FOLA OJO FROM PUNCH
“We all lined up to call ourselves Nigerians without gathering to discuss what it means. We cannot become a better Nigeria with an undue concentration of power at the Federal level”- President-elect, Bola Tinubu.
Nigeria’s afflictions are many. Her troubles are plenteous. While we resolve some bothers, more ferocious challenges take centre-stage. Anytime we put out a brushfire, out of the blues, a raging inferno erupts in its place. Immense are Nigeria’s struggles. And they come in differing shapes; and from countless fronts. Over one hundred years after amalgamation; many Nigerians are still groping through pages of history books to find the justification for the fusion of a people who can’t see eye-to-eye. Inter-ethnic oneness in the hearts of many is an illusion and elusion. The partnership is tumultuous. The marriage doesn’t seem to make sense. Our fusion has brought much confusion.
During election seasons in Nigeria, the depth of the divisiveness among the world’s happiest people is revealed. In jostles for political powers, friends become enemies; and enemies graduate to higher grades of bizarre arch-enemies. Brazen bigots accuse other people of bigotry. Notable personalities in society are now coming out of their closets expressing their true ethnic feelings of ravishing hate. We hear names like ‘Rascals” given to a whole ethnic block of about 45 million people. And it will shock you from whose mouth venoms of bigotry flow loosely. Many have concluded that this marriage is a mirage. In spite of all of these, can we still perfect this union? I hope so, only if we’re willing to do the needful. That needful deed starts with a first step to restructure Nigeria’s present misstructure. Nothing else will assuage units in the federation but true federalism. This will be Nigeria’s last-ditch effort at survival as a nation.
If a nation expects different and beautiful results, yet doing the same ugly thing; the leaders must be mentally unstable. They have got to be suffering from a combination of delirium, psychosis, and Alzheimer’s. You cannot lay your head on the thighs of Delilah and expect to wake up in the bosom of Abraham. For decades, Nigeria has locked down on the unitary form of government where power rests in a few hands at the centre. Our leaders still want the world to believe we practise true federalism. True democracy cannot thrive among thorns and thistles of Unitarianism.
Nigeria’s central government is an obnoxiously obese and sleazy suzerain that chews more than it can swallow. A single-location pharaonic entity central government looms so lousily large over states yanking off their rights in a federalism. What Nigeria runs today is peculiar only to Nigeria; and it makes no democratic or welfarist sense. Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution contains 68 items in the exclusive legislative on which only the Federal Government of Nigeria can legislate. Another gamut of items is in the legislative jurisdiction of states.
