NIGERIA: LEADERSHIP FAILURE, PROBLEMS & THE IMPERATIVE OF RESTRUCTURING
Background:
A
critical review of the leadership styles of past and present Nigerian leaders
reveals a common trend – ineptitude in decision making. In agreement with this
assertion, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, the leader of Nigeria’s largest church said,
“Leadership is at the core of our problems in this nation.” At his age and with
the many years of leadership experience of a large organisation under his belt,
we would do well to take him seriously. Also, at a meeting with Governor Bello
of Kogi State recently, Alhaji Muhammadu Sanusi II, the Emir of Kano, is
reported by the Nation newspaper to have said that there is failure in some
sectors because of the inability of leaders to set their priorities right and
that he urged the elite to wake up to their leadership roles.
When
faced with urgent and important issues, the country’s leaders have not been
able to take appropriate and timely decisions. Once an urgent or an important
issue is poorly attended to, or is not to at tended to at all, it soon becomes a
national emergency that both the leaders and the led pay dearly for. This
assertion was recently corroborated when Governor Kashim Shettima of Bornu State
blamed his predecessor’s inaction for the rise of Boko Haram, which has cost us
about 100,000 human lives and is estimated to be the world’s deadliest
terrorist group today.
The Problem:
American’s
34th President, Dwight Eisenhower, captured the imperative of timely and
appropriate decision-making in what has come to be known in academic cycles as the
Eisenhower Principle or the Eisenhower Matrix. The Principle recommends that a
decision maker places his tasks in one of four quadrants. The four quadrants
are labelled (1) Important/Urgent, (2) Important/Not
Urgent, (3) Not Important/Urgent, and (4) Not Important/Not Urgent. Quadrant (1) tasks should be attended to
first and on time. Tasks in Quadrants (2) and (3) follow in that order but may
be delegated to subordinates. Tasks that fall in Quadrant (4) should not be
attended to by the leader but delegated. Eisenhower said that important tasks have ‘value’ attached to
them while urgent tasks have ‘time
constraint’ attached to them. Urgent
tasks are not always important and
vice versa.
It
is my assertion that our past and present leaders have not been able to carry
out their functions in line with this principle. They have not undertaken
urgent tasks within the time limit or they have failed to do them completely.
They have also not accorded the value that their important tasks deserve. I
will buttress my assertion by going down the proverbial ‘Memory Lane’ for real
life examples.
Pre-Colonial Experience:
Before
our Independence in 1960, the country’s minority tribes expressed fear about what
their lot might be in a post-Independence Nigeria in the hands of the three
major tribes. They were afraid that they might be poorly treated and
marginalised. The Queen’s Imperial Government in London therefore decided to
set up an investigative Commission in 1957 to visit Nigeria, assess the
veracity or otherwise of these fears and report back with recommendations on
how to allay them. The five-man Commission was chaired by Mr. Henry Willink. The
other four members were Gordon Hadow, Philip Mason, J. B. Shearer and K. J.
Hilton (Secretary). The Willink’s Commission Report was submitted to the British
Parliament in July 1958.
Though
the minorities of the then existing three Regions presented their case to the
Commission, the dominant major ethnic groups countered with factual
inexactitudes and insincere assurances that they would be fair to all after the
departure of the colonial overlords. Willink and his team believed the majority
tribes and refused to recommend the creation of states as demanded by the minorities.
After Independence we saw the need to meet the yearnings of some minorities and
so created the Mid-West Region out of the Western Region in June 1963.
Demands
for the creation of a Middle Belt Region raged on throughout the 1950s but were
rebuffed by leaders from the north. Earlier on in 1956, Mr. R. S. Hudson had
recommended a Provincialization Scheme
for the Northern Region in which the Northern Regional government was supposed
to divest some powers to the provinces in the north in order to douse the
separatist agitations of northern minorities. The leaders of the larger northern
tribes pretended to buy into the Scheme but tactically threw it out later because
it was going to diminish their lordship of the Northern Region, which covered
two-thirds of Nigeria’s land mass. An urgent task that needed prompt action was
sacrificed on the altar of sectional political expediency. We are living
witnesses today of the cost of that leadership error – far slower economic
growth compared to the south, high rate of youth unemployment, educational
backwardness, religious extremism and upheavals, armed robbery and cattle
rustling, inter tribal clashes, religious tension, herdsmen/farmer clashes and
the monstrous settler/indigene syndrome.
