THOUGH the chairman of the APC Committee on True Federalism led by Kaduna State governor, el-Rufai, while presenting the recommendations of the committee to the national leadership of the party, noted that they will be implemented in the shortest possible time, feelers from the South-South and South-East geopolitical zones have revealed the distaste of the regions with the APC’s positions or restructuring.
The two zones have been clear on several leading issues regarding the restructuring discourse, issues that were either clearly side-stepped by the APC committee or treated from another perspective, which might not sit well with the zones. While the South-East had been asking for another state and more local governments, the APC committee recommended an option for the merger of states and the collapse of the three-tier structure into two.
For instance, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, which is the apex socio-political organisation in the South-East, has made clear positions on the subject of restructuring, insisting that the country must be restructured for it to move forward. The President-General of the organisation, Chief Nnia Nwodo had, at different forums, made the positions of the South-East clear on the subjects of restructuring. The region’s position, more than anything else, places premium on fiscal, structural and physical paradigm shift.
The group as well as leading individuals and governors in the South-East have, for some time, appeared to be on the same page on the restructuring discourse, highlighting the major demands of the South-East to include the need for equity in the number of states and local governments in the country, return to regionalism, fiscal federalism and resource control, among other issues.
The Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the Ohanaeze, Chukwudi Ibegbu, once berated a situation where other geopolitical zones have six states while South-East has only five and 95 local governments.
He said: “A state like Kano alone has 44 local governments while the entire South-East has 95 despite the huge population of Ndigbo in Nigeria…Igbo are the second in population in Nigeria. Igbo are everywhere. Nigeria needs a credible census that will factor in religion and ethnicity for proper and equitable distribution of resources. There has not been any credible census in Nigeria. The South-East has only five states and many have said that is equivalent to its population but we know that is not true.
“We want fiscal and structural restructuring. We want the implementation of the 2014 confab reports and more states and more local government areas in the South-East. We want equity, justice and fair-play. We want issues that lead to agitation to be addressed. We want the killing of our people in the North to be stopped.”
Similarly, a former governor of Anambra State, Dr Chukwuemeka Ezeife, a frontline Igbo leader and one of the advocates of restructuring in the country, had also at various times canvassed a return to what he described as the “agreed Nigeria,” saying: “We must go back to the ‘agreed Nigeria,’ that is, the structure of Nigeria, as agreed by the founding fathers— our heroes past. That ‘agreed Nigeria’ was a federal structure, with regions as federating units.
Like the South-East, the positions of the South-South on the restructuring subject have also been clearly defined, with resource control leading the pack among the demands.
A leading socio-political organisation in the South-South, the Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), with membership drawn from the six states of the geopolitical zone, recently reiterated its support for the restructuring of the country, noting that the continued existence of the Nigeria State “is strongly depended on the immediate restructuring of the country.”
PANDEF, which is an umbrella body for traditional rulers, political, socio-cultural organisations’ leaders from the different ethnic nationalities in the Niger Delta region, noted that it would organise a mega rally to mobilise and raise the consciousness of the people of the South-South region and to articulate a common and unified agenda on the subject matter of restructuring.
Generally, the South-South’s positions have always been undisguised whenever matters of federalism or restructuring are raised, with the region, which is the country’s economic base as a result of massive oil deposits, always expressing its dissatisfaction with the treatment of its people in the Nigerian setting. The region had, for a long time, engaged the government in serious arguments over resource control and derivation formula, winning and losing the battles over the time only for new agitations to surface at some point. For the South-South, therefore, resource control has remained a key component of its demands on restructuring, with PANDEF noting that the planned mega rally “will be a turning point in the struggle to liberate the Niger Delta from exploitation, oppression, and neglect. The Niger Delta is the economic power house of the country. Without the wealth of oil and gas of the Niger Delta, there will be no Nigeria. Our people are ever determined to emancipate themselves from economic and political slavery. Restructuring is the only route to liberty and justice.”
In a related development, leaders of the Ijaw nation, a prominent ethnic group in the South-South, recently took their determination to see to the restructuring of the country a step further by insisting that the Ijaw would only cast their votes “for a presidential candidate that genuinely believes and supports restructuring.”
The Chief Press Secretary to Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State, Mr. Francis Agbo, had disclosed said restructuring was one of the decisions reached at a meeting held in the country home of the foremost Ijaw Leader and elder statesman, Edwin Clark, in Delta State.
According to the Bayelsa State governor, the 2019 elections would be a referendum on restructuring with its derivatives of resource control, devolution of power, state police and fiscal federalism, saying: “Restructuring is about our existence as a people. It is not about APC or PDP. We as Ijaws want a Nigeria that is fair, just and equitable and this is what restructuring represents.”
The South-East and South-South zones have also been united in adopting the recommendations of the South-West on restructuring, even as they are bound in their demand for the implementation of the 2014 National Conference Report. This, more than anything else, is where the trouble lies for the APC’s effort to restructure, as it has, from inception, made it clear that it would have nothing to do with the Confab organised by the Jonathan government.
Though Clark and former President Goodluck Jonathan, among other Nigerians of South-South extraction have called for a faithful implementation of the recommendations of the APC committee on true federalism, it is left to be seen whether those recommendations would calm the frayed nerves in the South and douse the tension of restructuring once and for all. While areas such as the recommendations of the review of the derivation formula, the upward review of revenue allocation in favour of states and devolution of powers might be points of convergence between the agitators of restructuring in the South-East and South-South and the APC committee on true federalism, it is not clear whether the distrust between the zones and the APC-led Federal Government, which is believed to be uninterested in restructuring but coming up with the committee only to calm frayed nerves and buy time ahead of the 2019 election will wane soon. President Buhari’s stoic anti-restructuring posturing in recent times have also not helped matters, as the president appeared to have had his mind set on shutting the doors against restructuring as evident in his October 1, 2017 Independence Speech as well as the New Year speech on January 2018.
Most importantly, given how each region has held issues that affect it most as the important component of restructuring, with South-East always staunch on the creation of an additional state and the South-South or resource control, it is clear that the failure of the APC committee to accede to the South-East’s demand will not augur well while the dimensions taken in ensuring the control of resources by states could also become a point of disagreement with the Niger-Delta.
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