Constitutional amendments to make Nigeria a more viable entity – or at least less of a spectacularly expensive circus.
There is an old saying that if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. In Nigeria, if wishes were horses, the beggars would still be waiting for the federal allocation to buy the saddle, the state governor would claim ownership of the horse, and the local government chairman would invent three new wards so his cousins could ride too.
Still, one is permitted to dream. And these are the horses I would very much like to mount.
1. Consolidate the states – with economic viability as the non-negotiable principle
We currently have 36 states, many of which exist primarily to give someone a governor’s lodge, a fleet of SUVs, and a weekly opportunity to declare that “the state is broke” while somehow still funding a convoy that could invade a small country.
The main principle of state creation must be economic viability, not ethnic nostalgia or the urgent need to reward a political godfather with a new capital city. Respect cultural and ethnic boundaries where they make sense, yes. But let the constitution’s existing provisions for state creation actually mean something other than a permanent lobbyist’s picnic in Abuja.
Fewer, stronger states that can stand on their own fiscal feet. Imagine that. A federation where states do not survive solely by queueing for monthly handouts like pensioners who forgot to save.
2. Kick the local government areas out of the constitutional schedule
The current list of local government areas in the constitution is a masterpiece of frozen absurdity. It treats LGAs as permanent fixtures of the national charter rather than administrative units that should respond to people and economics.
Remove them from the schedule entirely. Strip the constitution of the provisions that allow states to create local governments as political favours. Let the creation of local government areas become what it should have been all along: a democratic process grounded in economic viability.
If a community can sustain itself and its people want the structure, fine. If not, it remains a community without the expensive fiction of a local government secretariat that exists mainly to award contracts to the same five people.
Democracy and viability. What a radical concept.
3. End the unitary pretence – starting with the police
Nigeria is a federation in name and a unitary state in practice. The constitution still clutches certain institutions like a nervous mother who refuses to let her adult children leave the house.
Police is the most glaring example. Remove these unitary institutions from the exclusive list. Elevate the states from their current status as appendages of the federal government.
A state that cannot maintain its own police force, set its own security priorities, or respond to local threats without waiting for instructions from Abuja is not a federating unit. It is a glorified local government with better air-conditioning.
4. Shrink the federal government until it can no longer trip over its own ministries
The exclusive and concurrent lists currently read like the inventory of a man who cannot throw anything away. Secondary education has no business on the concurrent list. The federal government should not be running secondary schools any more than it should be deciding the price of agege bread.
Narrow the exclusive list to the essentials: military defence, overall economic coordination and development, and foreign affairs. Everything else – education, health, agriculture, roads that do not cross state borders – belongs to the states or the people.
A lean federal government is not a weak one. It is a government that has finally stopped pretending it can micromanage 200 million people from one overstaffed capital.
5. Stop governors from owning political parties and candidates
This one is almost too obvious to state, yet here we are.
Remove the practical ability of governors to finance political parties and hand-pick candidates for elective offices. The independence of legislative houses and local government institutions is currently a polite fiction maintained for the benefit of the international community and the occasional visiting academic.
When a governor bankrolls the party, selects the candidates, and then complains that the legislature is “not cooperating,” we are no longer dealing with democracy. We are dealing with a personal fiefdom that happens to hold elections.
Sever that financial and nominating umbilical cord. Let legislators and local government officials answer to the people who elected them, not to the man who paid for their campaign posters.
These are not revolutionary demands. They are merely the minimum requirements for a federation that wishes to remain one.
Of course, the current political class will treat these proposals the way a cat treats a bath: with profound suspicion, vigorous resistance, and the occasional attempt to knock the entire idea off the table.
But wishes, even when they are not horses, still have the right to be spoken aloud.
And some of us are tired of watching the same broken carriage being dragged down the same muddy road while the drivers insist the problem is the passengers.
