Nation building is a task given to a society that deems itself worthy of being called a nation and our beloved Republic has reached a point where we, as citizens, must begin to ask the questions that have long been avoided. We begin by questioning the meaning of the concept that we are undertaking. I believe that restructuring means the complete destruction (obviously) of the old system and building a new one. In the context of the Nigerian situation, it means building a system that allows Nigerians to truly flourish in their homeland, with access to the commonwealth and the protection of their lives and property from those who would seek to take, both home and abroad.
There is a need, therefore, to break down particular ideas we will discuss here as simply (and as quickly as possible) and I am certain that as we connect from one area to another, we will find answers, previously obscured.
The logical jump off point is the definition of a nation. How can we begin with something so simple and self-evident? It is easy to take for granted, concepts that have existed side by side with us throughout our entire lives. Unless we go through a sudden, and often ‘violent’, experience we never really question these concepts. The journey we have embarked on requires that we take absolutely nothing for granted. Nigeria is supposedly a nation, one that I assume we want to see on an upward trajectory, if we do not conceptualize what a nation is, how will we know what we want to build and how best to build it? Thus, it is imperative that we begin there.
Dictionary.com defines a nation as, “ a large body of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own”. Merriam-Webster defines the same as, “ a community of people composed of one or more nationalities and possessing a more or less defined territory and government”.
These seem simple enough. Nigeria is a large body of people (depending on who you ask [and what you definition of ‘large’ is] we are anywhere between 120 and 200 million). Nigeria is associated with a particular territory. Nigerians are somewhat conscious of our unity and we possess a government of our own. But, Nigeria is a country of more than 200 ethnic nationalities. The Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba tribes could very easily lay claim to being called nations as well. They satisfy two out of three of the parameters, all three of them have had designs on secession and the members of each tribe are more loyal to their tribes than to Nigeria. This applies to the other tribes in Nigeria as well, smaller tribes (in population) but no less proud and no less illustrious than the others. Thus, Nigeria is a nation of nations.
Nigeria has 371 tribes (Vanguard) which might mean that Nigeria is a nation of 371 nations. We have arrived at an obvious problem, haven’t we? Nigerian history is littered with the interactions of the Big Three tribes i.e. Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba and how these interactions have more or less defined the trajectory of the country e.g. Constitution arguments, the Civil War, Zoning agreements and so on. However, if you venture deeper into our vast history, you will find the other tribes laying claims as well.
It is partly because of these non-Big Three tribes that we have 36 states instead of three regions. While the major tribes competed for dominance in newly created Federal Republic, they had a long history of oppressing the minorities in their region.The Igbos oppressed, the Yorubas oppressed and so did the Hausas and they did not want to let their dominance (in their respective regions) go. And so, the so — called minority tribes clamored for their independence from the oppression of the big three, the demon of tribal-nationalism rears its head.
In addition to the tribes that exist in our Republic, Nigeria is home to different religions as well: Christianity, Islam and Native Religions like Ifa worship. There are also Jews, Buddhists and Atheists as well. And these religions cut across ethnic groups: there are Northern Christians as well as Souther Muslims. Southern and Northern Atheists, Southern and Northern Native worshipers.
It appears that even though we have defined what a nation is, that particular definition is not satisfactory enough for our purposes. Nigeria may be a nation but it does not behave as one. We may be a union, but we are not united.
In a country with such differing peoples, there must be one fundamental thing that this exercise will hinge on. One thing that can bind such a diverse country together. Guibernau tells us that awareness, territory, history and culture, language and religion all matter in the formation of a nation (and of a national identity) where awareness is “a human group conscious of forming a community”. Our bond cannot be territory because even though all the tribes exist in one geographical location, they are more tightly bonded to their specific ethnic locations and there is very little migration and inter tribal mixing. It cannot be culture either because the culture of each tribe is distinct. Amongst the Igbos, culture differs even from place to place. It cannot possibly be language either because, like culture, it differs from place to place even within the major tribes. Religion is completely out of the picture as well for obvious reasons, one being that we have quite a number of beliefs in Nigeria.
