By Dr Kayode Fayemi
(Former Ekiti State Governor)
“Well, I don’t think it would take much time for us to arrive at a consensus that 25 years after embarking on our current electoral journey, our citizens are more disillusioned about the state of the nation than ever. But that is where the consensus is likely to end.”
It is such an honour and a privilege to have been asked to give this 80th birthday lecture in celebration of a most distinguished Nigerian, a progressive public intellectual, an elder statesman and a major subaltern in the struggle to return Nigeria to a genuinely democratic and restructured nation -father, teacher, activist, diplomat, mentor, culture enthusiast, broadcasting guru, and most importantly, old boy from the best secondary school in Nigeria, our very own Uncle Yemi Farounbi.
I have been asked to speak on “The Future and the Challenges of the Nigerian Nation.” The unspoken assumption in that topic, of course, is that we all agree that the geographic area known as Nigeria has attained the status of a nation and that I, the speaker, knows what the future portends and even more importantly, that I possess the intellectual key to address the challenges militating against that assumed future.
Well, I don’t think it would take much time for us to arrive at a consensus that 25 years after embarking on our current electoral journey, our citizens are more disillusioned about the state of the nation than ever. But that is where the consensus is likely to end.
Truly, like many compatriots, I often ask the question what the challenges confronting us are and how best we should approach the nation-building task in the country. In all segments of our population, the thirst for excuses and culprits to blame for our challenges is an insatiable one.
There are those of us who think the problem with Nigeria is her size, some others think it is the many ethnic interests conflating one another for domination. Others think it is all about bad leadership, while some others believe it is the Constitution. There are those who blame poverty as the issue, while some pan-Africanists believe colonialism, foreign religions and intellectual imperialism are the reasons we are still lagging behind.
In the midst of this epistemological melee, there have even been more disillusioned solutions as to how to end the problem – the loudest of these today are the clamours for secession and unending complaints about marginalisation!
For me, whatever defects that currently ails our country can be corrected without having to collapse the whole structure. This is very logical if we understand that nation building is an endless endeavour and that no generation is ever satisfied with the work it has done, it is the generation that comes after that can truly appreciate the progress that has been made when they begin to take for granted what was scarcely available for the generation before them. Nation-building is an unfinished business.
Renowned Nigerian author, Ben Okri in his award winning book, The Famished Road, tells of a people who, for several generations, have been trying to build a road. But no matter how hard they work, they never go far in their endeavour. Even then, whatever little progress they make, is always destroyed by disasters beyond their comprehension and they would have to start all over; much like the curse of Sisyphus. Yet, every generation understands that it is their destiny to try and complete this road. History has taught them that the road would never be completed, but they never give up because each generation hopes that it would be the generation that gets the job done.
Several commentators have noted that Okri’s unfinishable road is, in fact, a grand metaphor for nation-building. Indeed, nation-building is a continuous work in progress. 64 years may be a long time in the life of an individual. But a 60-year-old nation, is a nation yet in its infancy.
Therefore, rather than despair over the failures of the past, it would be more productive that we look ahead with great hopes at the infinite future that lies ahead of us, armed with that immortal admonition from the French West Indian psychiatrist and political philosopher, Frantz Fanon, that “every generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, betray it or fulfil it.”
Over the years, Nigerians have agonised over the lamentably slow pace of our development. Successive governments and policy makers have responded with various approaches and strategies for achieving the much desired national development. Yet, even the most charitable analyst of our political economy would agree that we have not performed to our optimum capabilities. So many experts have made great efforts to explain our under-development, with some, like the late Professor Claude Ake, even arguing that development was never part of the post-colonial African political agenda.
It appears to me however that the fundamental challenge is that, all along, we have been placing the cart before the proverbial horse. Before we can think of development, we must first solve the problems of nation-building, because you cannot develop what you do not have.
When the Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, asked “When is a Nation,” he was attempting to draw our attention to those urgent questions of nation-building that have remained largely unanswered till this day.
The development of every nation necessarily derives from “national consensus”. However, this consensus can only be forged after some fundamental questions, what we call the national questions, have been settled. Where the very existence of the nation itself is easily brought to question at the slightest provocation such as we have seen with our most recent elections in 2023, it should be clear that we have to ask and settle certain questions first, and it is the settlement that would then provide the foundation for our vision of society and the structure and direction of our national development.
