BusinessDay 28 Feb 2018

BUSINESS DAY
Opinion
OPEYEMI AGBAJE
opeyemiagbaje@rtcadvisory.com
Nigeria’s current
political and
constitutional
status quo is
clearly and evidently
unsustainable and the
cries of “marginalization”,
“secession”, “true federalism”
and “sharia”; as well as abject
socio-economic conditions
of poverty, unemployment,
rural misery and neglect,
decrepit infrastructure and
urban slums, militancy, insurrection
and widespread
insecurity being experienced
all over Nigeria are symptoms
of the nation’s critical
dysfunctionality. The status
quo is not an option and the
nation must heed calls for
“restructuring” or else serious
problems may lie in the
horizon. We must restructure
Nigeria to re-establish the
principles of federalism as
our founding fathers freely
decided in the negotiations
that led to independence.
That federal ideal was subverted
by the military as they
sought to transform Nigeria
into a unitary state which
now undermines Nigeria’s
unity, stability and development.
The alternative to a
proactive embrace of “restructuring”
may be ruinous
NEWS YOU CAN TRUST I WEDNESDAY 28 FEBRUARY 2018
The imperative of restructuring and federalism in Nigeria
ment and dysfunction!
The required restructuring
of Nigeria is essentially to
restore our federal structure
and will involve devolution
of powers back to the states
or regions and drastic reduction
of the matters contained
in the exclusive legislative list
in our constitution (which
are restricted to the federal
government) with more matters
returning to the concurrent
list (where federal
and state/regional powers
coexist) and residual powers
reserved for the states. It
would involve re-establishing
fiscal federalism based
on the principle of derivation
including modifying the revenue
allocation formula in
favour of regions and states
consistent with devolution
of powers, and restoring
state powers over sales tax
(or VAT), inland waterways
except the few that traverse
two or more states, solid
minerals and other matters
best suited to state control.
Matters like electricity transmission,
ports and harbours
and railways should become
concurrent matters in which
both regional/state and federal
authorities can co-exist.
The absurdity in which
state legislatures can create
crimes but state governments
which have primary responsibility
for law and order within
their states do not have any
mechanism for enforcing
their laws would be rectified
with the legalization of state
police. There is no sensible
rationale or justification for
listing local governments
in a federal constitutionthere
should be only two or
three tiers of government as
is the global practice in federal
constitutions-the federal,
regional and state governments.
We should reject the
subtle attempt to recognize
local governments as a thirdtier
of government under the
guise of “LG Autonomy” and
view this attempt as a mischievous
attempt to drive the
nail in the coffin of Nigerian
federalism. It is a strategy of
“divide and rule…and conquer”
which will finally destroy
the concept of regions
or states as federating units in
Nigeria and foster a situation
in which through movements
of population, political control
of any local government
anywhere in the country can
be achieved! In effect, “LG
Autonomy” would turn out
to be a strategy for achieving
de facto “colonies” all over
Nigeria!!!
The Yoruba people unanimously
decided at the historic
Yoruba Summit of September
7, 2017 at Adamasingba,
Ibadan on federalism encompassing
a six-region federal
structure with federal, regional
and state governments;
regional constitutions, with
power to create local governments
vested in the states;
and a revenue allocation
formula weighted in favour
of the states and regions. The
Summit also unanimously
agreed on a significantly narto
the Nigerian state!
With particular reference
to the Yorubas of Western Nigeria,
we recognize that it is
not a mere co-incidence that
our modern golden age was
the period during which we
enjoyed relative autonomy
over our own affairs under a
democratic, regional government
and federal constitution
under the leadership of
Chief Obafemi Awolowo and
later Chief Samuel Ladoke
Akintola, until that era was
truncated by military rule.