Of the five essential things that forms the definition we currently have of a nation, the Nigerian nation seems to only have one: awareness. By undertaking this task, we are clearly showing ourselves to possess the desire to create a society. In a way, perhaps Nigeria is lucky. We lack the homogeneity to form a country like our distant cousins in the western hemisphere. Many nations that exist today are bound together by a single religion, language, race, culture and the current immigration crisis of the modern world has put many national identities under some pressure.
Because of the diversity of our Republic, we cannot afford to be like them. We simply must find something else to be the unifying factor for our people. Seeing as we can not rely on location, culture, religion or language, it appears that we must derive our first principles from the world of ideas. I believe this to be the highest form of nationhood. Ernest Regan, in his epic 1882 address, tries to raise the concept of nation beyond the basic backbones that we had earlier mentioned.
“A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things which, properly speaking, are really one and the same constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is the past, the other is the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the desire to continue to invest in the heritage that we have jointly received.” …
“A nation is therefore a great solidarity constituted by the feeling of sacrifices
made and those that one is still disposed to make. It presupposes a past but is reiterated in the present by a tangible fact: consent, the clearly expressed desire to continue a common life. A nation’s existence is (please excuse the metaphor) a daily plebiscite, just as an individual’s existence is a perpetual affirmation of life.”
Here, Ernest conceptualizes the two pillars that form this new nationhood: history and consent. The latter is present in virtually every democratic document that exists: the consent of the governed, that is, the nation is reaffirmed on a daily basis by members of that nation whether or not they will continue to remain as members of that nation. According to Ernest, a nation is in a perpetual state of ‘is’, because everyday we must continue to perfect our union. In order for us to go through this consistent process, we must have a vision in mind, an idea that keeps us going through the good days and the bad.
That is why I believe we simply have no choice but to resort to the world of ideas. Using the twin pillars of nationhood that Ernest visualizes for us, it is clear that we have a common history. We were conquered by the same people then united, administrated over and then given independence together. As a people, we share a common history in many ways, even though our paths differ in others. Fate has brought us together and has given us that common history, a platform that only we can decide what to do with.
Consent, however, is something that Nigeria has never truly built on. If two people are making an agreement between themselves, both of them must consent to the agreement before it can be said to be valid. This means that in the eyes of that agreement, both of them were free to sign and equal under that agreement i.e. they will both be treated equally as the agreement dictates. Consent presupposes equality. When Genghis Khan went on his conquering missions, he did not require the consent of those he conquered because in his eyes, he had ‘won’ them.
This same principle applies to the concept of slavery and many other concepts as well. But it is in democracy that it is truly enshrined. Nigeria has not had much luck with consent. In the pre-colonial era, many of the regions in Nigeria were monarchies by design. On some level, equality existed in principle, the Gods were supposed to punish those that had committed evil acts equally but in reality, we know that a disproportional level of punishment was handed down to those without power and the rulers derived their right to rule from the Gods not the people. During the colonial era, after much war and conquest, there was hardly any consent. The British considered us subjects and certainly did not require our consent in taking decisions that affected us directly.
Even though we inched ever closer to the promise of independence, we had precious little experience with the concept of consent. Freedom and equality eluded us simply because we had no practice with it and thus the ideals which should have been at the foundation of our nation had been left to rust. We simply do not understand the concepts of freedom and equality. A cursory look at our history and it is filled with attempts of one group trying to outwit the other(s). Politics is normal in every country but we must be guided by certain principles and those principles simply do not exist for us.
It was that very consent that was broken in 1967 when Ojukwu announced that the South Eastern people had withdrawn their consent from participating in the new Nigerian nation. Our union was as it is now, young and fragile. Our history had not yet been fully formed and all the little consent that had held us together was brutalized in 1966 and finally destroyed in 1967. We have spent the last 51 years trying (and failing) to create something of a semblance of unity.