Military Era:
Another
example can be found in Gen. Ironsi’s Decree 5 in 1966, which effectively
abolished the then four-regional structure of the country and put in place a
unitary system, which we vainly refer to as a Federal Republic. Gen. Gowon
created 12 States in 1967 but did not give them the same powers and
semi-autonomy that the former Regions had. Today’s 36-State structure is still
the Gowon model in which the States are hamstrung and cannot exploit their
natural resources, nor can they survive without pitiable handouts from the
mighty Federal government. Our military regimes were neither prepared for, nor were
the soldiers trained in the art of civil administration. They effectively ‘killed’
the Nigerian political state and garrisoned us into a regimented military hierarchy
of command that does not permit initiative and autonomy of the States or the
774 Local Governments. The central government has 68 items on the Exclusive
Legislative List and only 30 on a Concurrent List in the 1999 Constitution (As
amended). State Governors are referred to as Chief Security Officers of their
States whereas they do not command even a Boys’ Scout let alone a Police
Constable. We are underdeveloped today because military leader didn’t solve the
urgent national issues they seized power to address. Instead, they bequeathed
to us an unsustainable and stifling fake federal republic. On a visit to Nigeria in 2011 as US Secretary
of State, Mrs. Hillary Clinton, said of dysfunctional governmental structure,
“The most immediate source of the disconnect between Nigeria’s wealth and its
poverty is a failure of governance at the federal, state and local levels.”
The
various Military administrations also treated another important national matter
without bothering to accord it the importance it deserves. Our current 36
States and 774 Local Government Areas were created recklessly. Their creators
threw caution to the wind and put in place and incongruity that portends great
danger for peaceful coexistence. Let us interrogate the monstrosity we refer to
as the third tier of government as presented in the table below.
Table 1: Timeline for the
Creation of Regions, States and Local Governments in Nigeria
Year
|
Number
of Regions or States
|
Number
of Local Government Areas
|
Regime
|
1954
|
3 (Regions)
|
0
|
Prior
to Independence
|
1963
|
4 (Regions)
|
0
|
Sir
Tafawa Balewa
|
1967
|
12
|
0
|
Gen.
Yakubu Gowon
|
1976
|
19
|
301
|
Gen.
Mohammed Murtala
|
1987
|
21
|
453
|
Gen.
Ibrahim Babangida
|
1991
|
30
|
589
|
Gen.
Ibrahim Babangida
|
1996
|
36
|
774
|
Gen.
Sani Abacha
|
Source: Survey
All
774 LGAs were created by four military rulers, Murtala Mohammed - 301, Ibrahim
Babangida - 288 and Sani Abacha – 185. What was the criterion used by Murtala
when he created the first 301 LGAs? What was Babangida’s yardstick when he
created another 288 LGAs in some States and not in others? What informed Gen.
Abacha to give the country another 185 LGAs more, again, in some States and not
in others? Why was Lagos State given 20 LGAs in the first exercise and no more,
whereas the number was doubled and even tripled in some States?
Let
us compare the some demographic data on Lagos State and Kano State. Lagos State
with a population density of 2,695/sq. km and GDP of $91.00 as at 2006 was
allocated just 20 LGAs. Kano State with a population density of only 454/sq. km
and GDP of $12.39 was given a whopping 44 LGAs. What could be responsible for
the over 100% difference in their LGA numbers? Another data shows that both
States have the same number of Federal constituencies - 24 (which translates to
24 seats in the House of Representatives). Why should these two States have the
same number of seats in Parliament? Also, 22% of the country’s revenue is
shared according to the number of LGAs. Therefore, Lagos State receives less
than half what Kano State receives as their share of centrally accrued revenue.
More
comparisons can be done across the country that will expose glaring injustices
embedded in our LGA numbers. What were our leaders thinking as they created
these LGAs? No rational person can argue for their retention. The fiscal
structure we are currently operating is fundamentally flawed. It is no wonder
that the 2014 National Conference delegates recommended the outright scrapping
of the Local Government system.
