President Muhammadu Buhari has assented to 16 bills that have altered some provisions of the 1999 Constitution, which has become further amended. This is the fifth in a series of piecemeal efforts at curing the varied ills of this supreme body of national legislation since the Fourth Republic began over two decades ago.
Calls for it to be completely jettisoned in favour of one drafted by the people of Nigeria have not ceased on account of it being a creation of a military regime. These amendments, which are short on public expectation, however convey a strong message on federalism: that Nigeria is a federation and should be governed accordingly.
The 16 bills were among the 35 that the Ninth National Assembly forwarded to the President in January, after a spell of filibustering in parliament, lethargy in completing the process, and the 36 State Houses of Assembly’s quid pro quo demands, goaded by the governors, before giving their approbation, as required by the constitution. The power tussle almost truncated the entire exercise, which gulped more than a billion naira.
Essentially, nine of the bills dealt with substantial issues, while the seven others only corrected typographical errors in the names of some Local Government Areas. Bill No. 6 sought to grant financial autonomy to the State Houses of Assembly and the judiciary, two arms of government, which along with the executive arm, form the tripod of democratic governance, according to the constitution. The 16 bills were among the 35 that the Ninth National Assembly forwarded to the President in January, after a spell of filibustering in parliament, lethargy in completing the process, and the 36 State Houses of Assembly’s quid pro quo demands, goaded by the governors, before giving their approbation, as required by the constitution. The power tussle almost truncated the entire exercise, which gulped more than a billion naira.
Essentially, nine of the bills dealt with substantial issues, while the seven others only corrected typographical errors in the names of some Local Government Areas. Bill No. 6 sought to grant financial autonomy to the State Houses of Assembly and the judiciary, two arms of government, which along with the executive arm, form the tripod of democratic governance, according to the constitution.But abuse of power by the state chief executives has emasculated the other two arms of government, with their denial of financial independence emphasising this. In most states, the legislatures are mere rubber-stamps of the governors, thus making a mockery of the checks and balances that the constitution statutorily expects of them. The same applies to the judiciary.
The cumulative effect of these incongruities has been the transformation of governors to emperors who, in essence, live above the law. In some cases, compromised lawmakers run the legislatures, while the majority are contained or even expelled. The oversight functions of these Houses are overlooked, thereby allowing for the binge on public treasuries through looting, which has become a routine act in governance.
According to Premium Times it is believed that governors must be held to account; and the new vista provided by the recent constitutional amendments is a breath of fresh air in legislative houses, to perform in this regard without let or hindrance.
The quest for devolution of power or restructuring in the country has been resonant in public discourse for decades. There are 68 items in the Exclusive Legislative List of the extant 1999 Constitution, which have effectively centralized governance in Nigeria. This should not be happening in a true federation. Bills number 31, 32 and 33 have dealt with this concern modestly. The Nigeria Correctional Service, formerly Nigeria Prison Service, is now on the Concurrent Legislative List, addressed by Bill No 31. Railways ownership has also been moved to the Concurrent List by Bill No.32; while Bill No.33 removes electricity from the Exclusive Legislative List.
This means that states can now be involved in these spheres by fostering the environment for inflow of private capital or investment. To generate and distribute electricity by sub-national governments will boost their economies by unleashing the productivity of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), creating jobs and thereby increasing the revenue bases of states. More crucially, it will equally reduce their crass dependence on the monthly disbursements from the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) for the business of governance. The import of this appears in bold relief with the Country Director, International Labour Organisation (ILO), Vanessa Phala’s reference to the fact that MSMEs contribute 48% to Nigeria’s GDP of $441 billion. Many companies have relocated to other West African countries and many small businesses had closed over abysmally low power delivery in the country.
It is regrettable that it took Nigeria this long, especially the National Assembly, to come to terms with the need for decentralisation of electricity. The lack of this denied Lagos State the ability to utilise the 270 megawatts it generated via partnership with the AES/Enron, under an Independent Power Project (IPP). The power was wheeled into the national grid when Babatunde Fashola was the governor. The state’s perception that the hitherto template was anomalous informed its long-term plan to produce 1,000 MWs of solar energy by 2030, which the constitutional assent has now boosted.
Abia State is already in this league with the Geometric Power Project in Aba, another IPP geared towards maximising the productive or innovative capacity of the city with uninterrupted electricity supply. Other states that have been trifling with the idea before, can now take it seriously. A country with a national grid that collapsed 15 times in 2017 and a power generation vacillating between 2,200MW and 3,553 MW in January, cannot deliver economic growth and development, or become socially stable for its over 200 million population to thrive.
With the Railway Act of 1955, which manacled the initiatives of states, now otiose, more rail tracks can be built in states through private capital to enhance public transportation, alongside the movement of goods and services. Many lives have been lost to frequent fuel tanker explosions on our roads. This will drastically reduce as some of the products would be moved by rail. It is laughable that Nigeria, as the biggest economy in Africa, had a mere 3,528 kilometres of rail tracks in 2015, according to the World Bank, whereas South Africa boasts 30,000 kilometres, but yet is Africa’s second biggest economy. The disparity in power generation and distribution between the two leading African economies is even more ridiculous.
High level insecurity throughout the country – largely as a result of large swathes of territories being under the control of non-state actors like Boko Haram, ISWAP, kidnappers and bandits – is an unresolved existential concern. It was anticipated that the fifth constitutional amendment would take care of this by creating multi-layered policing for a more efficient security umbrella. This omission is grave. Rather than taking this up, the Ahmed Lawan-led NASS had busied itself with passing a self-serving Bill that sought to make former leaders of the National Assembly members of the National Council of State, which the president rightly spurned; and the 60-day time limit for presidents and governors to form their cabinets. Any of these two categories of elected officers who cannot form his team a few days on assumption of office, as is the practice in the US and the UK, is ill-prepared for the job. Buhari’s timorousness in doing so should depart with his regime.
It is hoped that the incoming Tenth National Assembly will, as soon as possible, take off from where its predecessor stopped. The country badly needs a multi-layered policing structure as obtainable in federal jurisdictions like the US and Canada, and even in a unitary political entity like the UK with 45 police forces, if the country is to have a handle on insecurity. State governors as the chief security officers of their states, legislatures and Nigerians across the six regions have been vociferous in canvassing this.
From January to March 2022, for instance, 2,968 persons were killed and 1,484 others abducted in Zamfara State alone, evident in the data from Nigeria Security Tracker (NST). The state is not isolated in this harvest of carnage. This factsheet of horror and barbarity should inspire strategic thinking and action on new ways to secure lives and property. Let the states take this drive amid the self-evident, woeful scorecard of centralised policing in the country since the end of the First Republic.
