RESTRUCTURING: Another empty SLOGAN!
In 2015, Nigeria was flushed with what seemed like a wave of CHANGE all over the country. This wave was so strong that in states where people did not think possible, it overturned the political status quo and brought in an entirely new set of politically elected officers at all levels.
Our fixation as a country was on who became the President of the ‘Federal’ Republic of Nigeria and how it just couldn’t be one particular man, not minding what the consequences were down the line for other elected offices.
Anyone could argue that this was one of the defects of the structure of the country which is a positive for the current debate that is largely ongoing in the country in preparation for 2019.
I tried so hard to find a poorly written letter in a local government in the Northern part of the country, written by an official of the government dismissing another official, I couldn’t. But the picture below will give you insight to how much politicians recognized the CHANGE wave and tried to leverage on it in 2015
In one of my conversations with a young Nigerian who played an undoubtedly significant role in realizing this wave, one of the insights i took away is that voters seldom vote for a lot of reasons. A potential voter who eventually voted would have voted for one particular reason, at most two.
This is ‘natural’ human behavior and to get human beings to vote for a candidate, loading them with a lot of reasons won’t just work. The quote ‘less is more’ applies perfectly in this scenario.
Enter the Restructuring Debate
There are political waves that are electorally viable and any politician who is strategic enough will align with such. As a matter of fact, these waves even cross international borders.
As with every other democratic setting, the Nigerian politician will defer to any political wave if s/he must remain relevant. I won’t be surprised if those against restructuring the country become proponents of the debate as soon as we get closer to the 2019 general elections. And this largely affirms the notion that leaders will always defer to what the followers want.
So why have we not learnt?
Any proposal to deliver a better Nigeria no matter how laudable and great of an idea it is, if done under Bad Leadership will FAIL!
Anyone who was around during the privatization talks of the electricity apparatus of the country will tell of how the only way to guarantee the better electricity for Nigeria was to privatize the companies. The Federal Government needed to replicate what was done with the telecommunications industry with the electricity apparatus of the country and give Nigerians cheap and available power.
It’s a couple of years after privatization and we have still not been able to move an inch further from where we are in 1999. Africa Check confirmed from its latest figures that it has from the US Energy Information Administration that Nigeria’s installed capacity as at 1999 was 5,888 MW. After 6 years of privatization (2011), installed capacity was 5900MW.
For an APC administration that rode on the wave of another slogan to solve our problems and deliver the promised land, the Nigeria we have today as i write is by all indications different from what we were promised. The CHANGE however is evident. To say that the APC administration is a catastrophic failure is an UNDERSTATEMENT.
It is quite evident that Nigeria as a country is designed to favor a microscopic few and the toxic concentration of powers at the center is so self-defeating that it erodes any natural incentive for any state to develop its own resources.
Nigeria has to be restructured but by who? The same crop of leaders who cross carpet from one party to the other like they’re exchanging clothes or a different set of leaders who have nothing but compassion for the Nigerian state and her people?
The proverbial white pap that comes out from a black pot is practically impossible in this Nigerian political context. Any RESTRUCTURING that has any input from any politician who belongs to the old order will FAIL to achieve its purpose
It is based on this premise that I am moving that the Restructuring Debate should be postponed till we can have a system. This system must be one that evolves the best of us, those who have real ideas beyond a slogan of how to make Nigeria a better place for us all, as leaders not consultants or civil society agents or business gurus, but as political leaders.
It’s until then that we will be ready for a real debate about the structure of our ‘Federal’ Republic.
