4th January, 2012
It is no longer in doubt that President Jonathan Goodluck has by action and inaction brought Nigeria to an avoidable gridlock. A combustible cocktail of Boko Haram insurgency and mass protest over the removal of a non-existent fuel subsidy translates to political instability. The dire implications of loss of massive man-hours, temporary disruption of the already epileptic production and immense opportunities for petty crime stare us in the face.
As desirable as it may seem, let us not waste more time on the blame game. Or debate on whether Nigerians should have voted for Jonathan or PDP or South-Southerner. Forget the ifs- if we had voted for Ribadu or Buhari. Neither rumination nor reminiscence can stem the tide of civil disorder that is on us now.
What is most urgent is that we have to decide if it still makes sense to save what is left of Jonathan’s Nigeria or whether we should just allow it to disintegrate in the hope that a Sovereign National Conference of ethnic representatives can work out a very loose federation or simply allow component units to embrace each other and bid farewell. Unless the leaders of the political parties and ethnic nationalities meet urgently to manage this transition, a military putsch is what the Nigerian formula indicates.
There is no reason why Nigeria should not be. Her size, population and diversity make us proud. Her infinite potential as the greatest black nation in the world fill us with hope. But she is badly managed and badly led. Pushed from feudal economy to commercial capitalism by colonial force, the nation-state cannot manage the contradictions of primitive accumulation and imperialist domination unless it enthrones industrial capital.
Yet industrial capital, established through capital formation in the commanding heights of the economy, is the compelling furnace that transmutes the almajiri and all other vestiges and remnants of feudalism which stall the progress of the State and complicate its contradictions into the working class. It is the working class and its twin-the industrialists, who hold the key to the survival of the Nigerian state.
Now that we have failed to complete this transition 52 years after independence and are still mired in the mess that has failed to produce a messiah, reason persuades that we conclude that the concept of central government has failed woefully to address the concerns and hopes of the constitutional conferences from the 50s to the 90s.
The rational, practical and pragmatic alternative is to return the powers of the central government to where it came from in the first place- the regional governments. Luckily, a six zonal system- South West, South East, South-South, North West, North Central, North East- is already in the consciousness of the people. This format aligns with the principles and recommendations of the Willinks Commission on the fears of the minorities.
Nigeria would be a loose federation of regions and the president would be nominal, elected by a college of regional delegates to perform ceremonial functions as it occurred under the Independence constitution. All central institutions, including police, the armed forces, civil service, the legislature and the paramilitary agencies will be regionalised. States will operate as sub-divisions of regions and act in accordance with regional agenda. The regional legislature will elect a premier.
The historical fact is that the industrialization of capitalism moved at a faster pace under the regional governments of the First Republic with the introduction of tax holidays, industrial schemes and successful public/private partnerships. The crisis of primitive accumulation at the root of the struggles of the elite for power could be contained by the economic expansion in the regions but for the cocky intervention of military adventurers.
However tempting the impending civil disorder will be, any attempt by any faction of the military to ride on the crisis to execute a putsch will roll back Nigeria’s progress by another half a century. Indeed, the military has exhausted its potentials as a redeeming institution under military and civil dispensation and can only regain its respect and professional pride by supporting the programme for a Nigeria that can work.
I hope President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan reads this. I hope it strikes the right chord within his innermost shell. It is no longer an open secret that luck has run out on him. He presides over a state in tatters, tottering on the brink of disaster. But there is a silver lining in the dark cloud. From this zero level, he can still be a hero. He can supervise the re-configuration of a workable Nigeria.
President Mikhail Gorbachev was once in his shoes. The Soviet Union had greater global and ideological responsibilities than Nigeria. From the socialist revolution of 1917, the Communist Party forced a feudal economy through collectivization to industrialization but much of the capital formation that could aid economic liberation was deployed to military defence and superpower rivalry. Gorbachev took a long look at a nation that no longer worked and unscrambled the state to rescue the citizens.
To President Goodluck’s advisers, the path I present asks the president to take the hemlock. But it is a path that unlocks the gridlock that his “luck†has given all of us. I agree that it requires courage and sacrifice. At critical junctures of Nigerian history, the men of the Niger Delta have always proven to be men of history. Isaac Boro, Ken Saro-Wiwa. Can we now add Jonathan Ebele Goodluck?
•Bamigbetan wrote in from Lagos