THE NEWS NIGERIA
Obong Victor Bassey Attah, a two-term governor of the state, was at the forefront of the fight for resource control and true federalism. He spoke on Nigeria’s 63 years of independence, way forward and restructuring, among others.
Nigeria at 63, how will you describe the journey so far?
My simple answer to that is that the journey has been downhill, because we are travelling the wrong road. I say so because we say one thing and practise something completely different. We claim to be a federation, but we practiseunitarianism. We claim to be a democracy, but we practise some obnoxious form of imperial presidency. We take all the powers from the federating units and make them subordinate and subservient to the central government.
That is not what we agreed to in 1960. We want to blame our failure on democracy, as practised in the western world, while that is not what we practise here. We know what to do, but we stubbornly refuse to do it.
Many described the amalgamation of the Southern and Northern Protectorates as a ‘forced’ marriage. What is your view on this?
I don’t know why we keep harping on or referring to the amalgamation of 1914. Even if that was for the convenience of our British colonial masters, I want to emphasise that we, the people of Nigeria, without any external force or coercion, voluntarily, consensually, and quite happily agreed to come together and stay together as a country in 1960.
From 1953 when the late Chief Anthony Enahoro moved the motion for self-governance, it took us seven years, from 1953 to 1960, to hammer out the terms and conditions for staying together. We agreed to be a true federation, with full resource control and each region, as they were then, to develop itself as best it could within its means.
Total freedom of where one wanted to reside as common citizens of the same country was guaranteed without any discrimination or disenfranchisement. That was the Nigeria that we inherited from our founding fathers.The military interregnum turned all that on its head with its unitary form of government, and today, we are a badly fractured and disharmonious society.
What is your view on the clamour for restructuring?
I am sure you know my view on restructuring. I once said to the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) that we must device our own perestroika or perish. Without restructuring, there is no hope for the future of this country. By restructuring, I am not talking about regionalism or some such anachronistic concept.
I am talking about establishing the federation with the existing 36 federating units and the Federal Capital Territory; a federation where the federating units and the centre are co-ordinate with none being subordinate to any other; a federation where we will be able to bring back healthy competition, rather than jealous rivalry between the federating units; a federation with emphasis on productivity, each according to its means and resources.Those were the negotiated terms that brought us together as a country in 1960. And, if I may add, it is my total conviction that such a federation would thrive and flourish much better under a parliamentary system.
