As the song of restructuring reached a crescendo last year, one of the unlikely quarters where the subject was not expected to gain popularity is in the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC. This is sequel to the position canvassed by some of the party’s highest ranking governmental officials. The president for example, had canvassed for process rather than restructuring to get the country moving again. To restructuring proponents, it is heartwarming that the party in power has joined their bandwagon.
Last year, the party had inaugurated a 10-man committee which was headed by the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai. It also included four other governors, a former governor, the national organising secretary and the national publicity secretary of the APC. The committee first presented its report to the party chairman, Chief John Odigie Oyegun, and later made a public presentation in Abuja during which the party apologised for and explained its foot-dragging on the issue. Chief Oyegun said the APC had inherited a collapsed governance system and was busy trying to fix the economy, security and infrastructure.
To be fair, the report aroused great optimism by moving 10 items from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent List, including some items hitherto considered controversial. The list includes Foods, Drugs, Poisons, Narcotics, Fingerprints and Identification of Criminal Records. Others are Registration of Business Names, Labour, Mines and Minerals, including Oil Fields, Oil Mining, Geological surveys and Natural Gas; Police; Prisons; Public Holidays; Railways; and Stamp Duties. On the highly charged issue of resource control, the committee declared that “we have proposed that mining, minerals and oil should go to the states,” except offshore minerals. It also endorsed independent candidacy but with the caveat that the individuals must prove that they have not been members of a political party six months before they wish to contest elections.
The chair of the committee further explained that if the necessary constitutional amendments are passed, Nigeria will return to a balanced federation by devolving more powers to the states and reducing the burden of the Federal Government. He reiterated that Nigerians have clamoured for these changes for long and his committee had listened to the voice of the people and “taken the reports of all previous constitutional and national conferences.” The committee, he added, had also drafted the requisite bills to be passed to the National Assembly and the states Houses of Assembly.
Also among its recommendations is the presidential system of government, provision that corruption and the high cost of governance are urgently addressed. The committee also recommended the creation of more states, but it is not against the merging of states owing to the growing regional economic cooperation that is being witnessed among states. It upheld the recommendation of the 2014 National Conference which dispensed with the local governments as a tier of government. It also endorsed state police with the caveat that state police would handle certain categories of cases as is done in the United States. Prisons, it stated, have historically been owned by local governments and should revert to them, while states should now build prisons since most of our current prisons are owned by the Federal Government.
Continuing, it took Public Holidays to the concurrent list so that there will be federal public holidays for the entire country and the states can have their public holidays. The committee also recommended the abolition of “state of origin”, which it says is discriminatory and should be replaced with “state of residence.” It also recommended that a referendum be conducted on burning national issues.
While we believe that structure of our politics is not the main problem we have, it is understandable that nation building requires that sometimes leaders listen to public opinion. Besides, the country will not lose anything if she tries to reform some of the structural talking points. Like we have continually stated, people are the real change agents. Members of the ruling class must realise that no matter how beautiful a structure is, if there are no selfless leaders then the who effort will be in vain. Apart from commending the party for the step towards structural reforms, we hope that the party will follow through the recommendations. The National Assembly must therefore be carried along from the start so that these amendments can easily pass. The change is a welcome development.
