…Nigeria needs to decentralise or face implosion
By Adewale Adeoye
The dream of many progressive Nigerians is to see a decentralised Nigeria.
Over Centralisation even in business breeds ineptitude. A capitalist state cannot continue to run a command economy.
People who are conscious of development should also have a deep sense of comparative history.
A careful study of Western and Eastern Europe and the growing devolution of power and responsibilities to communities will do.
The world had fought two major wars in the search for people’s sovereignty. We need not fight a third one. Nigeria is one of the last colonial empires, brutally constructed to fit the mindset of imperial forces for their own good. Most prosperous countries un the world are smaller countries. A man with 200 uneducated, untrained children is but a lilliput standing near a man with 5 trained and hungry educated children.
We need a Federal Government that is unburden, with less funds and fewer responsibilities
Let communities with states and counties lead development while the Federal Government provides a conducive environment with limited functions.
We cannot continue to build a house from the rooftops.
We should be talking of South West, South East, North East, North West, South South Agriculture and Cooperative Boards not Federal Government Corporate Boards.
We don’t need a central control for Nigerian Universities for instance, like NUC which was a small dot in the Cabinet Office under Tafawa Balewa, but now a lord unto itself under which Great Ife, ABU, UNN that were built to be the engine boxes of developments in Western, Northern and Eastern Regions were seized at gun point by the Federal Govt. I’m aware that Great Ife was about to develop Atomic Energy, working with Pakistian in the 1970s. The FG stopped the project.
Western Regional TV was seized with all her intellectual, creative art, ancient tapes, manuals and other intellectual property worth billions of Naira.
The colonisation is also cultural.
The artefacts taken by the military from Ogedengbe of Ilesa including guns he imported from Hambourg in 1880, his war regalia, including the picture sent to him by the King of England after he refused a state visit by Her Majesty, the war weapons of Ibadan, Ekiti and Ijesa are kept at National Museum as we speak instead of a Yoruba Museum of War History. They were taken away by the military.
But in 1996 when war weapons were suddenly found in caves at Osogbo belonging to Uthman Dan Fodio soldiers, after their defeat in 1840s, they were hurried taken to the museum in Sokoto. Babangida who claimed his father came from Sullubawa of the Bagwatse stock in Sokoto gave the order. Th Guardian published the story.
Those items belong to Yoruba not Fulani.
These are history resources of inestimable value.
The future of the South West lay in Regional Integration and developments based on her values and civilisation.
Why should regions wait for FG to develop railways, regional banks, water ways, agriculture, poultry, fishing and all? We were told in the past they needed FG permit. Terrible.
If development is tied to the FG whims and instincts, the next time a reactionary step on that shoe, it would be very easy to destroy the pyramid from the apex (Abuja).
The greatest legacies across Nigeria were those monuments built in the era of Regional Autonomy.
Ife was built in 1965, the Western House, Cocoa House, Liberty Stadium in the 1950s, some 60 years after, all the Governments combined have not been able to build better monuments, in 60 years, and it took Awolowo only 8 years. What are we talking?
Power must devolve to the people, to communities, to indigenous peoples, to states and local authorities,
that is the emerging standards practice going on across democratic nations.
The idea of FG disbursing funds to LGs is crazy. It must never happen.
Over centralisation was why Eastern Europe broke up.
Wales and Scotland insist on greater autonomy even Quebec that has produced more Canadian Prime Ministers want autonomy.
Defining humanity from the prism of matter, economy alone is retrogressive. It is one of the flaws of Karl Marx. Man is not for bread alone.
Humanity has civilisations, culture, language, heritage, values that they which to defend and uphold and even die for them if necessary.
In China and Russia, there are autonomous (ethnic) communities based on culture and values different from Hans (China) and Russians in Russia.
Some of these autonomous communities in Russia even have their own Army.
Nigeria is currently fascist in nature, where resources, power and politics are concentrated in the centre.
Let Lagos, Calabar, Ondo manage their seaports. Let states own and manage their oil and other resources and pay tax to the centre.
