Dr. Doyin Adebowale, a legal practitioner and former Senior Special Assistant on Special Duties and Strategy to the late former governor of Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu, has noted that Nigeria as currently structured, is unworkable.
The legal practitioner who spoke to Business Hallmark Newspaper in a interview, noted that the country's entire setup is based on falsehood, noting that it is no doubt a colony of slaves and a country of liars.
"I don’t want to sound too pedantic by taking us back to what happened when we were under the colonial system, when the so called nationalists started their agitations against the colonialists, for freedom and when they started the resemblance of self governance in 1951," he said.
"That was the period we were allowed to chose our leaders and Awolowo became the Premier of Western Region, Eyo Ita that of the East and Ahmadu Bello that of the North. Until 1954 with Littleton Constitution, which allowed the Regional governments to take place and we are living witness to what those people did in their different areas; the achievements witnessed under them. At that time, we were running a federal government, at the centre, with federating units. To be honest with you, there are two tiers of government in a federal system, and it is now that people are dubious and idiotic that they are talking about local government autonomy.
"When the Western Nigeria government took off, we had flashes of inspirations and nobody was in doubt about those at the helm of affairs in the West, the East and the North. There was healthy rivalry among the regions but the West, which received the least in terms of Federal allocation from the colonial administration, was the best governed and there were reasons for this. When Awolowo was in charge, he took certain decisions that were considered very harsh. The Universal Basic Education Act of today started in the Western Region, when Awolowo introduced compulsory free basic Education.
"It was not free as such, because it was financed through taxes. He made sure that the revenue from the sales of Cocoa was well utilized. When the Colonial government asked him how he went about the free education – because they were not comfortable that many in the region would be educated – he simply told them that he depended on cocoa and there was the cocoa Marketing Board. The beauty of governance at that time was that every region was given the wing to fly. While the west depended on Cocoa, the North had its groundnuts pyramid, hide and skin and cotton, and there were many textile industries across the North, while the East had its Rubber plantations, coal, palm oil, and other produce, to execute its own programmes. Well, not that the arrangement did not have any flaws, but the people governing us were able to work genuinely with the resources at their disposal.
"Awolowo, who said education was the focus of his agenda, established scholarship board and gave scholarships to people based on merit, not on account of where they came from. The arrangement was that they were on bond and those who studied Engineering, Agriculture and other disciplines, had to come back to serve the region. That was the period when we actually had real federal system of government. Even at Independence, when the Independent Constitution was adopted, we had agent generals. The present day High Commissioners were the agent generals. Every region was allowed to explore, given its peculiarity. The current Nigerian House in London belonged to the Western Region. It was the Military that took everything over.
"The regional system took into account the issue of contiguity and it was the North that refused to break. Apart from the Hausa Fulani in the North, there are people from Middle Belt of Benue, Plateau that we now know as North Central. Ahmadu Bello refused and did not allow the North to break, likewise the East, but it was the Western Region that was carved out to have the Midwestern Region, known today, as Edo and Delta states from it. Though the present day South South belonged to the East, Zik too did not allow them to go, but West was broken because the West started from Jibowu in Lagos to Asaba at that time because it was a parliamentary system. At the time, there was accountability because those in the opposition too had their own shadow government that would look critically on the policies of government in power. The system of government then was that those in the parliament were also the cabinet members.
"Those in the oppositions too had their shadow government with portfolios like those in government and they scrutinized every policies of government. Things would be debated on the floor of the house, as the government would want to justify its policies while the opposition would also come out with reasons why the policies are not good for the people and this would come with good and genuine criticism too.
"All these were done for the best interests of the people and this always guided the people to determine the party they would vote for, in the next election. Based on this rivalry then, the West was the first to have Redivision and Television. The redivision was all over and it was a small box that transmitted government programmes and policies. Not for entertainment but to educate the people on various issues and policies of government, such as education agriculture, science technology and entertainment was the least of all the activities.
"The same was the television, where experts were brought to discuss various topics, beneficial to the people. What is NTA today was WNTV and the FRCN was WNBC. Again as part of the peculiarities in each region, the Eastern region did not have the House of Chiefs because it was not in their own local culture, it was a Republican system. At that time too, the sittings in the parliament was part- time. No body earned millions and billions then like the parliamentarians that we have today. There was no oversight functions as we have now because government and the civil servants took charge of that. Where it should stop is for a legislator to make proposal and tender the request of his people to the house.
