the Petroleum Decree 51 of 1969 that empowered the central or federal government to take 100% ownership and control of the oil and gas resources. The oil-rich states of southern Nigeria are the prime losers. The powers of the 1969 Petroleum Decree are enshrined in Section 44 (3) of the 1999 Constitution as follows:
…the entire property in and control of all mineral oils and natural gas in, under or upon the territorial waters and the Exclusive Economic Zone shall vest in the government of the Federation and shall be managed in such a manner as may be prescribed by the National Assembly.
This Section of the 1999 Constitution is a veritable economic death sentence for the revenue-yielding states of Nigeria; for the past twenty years or so, only 10 of Nigeria’s 36 states have been making the financial contribution to the Federation Account that is shared monthly amongst the Federal, States, and LGAs in the country. The ten states, in alphabetical order, are Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Lagos, Ondo, and Rivers.
This system further exposes the strange and obsolete nature of democratic rule in Nigeria: a country where only 10 states pay the bills of the central government, all 36 states, the Federal Capital Territory, and 774 local councils. How can Nigeria achieve the minimum requirement of security and industrial self-reliance with more than two-thirds of its states in an insolvent beggarly position? This is one of the factors that have stagnated Nigeria’s development for several decades, making the country vulnerable to mass and insurgent protests and armed rebellions.
These conditions explain why some public analysts describe Nigeria as an African giant with the feet of clay. But that inauspicious fate can be altered through radical political engineering.
Restructuring and the Report of the 2014 National Conference:
The resurgence of the campaign for restructuring and the restoration of federalism came in the wake of the disengagement of the military from politics. The annulment of the 1993 presidential elections was a trigger. The shoddy and unsatisfactory manner the military arranged the transition programme in the 1998-1999 period intensified the pressure. The violations of basic human rights and the violent means elected President Olusegun Obasanjo employed to quell protests in the oil-rich Niger Delta further infuriated pro-democracy constituencies to agitate for an overhaul of the Nigerian Constitution to promote a more caring, equitable and functional federal system. These political and ideological currents culminated in the convoking of the 2014 National Conference by President Goodluck Jonathan. In his inaugural address to the Conference on March 17, Jonathan underscored the fundamental issues for deliberation:
“…the issues range from form of government, structures of government, devolution of powers, revenue sharing, resource control, state creation, state police, and fiscal federalism to indigeneship, gender equality, and children’s rights…”
The 492 delegates were selected from geo-political zones, senatorial districts, professional bodies, gender constituencies, and sundry platforms. The Confab sat for three months, approved 600 decisions/recommendations through consensus (without dividing the house), and produced reports in 20 volumes. Some of the Confab recommendations pertaining to restructuring and federalism are highlighted hereunder:
1. Devolution of Power and Federating Units:
In the present arrangement, the federal government in Abuja relates to and treats the states and local councils as conquered or colonized appendages. This situation is a negation of the tenets of a federal system where the centre and states (units) are co-equals. Since 1999 the federal government has been relating to the local government councils as if they constitute a separate tier of government. This is a violation of Section 7 of the Constitution that stipulates that the creation, funding and management of local councils are the exclusive affair of States.
The Confab rectified these two anomalies by affirming that only the federal government in Abuja and the States are the constituent units of the Federation and the only two tiers; there is no third tier in the federal set-up. Therefore, all the local government councils shall not take part in the sharing of revenue at the Federation Account meetings; the names of all the 774 councils shall be removed from the First Schedule, Part I, of the 1999 Constitution.
2. Fiscal Federalism and Revenue Sharing:
Some of the most oppressive aspects of the military-imposed 1999 Constitution pertain to the provisions for revenue distribution or fiscal federalism. About 52% of the revenue is reserved for the federal government in Abuja, with 26% and 22% going to the states and local councils respectively. The Confab was only able to reduce the share of the federal government by 10%, making it 42%. This leaves 58% for all the states; the gain is substantial given that local councils shall no longer partake in the sharing exercise.
Another noteworthy change in favour of fiscal federalism was the decision taken on Item 39 of the Exclusive Legislative List of 68 items. Item 39 deals with “Mines and minerals, including oil fields, oil mining, geological surveys and natural gas’. Without doubt these fields constitute the juicy morsels of the Nigerian economy. The Exclusive Legislative List bars states from being involved in these businesses. After an acrimonious “north versus south” controversy on the subject, Confab resolved to leave Item 39 in the Exclusive List with a minor rephrasing this way:
“Mines and all minerals, including oil fields, oil mining, geological surveys, and natural gas, provided that (a) the government of states where mining activities take place shall be involved in matters relating thereto, (b) the government of the federation shall make special grants to develop mines and minerals in states where such resources are underdeveloped”.
In furtherance of fiscal federalism, the Confab prepared a list of 42 commercially viable solid minerals, indicating states where they abound. The list revealed that each of the two states of Nasarawa and Plateau has about 25 solid minerals, including diamond, gold, uranium, marble, granite, etc. The ten most abundant solid mineral deposits in Nigeria are indicated hereunder according to the number of states where each mineral abounds:
MINERAL NUMBER OF STATES
1.Clay 16 states
2.Kaolin 15 states
3.Limestone 15 states
4.Granite 12 states
5.Salt 12 states
6.Marble 11 states
7.Gold 10 states
8.Byrite 9 states
9.Coal 8 states
10.Bitumen 5 states
Confab also removed ten items from the Exclusive Legislative List and put them in the category of Concurrent Legislation where both the federal and state governments can make laws about them. Among the items are taxation, ports, railways, insurance, and incorporation and registration of corporate bodies.
