Nigeria: Restructuring More Urgent Than 2019 Elections

By Nwokedi Nworisara

Election is a function in the process arising from the structure. It is defined by the structure and serves as a vehicle to achieving the goal. Now when you have a wrong structure,a distorted goal emerges leading to a purposeless election which cannot further democracy no matter how you define it.

*President Buhari 

Before now I had called for restructuring before the 2019 elections to make its outcome meaningful. I called on the National Assembly to initiate bills to ensure true federalism before elections. I called for the states to join themselves along the three original regions in line with the 1963 Constitution.

These are inevitable processes that will make meaningful restructuring possible before the elections or at least to prepare the people for what must be. There is nothing like choice about it. We chose once in 1960 and nothing can change it because we had set up an avalanche of activities spiritual and physical that is likened to a building and we can only build upwards! But that does not mean we cannot decide to demolish this building. What we need to understand is that we cannot remodel this building at the second floor outside approved plan. The least we can do is demolish it and obtain another plan, another name perhaps to start another building!

So for those who go about hoping for another country out of the parts its consequences are great and it may not happen. For those who want to remodel Nigeria midstream, by introducing six geo political zones or middle belt or the like, it is part of the problem itself because the structure does not recognise it. For the military with their learning process creating states every corner and multiplying local councils at will,they need to find another country or name to sustain it but not Nigeria. The State structure cannot stand under the 1963 constitution except it is subsumed under the three regions as were provinces. The states will not have its boundaries outside the regional boundaries because that nullifies it.

The states will take its authority from regional houses of Assembly  resolutions and edicts. It is only then you can have 50% derivation and all the freedoms to create and be productive.

The alternative of course is to continue in this blind alley as today. What do you get? Unviable states with no true federating powers because truly the state cannot become a federating unit. It also means that the states cannot have a state police only the original three regions can have such attribute to federating units. Sorry for the national assembly who just woke up to my warnings to sponsor a bill for state police. There are other bills that should have been pushed through by now but you too  thought that election was more important than restructuring until you began to understand that PVCs may not be Uhuru after all.

Restructuring cannot be given or even debated or is it a token like
fighting corruption. It is either whole or nothing. Not restructuring means supporting corruption ,sustaining poverty and unemployment. Each election without restructuring means another 4 years of sustaining these vices and you cannot say you were not forewarned. What each four years will bring is decreasing productivity of states, insecurity because the states cannot secure themselves not being federating units. It means increasing federal allocation through foreign loans that impoverishes the coming generation.

It means unpaid salaries and increasing inflation. It means land use decree a.k.a.  Acts of National Assembly for want of what else to call it. And I hear that some Presidential Aspirants are promising to restructure Nigeria when they get elected into office and many Nigerians are deceived.

In the first place what oat will they take on swearing in? Is it not to
defend the 1999 constitution? How can you defend something and change it? Let’s get it straight here. Most of these people enamoured by the glitter of money politics know that you can only play it under this unstructured polity. Money is only a bridge that keeps this unworkable constitution working for a while. It was the gun during the charade of military rule but has to be replaced by another source of impunity cash. Yet you see them going about saying they are fighting corruption the very fabric that is keeping them in power! Remove money politics, buying of votes inducement and nobody will bother to vote in elections under the 1999 constitution!!

So if you want to fight corruption, then you cannot mount the rostrum of corruption  provided by the 1999 constitution and promise to defend it by oat and still deceive Nigerians and yourself saying you are fighting corruption. You do not need the recent Ekiti  debacle to have known it. So unless you want to continue for the next four years this system, the time to change to the original structure that bears the name Nigeria is now not after the 2019 elections.

So you can understand the dilemma of those who still aspire to be
constrained under this system for another four years, those who have no qualms joining the money support while ignoring their own healthy legs. These people are not patriotic and cannot be leaders!

They have defined themselves as not capable of joining the new Nigeria. By their aspiration alone under such circumstances they inadvertently seek to further our miseries for another four years.  They help extend the expiring political capital from the international community in the belief that if such calibre of people have confidence in this system then it can be reformed. It happened to Shagari,to Obasanjo,to Yar Adua, to Goodluck even to Buhari …. and now we are 11 trillion Naira in debt for it.

But I know that so many of them have such good heart and mean well and want to help but it has always been so. What is more important is not array of good men willing to work an unworkable system only to apologise in four years but a modicum of them willing to do the right thing.