In short, the very notion of national greatness is directly consequential to nation-building. It is like a mathematical equation that is often sequential. You start with a vision which leads to a system and the system produces a structure which spawns institutions that are intertwined with leadership that produces a shared nationhood.
Over the years, I have heard even presumably informed analysts refer to our country as the mistake of 1914. Even recently, I read a newspaper report purportedly credited to Northern Elders Forum (NEF) leader, Professor Ango Abdullahi, to the effect that the 1914 Amalgamation has expired and Nigeria is therefore due for retirement. Regardless of how one might take that statement from Professor Abdullahi, but was the amalgamation really a mistake?
The American social philosopher, Eric Hoffer argued that divide and rule is most effective when it “fosters a multiplicity of compact bodies – racial, religious or economic – vying with and suspicious of each other.” Therefore, it is possible to argue that the toxic legacy of the colonialists’ ‘divide and rule’ strategy may be the reason that we have remained divided, even six decades after their rule has ended. However, to describe this amalgamation itself as a mistake would be wrong, both historically and conceptually. The hands that drew the map may not have been ours, but the map was possible only because we were here in the first place.
Every student of history will agree that, as a people, if not as a country, Lord Lugard did not introduce us to ourselves. Long before the white man set foot on our land, our people have developed an intricate network of relationships. Even though they lived in their various enclaves as independent people, they traded together, they married one another, they fought together as allies in battles and against one another as adversaries. Our cultures inter-mingled freely and produced rich synthesis of cultures, in such a way that no single culture was left pure and unaffected from this intercourse, as evidenced in new vocabularies, diets and even dress.
It is also important to note that many of our empires and kingdoms were territorial rather than tribal. They luxuriated and thrived on their diversity and formed unions and alliances based on shared understanding and mutual respects. A cursory analysis of our languages and belief systems will reveal that we actually have more in common than some of our differences would suggest.
Therefore, while the colonialists may have been “culpable” for creating the country that we call Nigeria without consulting us; the task of forging a nation out of this colonial invention, rests squarely in our hands. And this task must progress from a deliberate effort to remobilise and re-interpret our history, especially our pre-colonial history. If we take a sociological look, we will see clearly that we did not arrive here by chance or as mere products of colonial misadventure.
In his book, titled, “Can Anything Good Come Out of History?”, famous historian, Obaro Ikime, observed that it is not colonialism that introduced the Igbos to the Igalas; the Kanuris to its neighbouring states; the Efik to the Ibibios and the Igbos; the Itsekiri to the Urhobos or; the Yorubas to the Nupes, etc. Brought together, sometimes by forces of geography and history, all these people, he noted, “knew about themselves and respected their varying cultures and susceptibilities.”
Ikime went further to underline the important roles that historians and teachers of history must play as we strive to build a united nation out of this colonial legacy called Nigeria. He argued that “[t]here is a need to provide a general framework of our nation’s history; a need to indicate broad influences and operative factors in our history; a need to identify the nature and impact of contacts between our peoples; a need to identify factors that make for the differences discernible among our peoples; and so on.”
One of the most popular anecdotes that survived from our early efforts at nation-building was the one credited to the late Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello. He was said to have retorted that in coming together as a country, we do not need to forget our differences, rather we only need to recognise and respect them. It is not clear to what extent this wise admonition was taken on board by our founding fathers as they tried to grapple with the challenges of nation-building in a post-colonial entity. However, embedded in the notion of “unity in diversity” is a distinct awareness that sameness is not necessarily a precondition for oneness.
Perhaps, one major area that the successive generations have failed is in the tendency to stigmatise difference and weaponise diversity. We are Muslims, we are Christians, we are animists, we are Idoma, Tiv, Angas, Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, Kanuri, Fulani and so on. We don’t need to apologise for these differences or attempt to hide them because there is nothing wrong in being different. The problem starts only when these social categorisations become the boundaries for inclusion or exclusion.