Nigeria is a union of more than 200 nations but if we must form the nation, I mean truly form one, then in addition to our common history, we must build our society on the principles of equality and freedom. That means that any attempt to structure or design the kind of nation we desire then every action, every law, every institution must incorporate these ideals within them.
A nation, therefore, is a community of people bound together by a common history who constantly reaffirm their commitment to a society based on liberty, equality and justice. In a Nigeria, this is most important as there are many different people, all fighting for prosperity, glory or even merely survival. We must encapsulate these principles in our new world, and hold ourselves steadfast in the application of them as we attempt to build our institutions.
By virtue of being born in the geographical location, I believe that we have a responsibility that anchors us to the African continent, and more specifically, the Nigerian Republic. It is a responsibility not just for ourselves but for the other participants of our republic. One that, if we do not take up, we simply hand down to our descendants, like a curse, a most unpleasant baton. Man is a social being and this necessitates the creation of a society that allows us to form these unshakable social bonds and encourages each one to flourish in their pursuit of happiness.
Nigeria is a country with a history of many negatives. We were conceptualized at the wrong time, conceived at the wrong time and handed control at the wrong time. We managed to go from independent to civil war in 6 years (from republic to civil war in 3) and set not just ourselves but a significant chunk of sub-saharan Africa back almost a hundred years. And yet fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like (Lemony Snicket).
So here we are, 50 odd years later, still battling the demons of the colonial era and the era before fighting battles we did not ask for, wars that did not ask for our permission before descending on us. We are faced with overwhelming nature of change. Humans seek saviors, life is harder and we make it even harder for ourselves and so we seek relief from the burdens that have encumbered us. We seek, amongst ourselves, men and women of charisma and grace, gifted by all the Gods with the ability to move us by the thousands, to capture our imaginations and motivate us in ways we never, on our own, thought we could. Cast your eyes across the Atlantic and you will find them, behemoths of history, men and women who tower above the rest, who still inspire centuries after their demise and who will likely never be forgotten.
We are no different, we seek these heroes in our desire to mould our nation into a better society, to use them as the beams that form the very foundations of our society and each time we have tried, our society has crumbled. The Buddha admonishes saying, “ No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path”.
Our republic is broken. It has been broken since the very first day and will remain in its state until we recognize that it is our job, and no one else’s, to fix it. We cannot merely fix the system we have now, we must destroy it and build a newer, better system from the ashes.
Restructuring has always been an issue for the Fourth Republic. Many people were unhappy with the way the 1999 Constitution structured the Federal Republic and reading the Constitution and more importantly, experiencing how the republic panned out over the years since then has revealed those fears to be well founded. Unsurprisingly, the cries for constitutional amendments have reached such a level that many candidates for the upcoming [2019] presidential and senatorial elections have had to include it in their manifestos/promises.
The current Vice President has asked that Nigerians explain what they mean by restructuring and while I will not be revealing my thoughts on his statement, I believe that it is important that we, as enlightened Nigerians, begin to have this conversation amongst ourselves so that we can better critique the ideas that politicians will invariably throw at us.
In defining a nation as a community of people bound together by a common history who constantly reaffirm their commitment to a society based on liberty, equality and justice, we have therefore discovered what could be the foundation of our republic.
There are two things that bind a nation: history and consent. A shared history is important because it gives the people of that nation the emotional connection necessary to even desire a union. When people can look into their past, seeing the trials and tribulations that they have gone through together can sometimes be enough to see the nation through testing times.
However, history is never enough. This is because although history is a strong bond, people die and memories fade. Even the most powerful, unifying moments in that nation’s history often become nothing but vague memories of a distant past. That is why consent is important.
Because the members of that nation will continually change, each new generation must renew the social contract between themselves and between those that govern them. They must consistently, tacitly, consent to the participation of that union. To do this means that all members of that nation must at once be at liberty to do so and each person must have equal say in the affairs of the union. In order to preserve these inherent rights, the nation must institutionalize justice in our government. All decisions must take into account the liberty and equality of every member of that nation and must be justified by those principles.
