Given the constitutional history of Nigeria and appreciating that the 1999 constitution is essentially unitary, agitations for devolution of powers, from the national government to the subnational government or the constituent or federating units, will continue without break until devolution is achieved. What many may not appreciate is that there may not be restructuring to a true federation or devolution of powers before year 2028. Furthermore, there may not be restructuring of Nigeria before the year 2031. In these eventualities, how would the present situation of gross insecurity, mass unemployment, mass poverty, gross infrastructure deficits, mass illiteracy, corruption, capital flight, inflation, grossly poor level of industrialization and over dependence on grossly inadequate foreign earnings from exportation of crude oil and gas, with escalating foreign debts have become, reduced or worsen? Governance is social science, though more conjectural than as physical science or natural science is; and is, indisputably, relatively empirical; guided, as such, by principles and facts.
The contravention or transgression of scientific principles are of inescapable, undesirable consequences. The formulation or design of a constitution of any country must be based on the historical and present social, economic and political facts of life in that country that is the cultural facts, culture being conceived as the totality of all the facts of life of a country. And Nigeria, not being mono-cultural, but heterogeneous, cannot – scientifically – have an essentially unitary constitution. It must have a confederal or federal constitution. Accordingly with its peculiarities, Nigeria must have a confederal or federal constitution, accepted by all or most ethnic groups of the country. This is the ratio decidendi – rationale – for a people’s constitution of Nigeria, the restoration or achievement of a truly federal or confederal constitution of Nigeria. Ethnic plurality of a nation-state calls for, or necessitates, plurality of ethnic or constituent constitutions, with substantial devolution or constituent reservation of some crucial powers, thereby.
Ethnic groups, societies or communities, with different sets of facts of life in the socio-economic sectors must be governed by different sets of policies in their respective areas or jurisdictions. Education, industrialization, urban and regional planning, judiciary, jurisprudence, laws, labour and employment, security and policing, agriculture, banking and finance, lands, transport, water, health, environment, commerce and trade, public administrations, public finance, mining, energy, electric power, engineering, technology, communications, etc. are all interdependent; and different sets of integrated policies in these sections are only respectively appropriate for different ethnic groups. Only matters of external affairs, defense, money and central banking, and a few others, must be centrally legislated upon in a multi-ethnic nation-state such as Nigeria. It is the transgression of the fundamental principle or law of social-science that is the root-cause of the developmental retrogression or degradation of Nigeria. This transgression is the imposition of the unitarian 1999 constitution as amended. Without restructuring or devolution of powers in Nigeria, before the year 2027, then or thereafter, there may be a breakdown; or the total foreign debt of Nigeria would have become an amount in the region of two hundred [200] billion US dollars, by 2027. This is very dangerous functionally.
But how can we achieve restructuring Nigeria, with devolution powers, before year 2027? How does President Tinubu formulate the respective draft constitution or executive bills? With substantive devolution powers, do we still reasonably retain the present 36-state structure, with the inherent diseconomies of scale of almost every state in Nigeria? What if the required two-third majority of the whole members of the National Assembly is not secured? Or what if the required two-third majority of the 36 state assemblies is not secured? This prospect is very dangerous. Nigeria urgently requires ingenious social engineering, for take-off and acceleration of the process of industrialization of the country. Nigeria is at the stage of bad pre-conditions for take-off of industrialization. The five successive stages of industrialization are: pre-conditions for take-off, take-off, transition to industrial maturity, industrial maturity, and search for quality.
Nigeria cannot achieve take-off of industrialization with the dysfunctionality of the current urban and regional development, and the respective constitutional incapacitation of the constituent states of Nigeria without achieving the urgent imperative of restructuring to a six-region, truly federal structure, instead of, or super-imposed upon, the present 36-state structure of Nigeria.
Credit: Ponle. S. Akande