Development anthropologists have long concluded that culture plays a crucial role in development. In other words, every culture essentially contains the facilities for progress and advancement. The language in which we articulate our ideas; our diets and consumption patterns; our architectures and the way we live; our religion and how we understand our relationship with God and to the universe, our notion of ethics, morality and justice, all of these, in different forms and at different levels, provide the essential driving force for development. What this means therefore, is that the more diverse the cultures within a nation, the more resources they have for development and for progress.
In essence, homogeneity is not necessarily a blessing and diversity need not be a curse. This is why it is important to always make the distinction between our difference, which is essentially benign, and the politicisation of those differences, which constitutes the malignant cancer in the body of our nation.
Despite the challenges that we have faced as a nation, it is important for us to constantly bear in mind that nation-building is a slow and dynamic process. The awareness that nothing in nation-building is finalised should give us hope and challenge us to do better and constantly look for ways and means to build a better country, by experimentation and learning, trial and errors, setting and resetting, remaking and not unmaking. And this is why the operative framework of any nation is never intended as a divinely inspired scripture.
Most of the challenges that we face today could not have been envisaged in 1999. But we must see these challenges as opportunities to test our governance system and its responsive capacity to issues of national co-existence. The integrity of our governance and administrative system must be continually measured in terms of its ability to deliver the greater good to the greatest number of our people. If we are not able to do this, we must be willing to press the reset button and ask ourselves why the system that we all must submit to not working for us all?
However, for us to constructively confront these issues, we must start by first conquering the demon of mutual suspicion and distrust that has poisoned our politics and subverted our will to achieve the necessary consensus that is so crucial to marching confidently towards our destiny as a great nation. And we have seen that demon of suspicion rear its ugly head again in the unending debate about tax reforms in recent times. If we do this, we would have scaled the major obstacle to forging a great nation out of this colonial creation and show the world that we are finally ready to embrace our true destiny as the hope of all black people everywhere.
Imperatives for ‘Building a Nation’
Both our old and new national anthems contain an infinitive that underlines that nation-building as an unending search for perfection. It says: “To build a nation, where peace and justice shall reign.” For the next 1000 years, no matter the progress we would have made, as long as this country continues to exist, generations after generations, will continue to seek “to build a nation, where peace and justice shall reign.” It is a credit to the genius of those who wrote that line that both the mission and the means to achieve the mission are captured in one simple phrase.
The path to nation-building is peace, the path to peace is justice, and the path to justice is equity and inclusion. Even for Americans who coined the mantra, of “a more perfect union’, it was done out of the understanding that the work of nation building is never done. If a country like the United States, forged out of a common purpose and common consent, perpetually seeks to make a more perfect union, we have no excuse to give up on the task of nation-building in Nigeria.
Permit me to return to Ben Okri who wrote in the same book quoted earlier, The Famished Road, that “each new generation begins with nothing and with everything. They know all the earlier mistakes. They may not know that they know, but they do. They know the early plans, the original intentions, the earliest dreams. Each generation has to reconnect the dreams for themselves. They tend to become a little wiser, but don’t go very far. It is possible that they now travel slower, and will make bigger mistakes. That is how they are as a people. They have an infinity of hope and an eternity of struggles. Nothing can destroy them except themselves and they will never finish the road that is their soul and they do not know it.”
Okri tells us that the work of nation-building is for all generations. And how far each generation is able to go on the journey to nation-building and the attainment of greatness depends on the aggregate character and predilections of that generation.
Perhaps, as products of a specific period of our history and national experience, we are distrustful of change, even if change is what our situation recommends. We must however take note that the generation that wants to take over from us are products of a different historical experience. A great number of young Nigerians who marched on the streets in #EndSARS and the most recent #EndBadGovernance protests never lived under military rule. They are akin to the people post-apartheid South Africans refer to as the “born free” generation. Because they can take the fact of democracy for granted, it is difficult for them to see democracy as an end in itself. What really matters to them is what democracy can do for them, how it can work for them and how it can help to facilitate their dreams. Nurtured in the cusp of some of the most rapid transformation in human history, they are less fearful of change and experimentation. If it is not working, they want it fixed.
Therefore, in responding to the challenges that this moment imposes on us, we must recognise that a business-as-usual approach will no longer be sufficient. What we need is a fundamental re-engineering of our governance system in a way that will make our country work better for everyone.