It is important therefore that we take a moment to expand on these that we have chosen as our first principles. Not merely because we must truly understand these principles but because as we begin to understand what kind of government we will establish, a full understanding of these principles will be essential in the establishment of our institutions.
Humans are born free. At the moment of birth and throughout our entire lives, we are able to do anything we feel like doing and the only real boundary on our desires is our ability to make our desires into reality. Liberty is the first gift that nature gives us. However, humans are also social beings. We crave contact with other members of our species and when we cannot get that, we even attempt to gain companionship from other species, what we call pets.
In our desire to form closer bonds, we created societies to facilitate these desires. Social interaction is not limitless, in order to truly experience the beauty of it, humans have to consciously temper their liberty into acceptable forms of contact and interaction. This is necessary to foster human cooperation, a component of human society that has been the backbone of our lightening quick rise to the top of the animal kingdom. In a mere hundred thousand years, we are the undisputed Lords of the earth and much of our potential still seems untapped.
However, for human society to flourish, each member of that society must be allowed to live life as best as they can such that they have a platform to truly reach their potential. All humans have the liberty to do as they please and we are all equal in this. We all share the same ability to do whatever our hearts desire. In a society, we must curb this liberty. Social interaction and human cooperation is necessary for the continued survival of the human group. More than that, it is food for our soul. In a way, our interactions allow us to grow in ways that we would not have on our own, seeking better ways of living and interactions in pursuit of the promise of happiness.
In order to fully enjoy this blissful promise, we curb our liberty in order to ensure that we do not break the dynamics that we already have. We are all equal with respect to our shared humanity, our goals and desires and our ability to bring our desires to fruition may exist in us to varying degrees but their existence within ourselves is something we share. Our equality is not one of sameness, as no two beings are the same. Rather it is the commonality of our essence.
Essence is the core of all things, it is the set of properties that fundamentally form any entity. Humans share a common essence, it is this essence (ouisa) that forms the foundation of human equality. We derive our common humanity from this essence and it is this equality that allows us to fully express the principle in our form of government.
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal”
As long as humans exist in societies, power always exists. Government is one way we attempt to ensure that the power is not at the detriment of others. In a monarchy, the power is vested in the person of the king or queen, who usually had a divine, unchallengeable right to rule. Monarchies subvert the natural law of human equality and even worse, it does a disservice to human cooperation (which is bad for intellectual and social development). But they exist because power must always be held and the fewer number of people with power, the more corrupting its influence.
Even within the system of monarchy, many civilizations designed power to be spread over more people: council of chiefs, council of elders, advisory councils and so on. It is obvious that the responsibility of having all power vested in one person was far too much to bear and we continually sought ways to spread power.
Then John Locke came and decimated that idea of monarchies forever. John refuted the idea of the divine right of kings and argued that all persons are endowed with natural rights to life, liberty, and property and, most importantly, that rulers who fail to protect those rights may be removed by the people, by force if necessary.
It had taken us thousands of years, the death and impoverishment of billions, but we had finally come to realize something that was right in front of our eyes the entire time. Power is not vested in the sovereign, power must be held by the people. By virtue of our natural equality, we are vested with a power (the citizen’s collective) that far supersedes the power of any government.
To be sure, it is the power we have as a collective that gives us the authority to construct and deconstruct governments, institutions and constitutions. To ensure that our principles of equality and liberty are properly instituted in every facet of our nation, we add the final member of the trinity: justice.
Why justice? As we have seen, although equality and liberty are our natural born rights, it is easy for abuse to set in. While monarchs were vested with power in order to protect their citizens, more often than not, the monarchs of history were tyrants. Justice is the treatment of each according to their situation in pursuit of the correction of evil. Then therefore, the necessity of justice as a founding principle is important because it will guide the process of lawmaking and ensure that if (or when) the rights of equality and liberty are threatened or even taken away, members of our society can always seek relief and the restoration of their rights.
