Atlantic Post

Defining the Restructuring of Nigeria: Anything Less than the Wholesale Decommissioning of Nigeria’s Unitary Constitution Guarantees that Nigeria Will Collapse

(Being a NINAS Rejoinder to the video clip on the imperative of Restructuring by someone in Kano, now making the rounds on the internet:

The purpose of this Rejoinder is to provide clarity to the public regarding the misleading postulations, prescriptions and sophistry of this Speaker who on the surface, may seem to be an advocate of an Equitable Federal Union for Nigeria.

He may be making ‘some good sense’ to those who do not understand what went with the “Federation of Nigeria” and therefore, what needs to be done, to reverse and remediate the disaster Nigeria has become.

It is now past debate that Nigeria was derailed completely from the point in 1967 when the Northern Establishment, using its Military Wing, decapitated the Federal Constitutional Structure that was negotiated and agreed as the basis of the Nigerian Union at Independence in 1960, AND imposed by a Succession of Decrees, a choking Unitary Constitutional Structure consolidated and codified as ‘1999 Constitution of Nigeria’. 

But to those who understand what went wrong with Nigeria, it would be tantamount to dishonesty, (or ignorance) to suggest that Nigeria should now build up itself on the warped architecture of Six Geopolitical Zones, 36-States, 774-LGs, 68-Item Exclusive List, which all emerged by Decrees, through the 33-Year Caliphate Bloody Brigandage between 1966 to 1999, saddling us with a totally unworkable Unitary Union of 812 Governments which must be financed every month from the Treasury made up of the forcefully hijacked resources of the erstwhile Federating Regions.

Anyone hoping to retain the Nigerian Union currently erected upon the untenable foundation of the Unitary Constitution of Death that saddles us with aforementioned Monstrous Structure of 812 Governments, is simply hallucinating. 

More than any other cost factor, the monumental financial burden of funding 812 Governments, along with thousands of Bureaucracies operated by those Governments (now in an anomalous three tiers by virtue of the Supreme Court Judgment on Local Governments Autonomy), is the Chief-Reason for the Humongous Cost of Governance in Nigeria, only compounded by the atrociously hefty salaries and allowances of officials.

The suggestion that Nigeria should be Restructured into a workable and equitable Federal Union must be accompanied by Proposition for a viable, Time-bound mechanism for navigating Nigeria from its current Distress Situation to the Pathway of Redemption.

This is where the NINAS Union Reconfiguration Propositions come in, with Clear-Cut Transitioning Prescriptions for Union Reconstruction.

For the avoidance of doubt and confusion, regarding what exactly constitutes the Restructuring that is being mouthed all over the place in terms of WHAT needs to change and by what Process; let us examine a July 2024 Clarification by NINAS Secretariat under the title: 

“THE UNITARY NIGERIA DEFINED BY THE FRAUDULENT “1999 CONSTITUTION” IS A DISPUTED PROJECT AND WILL CRASH UNCEREMONIOUSLY UNLESS WE FIND THE DISCIPLINE TO ADDRESS THE GRAVE CONSTITUTIONAL GRIEVANCES NOW DRIVING THE UNION TO ITS DEMISE”

Here is Full Text of the Clarification:

“As the Countrywide Cacophony on the “Restructuring of Nigeria” reach new decibels and as Angry Debates rend the air about the Grave Constitutional Grievances of Nigeria’s Constituent Components, it has become necessary to dissect and bring clarity to the issues driving the Debates and the Trenchant Demands for the Constitutional Reconstruction of Nigeria which has now acquired the street parlance of ”RESTRUCTURING” 

Amidst the unending confusion that trails these Debates and Demands for Restructuring, the three Main Issues that seek resolution relate to 

(a) the Question of UNION, 

(b) the Question of the STRUCTURE of the Federation and 

(c) the Question of the SYSTEM of Government. 

These three relate to WHAT needs to be addressed; but there is also the Question of HOW which relates to the Sequence in which those three Main Issues can be addressed.  

As to be expected on a subject as complex as the Constitutional Arrangements of a Diverse Country like Nigeria, there is substantial deficit of clarity amongst many of those leading these Union Debates and Discussions.  

It is in the light of the foregoing that the following clarifications have become necessary: 

In terms of sequence, let it be known that we must first deal with:  

(1) the overriding Question of UNION (i.e. Have WE, the diverse ethnic constituent components of Nigeria Agreed to be One Political Union?) AND then: 

(2) the Question of the STRUCTURE of the Federation (i.e. in what Formations have we AGREED to relate as one Political Union – Federal or Unitary, who are the Federating Units, how many tiers of Government and what are the Power Relations between the tiers?), before we can get to: 

(3) the issue of SYSTEM of Government (i.e. whether we prefer Presidential or Parliamentary System).  

Those who wish to understand the three Questions above and the sequence in which they must be addressed, will do well to examine the three egregiously False Claims in the Preamble to the 1999 Constitution which asserts:

(i) that “We the Peoples of the Federal Republic of Nigeria” (i.e. the Ethnic Constituent Components of Nigeria) 

(ii) “Having Firmly and Solemnly Resolved to Live in Unity as One Indivisible and Indissoluble Sovereign Nation” (i.e. to form ourselves into One Political Union in Perpetuity), and  

(iii) “Do Hereby Make, Enact and Give To Ourselves, The Following Constitution” (i.e. that we therefore codify our Union Agreement as discussed into the Document we now call “the Constitution”). 

With the three issues highlighted in this note of clarifications, it is easy to understand the contention of those who insist that under the Fraud labeled “the 1999 Constitution”, We Do Not Have a Union.

It is also easy to understand the contention of those who demand the immediate Restructuring of Nigeria or the NINAS that formally declared a Union Dispute by way of the December 16, 2020 Constitutional Force Majeure. 

For the same reasons, it is easy to understand the absurdity of talking about a “New Governance Model” e.g. by Akin Fapohunda (which basically translates to the tertiary Question of System of Government) without first settling the Question of Union and then after that the Question of Structure of Federation.  

Unless we find the discipline to soberly dissect these issues and the honesty to engage them, the guaranteed outcome is that Unitary Nigeria will collapse unceremoniously under the weight of its own contradictions, with catastrophic consequences for the trapped victims of the Failed Lugardian Experiment of 1914.