Restructuring, Devolution, Fiscal Federalism and Electoral Reform
In our quest towards making Nigeria work therefore, the main challenge is one of re-creating the union and the basis of its fundamental national association. Unfortunately, this is one issue that we have allowed to be implicated in our instinctive mutual suspicion and unnecessary brickbats.
Caught in our politics of difference and otherness, devolution, decentralisation, restructuring and such other concepts have come to mean different things to different people, depending on the ethnic and regional toga they wear. Our age-long distrust and suspicions of one another is now being tested and contested on the basis of this issue that should be the pivot of our nation-building effort.
However, stripped of all opportunism and dysfunctional baggage, these concepts should simply refer to a way to re-imagine and reinvent our country to make it work well for everyone.
I associate fully with the views of respected scholar and former Chairman of INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega, when he said: “Sooner than later, these matters have to be addressed squarely but dispassionately. The challenge is how to address the issue of restructuring the Nigerian federal system without upsetting the apple-cart; that is, how to add value to the structure and systemic efficacy of the federal arrangement, without unleashing instability occasioned by the mobilisation of ethnic, regional and religious sentiments and identities.” [Jega:2017]
I will argue therefore, that our idea of restructuring must be motivated only by our generational responsibility to perfect our union and to build a nation where peace and justice shall reign, based on an operative principle that true greatness lies in building a country that works for everyone, regardless of the language they speak, or how they understand and worship God.
The evolution of Nigeria’s federalism has not served our best interests and it is not surprising that we have witnessed protests at every attempt towards a constitutional reengineering. Two prominent examples were the 2005 Constitutional Reform Conference convened by President Obasanjo’s administration and the 2014 National Conference at the instance of President Jonathan. In the two conferences, the delicate issue remained that of restructuring (often dubbed Devolution of Power, Decentralisation, True Federalism, etc.). But for how long can we continue to run away from this issue and continue to pretend that somehow it would resolve itself someday?
In my view, structural changes (like state creation and merger) would appear unrealistic in a democratic dispensation. I also do not think we can easily go back to the pre-1966 regional structure or adopt the 54 federating-units proposal of the 2014 conference, which I find impractical, no matter the appeal or attraction.
Rather, our preoccupations should be, how we can make the current structure work better for us in terms of, first, our governance system; second, our economy and national productivity; and third, citizenship and inclusion. There may be other issues that should be the object of our restructuring, but I consider these to be paramount. Therefore, in my view, restructuring should be less about redrawing the map of Nigeria; more about building an efficient governance system that is capable of delivering the greater good to the greatest number of our people.
In essence, our desire for a more prosperous future should be anchored on the principle of devolution of powers – that is, re-allocation of powers and resources to the country’s federating units. The reasons for this are not far-fetched: First, long years of military rule has produced an over-concentration of powers and resources at the centre to the detriment of the states. Two, the 1999 Constitution, as has been argued by several observers, was hurriedly put together by the departing military authority and was not a product of sufficient inclusiveness.
Part of the focus of such an exercise should be: what items should remain on the Exclusive Legislative List and which ones should be transferred to the Concurrent List? Other topical issues include derivation principle; fiscal federalism and revenue allocation; land tenure, local government creation and autonomy; etc. All points considered, the fiscal burden of maintaining a largely inefficient and over-bloated bureaucracy is a metaphor for shooting oneself on the foot.
Again, in arriving at a position on what ought to be in the quest to make Nigeria work, I wish to further say that my sentiments are more associated with strengthening the sub-national units in the re-allocation of powers and resources. The assignment of functions that would be consistent with a devolved but strengthened federal system would have a short, Exclusive Federal List focusing on national defence and security, macro-economy, foreign affairs, customs and excise; joint responsibility in respect of certain functions that are currently assigned exclusively to the Federal Government (for example, internal security and policing) and primary responsibility of the sub-national governments in respect to other functions in the second schedule of the 1999 Constitution whilst the remaining powers devolve to states.
On revenue collection and sharing, the sharing formula should be reviewed in favour of the states, especially given the argument of devolved responsibilities to the sub-nationals. In the context, many of the proposals contained in the draft tax reform bills before the National Assembly (NASS) makes sense; the main elephant in the room is the surreptitious attempt to re-centralise revenue management in a federal entity. Remaking Nigeria through devolution of powers and re-organisation of the federating units is an idea whose time has come.
