The Upper Crust

Restructuring while they look away

 

With Uche Nnadozie

As usual, the country is not paying attention. This is what happens when we are all fixated in labels and sometimes hysteria. The other day, President Muhammadu Buhari signed off an amendment to the constitution. In it is the financial autonomy to state houses of assembly and the state judiciary. This is a landmark law made by the National Assembly and other stakeholders. This will not herald much praise because it is done without the code name: restructuring! And this has always been my attitude; most of the things we clamour for and look for grandeur ways to achieve same are things we can easily achieve without making noise. The separation of judicial and legislative funding from executive control at the state level is a little feat.
But because of our penchant for exciting the gallery, it won’t mean much. The campaigners for restructuring are more interested in the word than the action. That is why some of us saw the campaign at the time as mere posturing for opposition politics. Because if you ask most of the converts for the position they took on restructuring and what it means, they drew blank.  The truth is that a lot of the proponents for restructuring do not have the faintest idea what they talk about. In my case, I’m not a fan of this buzzword. Not because I do not think that we need to effect some changes in the way we are structured, but the way it is presented is at fault. They make it look like without it we can’t function. We can, we have.
At the national level, the judiciary is financially independent of the executive. This means that there is no kind of control whatsoever over the judiciary when it comes to money. Whatever is agreed that is their budget is paid directly to their account; the leaders of the judiciary then goes ahead to spend as they wish. This means that whoever is president does not matter. This also means that the judiciary and its officials can take any decision anytime without suffering financial heartaches; or going cap in hand to beg the executive for money to run its affairs. This kind of servitude breeds contempt. And this may have informed the little confidence Nigerians repose on the judiciary. But of course this independence has not made the courts function to the satisfaction of most Nigerians. They still have big issues.
Also, the legislature at the national level is financially independent of the executive. This is a product of restructuring. This equally means that the legislature can operate without recourse to the executive. At least, they can have their money anyhow they want it. This diminishes the influence of the executive on the legislature. Again, we can imagine that in spite of this laudable piece of law, the legislature sometimes appear under siege. However, that tells the story. If they can still have hiccups now, one can only imagine what would be if their money was routed through the executive. These are some of the challenges of democracy. We only get better with patience.
So the turnaround is not going to come in one fell swoop in an ethnic-diverse country like ours. Doing otherwise might just be pure madness. That is why I support the financial autonomy granted the state houses of assembly and the state judicial council. This is a welcome development. It is yet to be seen how our imperial governors will welcome this. But more importantly how will this change help make for better service delivery for citizens. Because it appears that we reform for the sake of it. This time, we need to see how state legislature will make better laws that will impact state residents. I am hoping that this is not just an ego trip. An exercise meant to massage the ego of legislators whose main focus will be to show off their new found power by always threatening to remove the governors. No sir. The law is nobler than that.
For the judiciary the admonition is the same. Your new found power over your finances is not to oppress your peers or other arms of government. After all, although there is separation of power, there is still in force “cooperation of power”. No arm of government can function truly independent of the other. What is more paramount is the reality of a restructured part of the polity. We must therefore proceed to ensure these laws impact positively on the people by faster dispensation of justice and to promote the fact that the law is no respecter of persons.
Going forward, if proponents of restructuring are altruistic, they have to device new strategies in achieving their objective. Taking the issues one after the other is better. Pretending that there will be a time every Nigerian will agree to dissolve the polity in order that we may have a constitution so titled: “we the people” is taking optimism too far. It will not happen. We can campaign on certain subjects that can easily be taken out or elaborated in the constitution. Of course I’m not unaware in the discordant areas of interest by the restructuring gang. However, this is politics. People will play politics nonetheless, so it’s better to be prepared to achieve success little by little than to cry over a sea change that will not come. Such political attitude alienates rather than unite. And you need unanimity of interest to achieve constitutional reforms.

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