It is not simply an accident
of history that Cocoa House
remains the tallest building
in Ibadan; that Liberty
Stadium,one of the most
modern sporting edifices
in the world when it was
built, now lies desolate; that
the Western Region which
built the first television station
in Africa, well before
many European nations at
the time does not now have
any world-class broadcast
media; that the wonderful
University of Ife built by the
Western Region government
in 1962 is now simply another
broken federal institution;
and that our public education
system lies in ruin with
our young men and women
unable to get the right skills
and jobs!!! Without the freedom
and autonomy to run
our affairs, all of Nigeria
has descended to a lowest
common denominator of
mediocrity, corruption, ignorance,
idleness, disease,
insecurity, under-developrower
exclusive legislative list.
There are strong economic
arguments in favour of returning
to a regional system
of government based on the
defacto six geo-political zones
of South-West, South-South,
South-East, North-Central,
North-West and North-East
with adjustments based on
the wishes of the population
in any local government or
state as may be ascertained
through a referendum or
plebiscite.
There are also economic
arguments in favour of
rationalizing the current
excessively high cost of governance
by returning to a
parliamentary system of
government at the federal,
regional or state levels. A
system in which only one set
of elections into parliament
are conducted; and then
ministers are selected from
elected parliamentarians as
practiced in the first republic
is cost-efficient, and more
democratic and legitimate,
and would strengthen our
democracy. The practice of
appointing persons who are
unknown to the electorate as
ministers or commissioners
perpetuates corruption and
distances government from
the people who are the essence
of democracy.
As I wrote earlier, the
calls for secession from “Biafra”;
the calls for Sharia in
the Muslim North-West and
North-East; the grumbles
in the Middle-Belt of Nigeria
which is getting more
Billy Graham, moral man and immoral society
C002D5556
intense with the killings by
Fulani herdsmen; the unrest
and militancy in the Niger-
Delta; and the unceasing
calls for “true federalism”
in Western Nigeria are evidence
that the status quo
is unsustainable and about
to collapse. The vision of a
unitary Nigeria in which a
minority seek to establish
a permanent hegemony
over the nation will not succeed
and has produced only
a corrupt, unproductive,
unstable and disunited nation.
It has produced “boko
haram” in the North-East;
sabotage and militancy in
the Niger-Delta; widespread
poverty, illiteracy and tens of
millions of children outside
schools in the North-West
and North-East; murderous
conflicts between Fulani
herdsmen and farmers and
indigenes across the whole
country and particularly in
the North-Central; disgruntlement
in the South-West;
and growing calls for secession
and independence in
the South-East. In the whole
of Nigeria, all that unitarism
has generated is poverty,
unemployment, inequality,
a massive infrastructure
deficit and socio-political
crises. There can be no justification
for proceeding
further on this path to ruin!
*This article is the final
instalment of a three-part
series on the Yoruba Nation
and the Quest to Re-establish
Federalism in Nigeria.
OBADIAH MAILAFIA
Dr Mailafia is a development
economist and a former Governor
of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
obmailafia@gmail.com.
Reinhold Niebuhr
was one of the most
influential theologians
and philosophers
of the twentieth century.
His famous book, Moral
Man and Immoral Society: A
Study in Ethics and Politics
(Charles Scribner’s Sons
1932), made a huge impact
when it was published. His
main thesis is that human
beings are more prone to
evil as a group rather than as
individuals. Human beings
may be selfish and wicked,
but they can also reflect the
better angels of our nature.
For him, faith and individual
agency are vital in the renewal
of societies and nations.
The book in many ways
prefigured the emergence
of Hitler and Nazism which
plunged Europe into dark-
ness for more than a decade.
The American protestant
pastor and evangelist
Billy Graham who died last
week epitomised the ideal
of Nieburh’s moral man in
an immoral and unjust society.
Graham passed away
peacefully in his sleep on
Wednesday 21 February in
his home in Montreat, North
Carolina, USA, age 99.
For everyone on earth
that is live, there is a day to
be born and a day to die. It
is appointed to a man once
to die, and then there comes
the judgement, says the Old
Book. Death sums up a human
life more than anything
else does. Death exposes the
vanity of life. All the pomp
and power and pageantry
will come to an end sooner
or later. For some, it comes
peacefully in their sleep;
for those less fortunate, it
comes violently. It is often
granted to the righteous to
die peacefully.