Let states and regions control police. I am glad President Tinubu seems committed to state police. That will be a radical intervention.
Overcentralisation is the root cause of corruption and one-dimensional development.
It pays some people. It is an inexhaustible pot of soup for some people.
Afflictions of Nigeria
The three afflictions of Nigeria are: The Feudal System; Western Control of our Political Economy through IMF/World Bank etc and thirdly the strangulation of Nigeria by the reactionary arm of the Military class.
The last one, military control is local. Since 1966, the reactionary Nigerian Army has produced all Nigerian Presidents or Heads of State until February 2023.
There are only seven actors: Gen Obasanjo, Gen Buhari, Gen Theophilus Danjuma, Gen Ibrahim Babangida, Gen Abdulsalami, Gen Sanni Abacha and Gen Gowon.
These 7 Generals were also the main actors of military coups since July 1966. They either
rule directly or through their proxies.
There have been violent but failed attempts to display these musketeers. The first was in 1976, February 13 when the Middle Belt, led by Lt Col Bukar Dimka led a revolt against these elements. His groups, which represented Middle Belt ethnic resistance, was brutally crushed.
The second attempt was in 1979, few months before the handover to Shehu Shagari. Adekunle Bullet, a Middle rank officer from Lagos State led a coup but it was also thwarted. I was the Defence Correspondent of The Guardian when I got this privileged information at the Defence Headquarters. It means there is intra-class struggle within this backward military wing and inter-class struggle within the military as an institution itself. The backward wing has always vanquished other contenders.
This corrupt, savage wing manipulates and distorts the Constitution and are the Knights that rule the machinery that exploits and exports oil and natural resources. They and their agents locally and internationally, including their multinational economic frontiers, need to be uprooted and destroyed, for Nigeria to be free.
The 1979 plotters, led by Adekunle bullet, from downtown Lagos, against Obasanjo were arrested but later set free since Obasanjo was just few months to handing over to Shagari. That coup was never reported in the media.
The third attempt within the military was April 22, 1990. Major Gideon Orkar, Major Mukoro, Col Nyiam on behalf of frustrated ethnic, indigenous nations, led a revolutionary attack on these reactionary hegemons, but that attempt was also defeated.
This reactionary military wing, nearly planned another coup last year when they lost as they did after Abiola won in 1993. That was why Babangida said the “Military” didn’t want Abiola.
There was actually no intention to handover in 2023, save for security reports that laid bare the consequences which might make this old, savage force to lose all its consolidated gains over the past more than 50 years.
These seven soldiers and the retrogressive force they represent within the ruling class have produced Nigerian Presidents or Heads of State since 1966.
They produced Gowon, Murtala, Obasanjo (twice), Shehu Shagari, Buhari (twice), Babangida (almost twice), Ernest Sonekan, Gen Abdulsami, Shehu Yardua, and Goodluck Jonathan.
In 2024, having crossed the hurdle of electoral control by the retrogressive military arm, the next move is to defeat Western hegemony through IMF/World Bank chains tied on Nigeria and also the Feudal system, the Caliphate, (which collaborates with the reactionary Army wing), those who claim to represent God on earth, do nothing yet manipulate, deceive and control the poor masses who they use as negotiating puns, even arming them in form of bandits and insurgents, using them to negotiate and blackmail any regime that fails to knee and awe before them. That is why they are telling Nigeria to “negotiate” with them. I the real senses they are telling Nigeria to sustain and not to threaten the timeless privileges of this primordial political interests that have muzzle and trample on the economic and political freedom of all Nigerians.
While the military represented the armed wing of the reactionary system controlled by the Generals, the bandits, insurgents and armed herdsmen represent the armed Wing of the Caliphate, all fund and armed instruments of power designed to keep Nigeria stunted and keep Nigeria in the red light district of global affairs.
It’s only time than can tell if Nigeria can overcome the Caliphate and the Imperialist afflictions.
To uplift Nigeria from the cesspool, one sure way is to decentralise power and responsibilities which must go to the people. This will lead to plurality of development and not a One Dimension state.
Nigeria needs to SHRINK or SINK.