Slowly but surely, our nation is being formed. We have come to realize what a nation is (the ideal) and consequently the principles upon which our nation will be built (liberty, equality and justice). However, every nation must be governed and our next task is to figure out how. What will be the structure of our government? How much power should each of the levels of government have? We are approaching the more technical details of our subject matter and although this is merely a summary on the subject of restructuring, on certain occasions I may have to spend substantial time expanding on concepts that I feel may not be completely clear. This is in order to ensure that as we move further along, there will be little confusion.
Having established what our founding principles are (and I hope the necessity of that explanation is evident), we finally must express the superstructure of our new Republic and what form it should take.
Structuring a country can be a particularly difficult task, there are a few questions that need to be answered with respect to how we constitute our new Republic. What form of government shall we use? What are the levels and divisions of government? What are the tasks each arm/level government will be given? What are the powers each arm/level will given as well? These and many other questions will be the final subject or our inquiry.
As stated much earlier, the nature of our chosen government is the constitutional republican democracy. It is in this form that there is a recognition of the citizen’s collective power. We vest powers in our founding documents and our constitution as the supreme reference for our society. To determine what the different levels of our government should be, it is instructive that we take a look at the current ways we interact.
There are different levels of interaction of humanity. Human social groups are the necessary areas of demarcation for our different levels of government. From the the family group to the neighborhood, from the community to the city, from the state to the region to the nation, these are the different areas that we should attach representatives to such that they are able to make decisions as efficiently as possible. However, I have identified the layers of social interactions from the individual to the nation as such:
individual — family/friends — neighbourhood — community — local government area — city — state — regional — nation
Each level here deals with issues peculiar to that level. For example, a community cannot have the power to declare war on another country and the national government cannot tell a community when to fix their roads. Different levels require different abilities and have to deal with different issues. What plagues on community might be non-existent in another. And so the communities should be able to deal with their own specific issues. Issues that transcend one level of government should be elevated to the level above them. National issues (like military, health, rights and education) should be set on the national stage. States have specific issues to deal with. For example, how to develop their land, how to get their people productive, internal security and conflict resolution and so on. Local issues are more immediate: financial help, local security, kids playing truant, holes in the road, and so on.
The local level seems to be the most extensive as it appears that it will contain community, local government area and city. The state will be a collection of cities. The nation should effectively remain with the six geopolitical zones that we currently have (North-West, North-East, North-Central, South-West, South-East, South-South). Effectively giving us three serious levels of government: National/Federal, State, Local (which contains community, LGA and city).
Having settled on what the different levels of government should be, what then should be the arms of said government? We derive our modern ideas of the Separation of Powers from the impeccable Montesquieu, who recognized that concentrating powers in one person would, by default, lead to tyranny. And I, like millions before me, am forced to be in agreement. Government actions are largely threefold: writing laws, execution of those laws and judgments over breaches of the law. All government actions fall under one or all of these three things and the Montesquieu, understanding this, gave us the legislative, judiciary and executive arms of government.
In the current Nigerian constitution, there are effectively two levels of government: National and State, the Local government is merely an administrative thing but remains a part of the State government. Our current constitution also vest virtually all powers within the National government. Most of public funds remain under the control of the Federal (or National) government. The National Assembly makes all the applicable laws and sets broad (or even specific) national policy.
This is unwieldy and vests too much power in the level of government that is far removed from the people. There is too much control of local resources, local funds by the national government. Having earlier stated that each level of government should deal with issues within its purview, then the current situation is untenable. Considering that local and state governments first have to deal with local issues then it is clear that local and state governments must have more governing control over their respective areas, resources and people.
In lawmaking, each level should be responsible for their own areas but the local level should have the most powers of oversight to ensure that there is adequate avenue for accountability.