No one knows the day
or hour. Indeed, the French
writer and existential philosopher
Albert Camus once
declared that a man has never
started to live until he has
come to terms with his mortality.
It was perhaps for this
reason that the old psalmist
in the Old Testament Bible
counsels everyone to number
their days “that they
may apply themselves unto
wisdom.
William Franklin Graham
Jr was born on 7 November
1918 on a dairy farm outside
Charlotte, North Carolina, of
Scottish-Irish Presbyterian
stock. Graham was brought
up on a diet of rural Calvinistic
values. He had to
wake up at 2.30 am to milk
the cows and shovel off tons
of manure. At a tent revival
organised by the travelling
evangelist Modercai Ham,
the sixteen year Graham
made the life-changing decision
to commit his life Jesus
Christ as Lord and Saviour.
In 1936 he enrolled at Bob
Jones College, a Christian
liberal arts institution in
Greenville, South Carolina,
but soon left because he
found the atmosphere rather
stifling. The following year he
transferred to Florida Bible
Institute, where he apparently
bloomed. He found in
his new academic home “a
unity of God’s people who
sincerely held Jesus at the
centre of their lives”. During
a solitary walk in the woods
one evening, he knelt down
and offered his future and
destiny to serve the Lord
as pastor and evangelist if
this was His will for his life.
Happy is the young man who
discovers his life-purpose
and vocation early enough.
Graham was one of those
lucky ones. Barely in his
teens, he declared: “My one
purpose in life is to help
people find a personal relationship
with God, which,
I believe, comes through
knowing Christ.” In February
1939 he was ordained as
a Southern Baptist minister.
He later proceeded to the
better-known Wheaton College
Illinois, where he graduated
in 1943, majoring in
anthropology -- a discipline
that broadened his mind and
enabled him to see beyond
the narrow waspish culture
of his forebears. At Wheaton
he also met the woman that
would become his wife, Ruth
Bell, daughter of medical
missionaries in China. It was
a marriage made in heaven.
In 1944 Billy Graham began
his ministry as a pastor
with the Youth for Christ
evangelistic mission. In 1950
he founded the Billy Graham
Evangelistic Association,
BGEA. His style combined
the traditional open tent
crusades in football stadiums
with broadcasting in
radio and television in over
140 countries. He ministered
directly to more than
200 million people, and,
indirectly, 2 billion. Some
3 million people are said to
have responded directly to
his altar calls.
Billy Graham has won
more souls to Christ than any
single individual in history.
His secret lay in a simple
message: “Jesus loves you.
Let Him into your life and
your sins will be forgiven.” He
often startled his audience
with a rather unsettling question:
“What would happen to
you if you died on your way
home?” It was an existential
question that demanded
an existential decision. For
decades his Hour of Decision
broadcast, delivered in
a uniquely mellifluous voice,
haunted listeners throughout
the world. A mentor of
mine, a brilliant chemical
engineer, confessed to me
that after listening to the
Hour of Decision in his undergraduate
dorm room in
Ile-Ife in the early seventies,
knelt down and tearfully surrendered
his life to Christ.
Graham’s secrets lay in
the simplicity of his message,
his purity of soul and the radiance
of a consecration that
shone through his persona
-- a man with no guile. He
preached a simple gospel
of grace, repentance and
holiness. He was steadfast
in avoiding the scandals over
money and sex that bedevilled
tele-evangelists such as
Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart.
He made it a policy never
to be found alone in a car
or room with another female
other than his wife -- later to
be known as “the Billy Graham
Rule”. He also empowered
the BGEA board with
strong leaders while placing
himself on a fixed, modest
salary. All the funds from his
speaking engagements and
books went to God’s work
and for humanitarian action.
He never boasted of miracles
nor did he pitch his faith on
prophecy. He preached a
simple message of faith, love,
repentance, forgiveness and
salvation.
How I wish our avaricious
and grasping “General Overseers”
in Nigeria could learn
Continues on page 39
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