"Even the idea of having federal agencies that are of no use is killing Nigeria. The National Assembly rather than asking questions about the relevance of these agencies would go along with them and approve their allocations, which would not be used judiciously, for the benefit of the people. Honestly, our constitution sort of gives room for all these lapses. Unless we have a system that is working, Nigeria would just be moving in circles. I think we need a constitution that would not give room to all what we are witnessing today. When we were operating a Regional government, every region had its own constitution, own judiciary and every region was allowed to legislate on arms and ammunition, (the facts are there to check) in the 1963 constitution. So, what we had in the exclusive legislative list was minimal, as against what was in the concurrent list.
"Let me say this, this illiterate arguments on local government autonomy could not have arisen, if people read books. In a federal system of government there are two tiers of government, which are the Federal and the State. Everything that has to do with the local government is residual. Why they are restricting themselves to this idea of local government autonomy, is just about allocation and not revenue generation. If it is about the issues of revenue generation, there should not be argument about creating more states and local governments because their creations should be in accordance to needs. Agitations for more states and local government is just about allocation because we should not be creating states and local governments that are not viable.
"The local government autonomy to me, is a way of centralizing everything so that anybody that wants to be local government chairman can go to Abuja to meet. It is never done anywhere that you create local government to be parallel to to state. The present state of Nigeria is not right and we can’t continue to run a fraudulent constitution, depend on it and expect progress in Nigeria. No, it is not possible. The system is so much faulty to the extent that people in power used to operate on party affiliation. Because the party that controls the center would always want to favour the states in the same party with it and neglect other states not belonging to the party. We have seen this happening several times in Nigeria.
Asked to to speak on the way forward, Dr. Adebowale said the country needs a new constitution, and not further amendments to the existing one
"As some of us have been saying, we just have to throw away the present constitution we are operating in Nigeria. You see, we have amended this present constitution five times already (I have the constitution as amended here with me); they are now on the sixth amendments," he said.
"What we have failed to do, is to realize that when there is a structural defect in a building you have to pull it down. Those in the National Assembly would not want a new constitution because when we talk about regional government, they would not have a place there because the issue of permanent sitting would no longer be there and it is going to be part-time sitting. Again when we talk about Regional government, we would also talk about resource control. We are talking about local government autonomy but not about resource control, Is that not fraudulent?
"What is in local government autonomy, which does not make them control their resources? What makes nonsense of the whole thing is that someone would bring a piece of paper from Abuja, enter Ilesa and start to mine gold, destroying a whole village. He pays money, which was not captured anywhere.
"You can imagine Dele Alake, Minister of Solid Minerals, came on air bragging that he paid $5million into the government treasury, from mineral resources. That is not acceptable because there was no body who quantified what he sold, he did not tell us about the impact assessment and who did it. You only need to go to Ilesa to see what these Chinese are doing; you will pity us in Nigeria. They bring people from the North, Niger and Mali and armed them with sophisticated weapons because they control the mining sites.
"In fact that was what started the problems in Zamfara State and it is because of their gold. Nigeria is no doubt in a colony of slaves and country of liars. People talk about local government autonomy, saying that the state governors are stealing their funds, what about the federal government; why is the Federal government controlling 52 percent of the total revenue of the country? Let us look at those in the Federal government. We have the President, the vice President elected, we have the people at the National Assembly, the rest are appointees managing the 52% of the revenue.
"During the regional government, the West was the least paid in terms federal allocation and it was the best developed because the region did not depend on handouts. When you even talk about Federal appointments, the West was not favoured; it was the East that controlled the Federal, the East headed the ports with Aja Nwachukwu, the Nigerians Railways we had Ikejiani. In fact 80% of those manning the federal corporations and agencies are from the East. Let me say this, this was one of the basis of the quarrel between Chief Akintola and Chief Awolowo that people have refused to talk about. Akintola was not as disciplined as Awolowo, but more at home with people and flamboyant."
"Akintola foresaw tomorrow but Awolowo was too idealistic. He pointed all these to him but Awolowo did not listen. But notwithstanding, when we all minded our businesses as individual region. Yes, the rivalry was there but no one disturb the other. The west chose education as its priority other regions chose something else. The South West also chose Agriculture and established farm settlements, sent people abroad to learn animal husbandry, bulls were brought from Argentina, and cattle ranches were also established at Akunnu, Auga and one at Ibarapa. This is why some of us here in the South West are baffled when these people want to teach us about how to take care of cattles and telling us that cattle must be moving around."
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