3. Derivation Clause 162 (2) in the 1999 Constitution:
The Confab could not achieve consensus on the imperative need to increase the derivation percentage of “not less than thirteen per cent” in Section 162 (2) of the Constitution. Delegates from the nine oil-rich states, and Lagos with two ports and hefty income from VAT, wanted a 50% benchmark as was the situation in the 1960 and 1963 Constitutions. Debates at the Devolution of Power Committee and Plenary were always stalemated, although the Committee put forward an increase of 5% to bring the total to 18% for natural resources. It was finally resolved to ask the President of Nigeria to set up a panel of experts to examine the matter, and by way of an executive bill, present the report to the National Assembly for deliberation and legislation.
Similarly, the Confab could not resolve the issue of amendment to the Section 44 (3) of the Constitution on federal monopoly ownership of mineral oils and natural gas. This Section constitutes the most stubborn hurdle to the practice of fiscal federalism in Nigeria.
4. State and Multiple Policing Systems:
Nigeria’s constitution contain elegant phrases about government guaranteeing safety of life and property. Section 14 (2b) of the 1999 Constitution stipulates that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government”. All governments in Nigeria have breached this fundamental provision. The federal monopoly control of policing duties has aggravated the situation of insecurity in the country. The emergence of armed insurgent groups, violent crimes and reckless abuse of human rights are all symptoms of the wrong-headed, anti-federal policy of a single policing system. Confab approved the introduction of multiple policing systems at the federal, state, local council, municipal, and corporate levels.
5. Restructuring Through Creation of New States:
The demand for the expansion of administrative and territorial space for the practice of good governance and unity in diversity has been with Nigeria from the 1940s. Various governments, elected and military, responded to the pressure in various ways – through the creation of the Midwest Region in 1963, and military creation of states in 1967, 1976, 1987, 1991, and 1996. The Confab resolved that the creation of new states would enhance the federalist principle of devolution, decentralization, and de-militarisation of power in the unitary system inherited from the military regimes. The issues of too many administrative units, bloated bureaucracies, and high cost of governance were debated and resolved by consensus. Having resolved to support the creation of new states, the Confab established scientific criteria for the exercise. Using the principle of equality and equity the Confab resolved that each one of the six geo-political zones in the country is to have 9 (nine) states, bringing the overall total from 36 to 54 states. This figure was considered comparable to that of 51 states in the United States of America with similar features of socio-linguistic diversity – there are about 500 languages spoken in Nigeria and 311 in the United States.
On the basis of equality and equity, the Northwest Zone with Seven States shall have two more; North-central, Northeast, South-South, and Southwest zones with Six States shall have three each, while the Southeast with five shall have four more.
Zone-By-Zone Distribution of Recommended New States:
North-Central Zone:
*Apa State from the present Benue State
*Edu State from the present Niger State; it is noted that the present Niger State with about 76,000 sq. km is the largest in the country, presenting problems of ineffective governance and security
*Gurara State from the present Kaduna State; the Gurara State is to cover all of Southern Kaduna districts that have experienced political and religious intolerance, leading to violent and insurgent clashes
North-East Zone:
*Katagun State from the present Bauchi State; Bauchi is another polyglot of ethnic groups, numbering about 50
*Amana State from present Adamawa State; Adamawa tops the chart of ethno-linguistic complexity with 80 ethnic groups.
*Savannah State from the present Borno State; Savannah State will spread autonomy to minority areas such as Chibok where hundreds of schoolchildren were kidnapped in 2014
North-West Zone:
*Kainji State from the present Kebbi State
*Ghari State from the present Kano State
South-East Zone:
*Etiti State from the present South-East Zone; the territory of the new State is to be mutually decided by the entire Zone
*Aba State from the present Abia State
*Adada State from the present Enugu State
*Njaba-Anim State from the present Anambra and Imo States
South-South Zone:
*Anioma State from the present Delta State
*Ogoja State from the present Cross River State
*New Rivers State from the present Rivers State
South-West Zone:
*Ijebu State from the present Ogun State
*Ose State from the present Ondo State
*New Oyo State from the present Oyo State
The processes to be followed in the creation of a new state are stipulated in Section 8 of the 1999 Constitution. The processes culminate in a referendum to determine the opinion of the people of the area requesting for a state. The “result of the referendum is then approved by a simple majority of the Houses of Assembly” in the country.
Conclusion:
With the fundamental issues of restructuring outlined above and the historic compromises reached at the 2014 Confab, the prospects of an equitable, responsible, industrialised and prosperous Nigeria are brightened. A restructured and federal Nigeria is needed to provide good governance for our people. A strong and caring federal Nigeria will promote and defend the interests of African peoples on the continent and its Diasporas. A united, just, and prosperous Nigeria will be a reliable partner of the forces and agencies questing for resource democracy, racial equality, peace and concord in the world.
15th September, 2024.
C.E.
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