To quote Attahiru Jega again: “by working hard and rationally, scientifically, to remove all the distortions in our federal system, we would have a better functioning federation with only states as federating units; with conscious commitment to zonal cooperation among contiguous states, with local governments subsumed under states…with substantial devolution of power, responsibilities and resources from the Federal Government to the states, and with mechanisms of ensuring greater equality of opportunity for all and affirmative action for inclusion of the marginalised, minorities and groups discriminated against in the country…” [Jega:2017]
Finally, elections have come and gone but we are still confronted with its fallouts. It is my belief that electoral reform must now come back on the agenda. While I have absolutely no doubt that my party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), won the presidential election as declared by the umpire – largely due to better understanding of the political dynamics in the country and the ineptitude of opposition elements, I think it is time for alternative politics, rather than always seeking political alternatives among indistinguishable political parties, if the goal is to make Nigeria work on the basis of inclusion, stability and national cohesion.
If alternative politics must be taken as a wholesale reform of our political system, and we are interested in the codification of a system of alternative politics that is consensual and developmental, then, perhaps, the argument to put forward, as a first step, is that our electoral system may need to be re-engineered away from the current majoritarian “winner takes all” model.
With the three major parties winning almost an equal number of states and the eventual winner garnering 37 per cent of the total vote cast in the presidential elections, it does not require much to see that this is a recipe for the inevitability of instability. I think it is time to begin to look in the direction of what is commonly known as proportional representation in place of this inadequate and conflictual first past the post electoral system.
My notion of proportional representation is that each be included on the basis of performance in the national election. This will still guarantee that the winner of the election still leads the government, but it will not be a winner-takes-all system.
My own notion of proportional representation will also include a synthesis of manifestoes toward a comprehensive, national integration outlook with all the parties seeing themselves as critical stakeholders in the national project and it will make for stability and cohesion.
My sojourn in politics so far convinces me that any strategy for building sustainable democracy in a plural and divided society such as Nigeria must place a premium on electoral systems that will promote accommodation and inclusivity as a way of ensuring that the fractures and frictions that obstruct nation building are blunted and dislodged.
Conclusion
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I have no doubt in my mind that I have not exhausted all the factors that can assist in addressing the challenges militating against effective nation-building. However, there is no better testimony than the life that has been led by the celebrant as to how best to build a nation where peace and justice shall reign. So, if you find my postulations here inadequate and below par, all we need to do for context is read the inimitable Yemi Farounbi in his 80th birthday interview with Sam Nwaoko of The Tribune newspaper on September 28, 2024 where he covered a range of topics on how Nigeria missed the road – on parties as vote gathering machines and not ideological vehicles, on faulty leadership recruitment process that privileges money over track record, on “emilokan” ideology, on the place of plans, competence and character in leadership, and on optimism about the future.
Hear him: “We will get there. We will get there not because we want to get there but the poverty that has become common currency in Nigeria and the hunger that has become a common dialect for all of us will push us there… We are beginning to see that hunger has no tribal mark nor does it have religious coloration… We may not get there in 2027 but I can see us moving in that direction.” I completely share his passion and optimism about the future and that is why we must not give up.
As Shehu Usmanu Dan Fodiyo informed his people long ago, “a kingdom can endure with unbelief, but it cannot endure with injustice.” May we have the courage and the conviction to confront injustice in our country and make Nigeria work for all of us. By so doing, we will also make Nigeria a light that shines for the rest of Africa and the world at large. That’s the agenda Uncle Yemi has promoted in all his exertions and that’s why we are all here to celebrate a man of honour.
Happy 80th birthday, Uncle Yemi. The struggle to make Nigeria work must continue.
•Being a paper delivered Dr Fayemi, CON, Visiting Professor, School of Global Politics, King’s College, University of London, England and a former governor of Ekiti State, at the Yemi Farounbi @80 Lecture in honour of Ambassador (Dr) Yemi Farounbi, organised by the Ibadan Discourse Group (Friends of Yemi Farounbi), at the Law Hub Hall, Ring Road, Ibadan, on 5 December, 2024.