We have identified the areas of concern for the local (community, city, LGA) level. Infrastructural maintenance, policing, oversight of representatives, courts, regulation, business rejuvenation are the major things that come to mind.
The state level should then be free to deal with most of everything else. Within the context of our Republic, a state should be treated virtually like a sovereign nation. However there are areas that should be within the purview of the state and within the purview of the national.
For example, if the national assembly passes a law that protects the right for women to have abortions, a state assembly conceivably cannot pass a law that says they cannot. This cannot conceivably be a state’s rights issue as women cannot have different fundamental rights in different states. On the flip side, the National Assembly cannot pass a law that compels a state to do certain things. For example, if the state wants to practice a form of socialism, the National Assembly cannot conceivably force that state to practice capitalism as that is a specific state issue. Rights are national but states can give legal privileges.
The powers granted to each arm of government must be strictly enforced and expansion of constitutional powers must be made to be difficult except in the face of the most extraneous circumstances. The Executive powers should be held by Council of Governors (the state divided by the six regions of that state: North-West, North-East, North-Central/North-North (depending on the geography of the state), South-West, South East, South-South/South-Central. Each region of that state should then elect a representative to the executive of which there will be an annual/bi-annual rotating Chairmanship for six years where every year, a different person is the Chairman for that year.
The executive is responsible for setting the policy direction of the state/national level. It is empowered to implement legislation, develop and implement policy, direct and co-ordinate the work of the government departments as called for by the Constitution or legislation. The task is so broad that that is why having a single Governor/President in charge of the executive seems mindless to me. Each person elected to the small council at the state/national levels would then be put in charge of specific executive functions and have full oversight over those areas. But the general direction of policy will be set by the council itself. So one can have oversight functions of Transportation, Power and Environment while another can have oversight of Finance, Housing and Education and so on.
The legislative is responsible for writing the laws the govern the people under their area of influence (state/national). They also have oversight functions over the executive and must establish powerful independent institutions that can perform checks and balances as necessary. For example, the Independent National Electoral Commission cannot be vested under just the executive or the legislature. Furthermore, accountability for the legislative must be paramount in the establishment of our republic.
For example, if a Senator representing Lagos West (an example) votes for a bill that supports, for example, the continued emission of CO2 gases and the citizens of that area do not appreciate that then representatives in that area should conceivably be able to veto that vote by voting in the opposite direction. This is one option for accountability, another is that instead of the Senator going to individual people in an area (Lagos West is a huge place) or receiving multiple calls from hundreds of thousands of people, the local representatives can have oversight powers over their state and national representatives so that the people only have to bombard one person and the effect reverberates. I prefer this second option because it gives the people far more control over their representatives than they currently do and prevents the interference. Local representatives can also institute a process to recall any representative that is seen to be misbehaving.
There is a temptation to attempt to insulate representatives from the (uneducated) Nigerians so that they can make unpopular decisions without too much repercussions but the temptation for abuse will be too great. Rather, educational should not only a constitutional right but it must always be the highest allocated and funded piece of the national, state and local budgets.
The two previous arms deal with the establishment of liberty and equality and I have tried to enforce these ideals as I abstractly create this new structure. The legislative and executive create laws and policy that navigate these two powerful ideals and making sure that they are never endangered. The judiciary’s job, however, is to ensure that if an injustice is ever perpetrated, if a right is ever breached, they are available to correct it at virtually every level of government.
We have then arrived at the conclusion of what has been an extensive exercise and yet it is anything but exhaustive. There are details which we have not even remotely considered like the specific powers that each arm should get, should lawmakers write opinion pieces accompanying their law drafting so that future lawmakers and judges will have an idea of why they wrote what they wrote. What constitutes a state’s right issue? What are the checks and balances of the government? I fear that I am constrained by the digital space and cannot adequately answer these questions but what I have tried to do is enlighten us on the fundamentals of nation-building and an base understanding of the restructuring conversation. Our young generation will be at the forefront of a redesign for a new Republic and the least we can do is be informed.