Political Arrangement:
Our
leaders have been told uncountable times that our so-called ‘Independent’
National Electoral Commission (INEC) is nothing but independent. We know how
best to make this important political institution independent, but our present
and past leaders prefer to maintain the status quo for purposes best known to
them. Our electoral system leaves a lot to be desired:
(1)
Our President can emerge by winning just a quarter of the votes cast in two
thirds of the 36 States plus the FCT, irrespective of the total population of
the country or the number of registered voters. This formula is bound to
produce some of the most unpopular presidents in the world. For example, our
current President came into office with the votes of just over 15 million
Nigerians, which is about 21% of our 70 million registered voters and about 9%
of our estimated total population of 170 million people.
Supporters
of runners up in all our elections are completely disregarded. They are not
entitled to representation in government commensurate to the quantum of their
votes. For example, the 12 million Nigerians who voted for the runner up in the
last presidential elections are totally disenfranchised. This is not how
representative democracy should be practised. It is no wonder that the last
President is quoted to have once said that he was the most vilified President
in the world. We need electoral processes that will produce popular leaders
rather than minimal winners. We need strong electoral institutions rather that
will command respect rather than one that ends up with hundreds of elections
petitions at election tribunals or tens of inconclusive elections. All
contestants should have a proportional representation in government, thus
deepening true representative democracy.
The
2008 Justice Mohammed Uwais Committee on Electoral Reforms did a fantastic job.
It made excellent recommendations that must not be consigned to the archives
but implemented forthwith. They recommended the amendment of the Constitution
to remove powers of the President to appoint all Board members of INEC and
transfer the responsibility to the National Judicial Council (NJC). Also, only
the National Assembly should have the powers to remove these officers. The
Board’s funding should not be from the Presidency but directly from the Consolidated
Revenue Fund of the federation. Delineation of electoral wards should not be
INEC’s function but that of a separate Commission. Registration and regulation
of political parties cease to be INEC’s job but another separate Commission. No
one should be sworn into office while a petition against his election is still being
heard in a law court.
Unfortunately,
the current government went ahead in October 2016 to inaugurate the 24-member
Ken Nnamani Constitutional and Electoral Reform Committee. This Committee has
since reviewed the Uwais Committee report and submitted its recommendations to
government. Why this review was necessary beats my imagination. Was it set up
to water-down the Uwais report? Another leadership failure may be in the
offing.
Constitutional Conundrums:
The
1999 Constitution (as amended) has a number of ambiguities. One of such
ambiguities is provisions for the practice of religion in the country. While
several sections provide for freedom of speech, association and choice of religion,
others provide for possible variants that completely contradict the earlier
provisions. The evidence of this can be seen in those States that have adopted
State religions and the use of public funds to run various States religious
agencies without a query from the Attorney General of the Federation.
Another
ambiguity in our Constitution is in regard to the age of majority for Nigerian
married women. This ambiguity is further compounded by stipulations in international
Conventions that we are signatories to. An attempt to address this anomaly
during the currency of the 7th National Assembly was opposed by some
legislators and the issue was dropped. Once again, our leaders shied away from
living up to their responsibilities in an important national matter.
The
inclusion of the highly contentious Land Use Act (LUA) in the 1999 Constitution
is doing us a lot of harm. Recollect that the LUA was initially a military
Decree and not a popularly passed act of parliament. In one fell swoop it
changed our age-old land tenure systems to an obnoxious one. Its provisions
gave State Governors the enormous powers of granting Certificates of Occupancy
and Consents to Mortgage. Governors have used these powers as political weapons
against their opponents while some of them have simply not understood the
implications of these powers. It is estimated that we presently have a 17
million housing shortage for which the LUA has largely to blame. Property
development and creation of legal mortgages have been greatly hampered by this
law. It needs to be reviewed but it cannot until after it has been excised from
the Constitution via a tedious constitutional amendment process. This is yet
another very urgent and very important matter mater that has been toyed with
and is still being toyed with at a very high cost to living standards of our people.
This is yet another area of gross leadership failure.
The
federating units (if we could refer to 36 States as such) have highly limited
powers. Their Chief Executives, the State Governors are their Chief Security
Officers but they do not command even a Boys Scout or Boys Brigade recruit. The
Exclusive Federal Legislative List is more than twice the length of the
Concurrent List.
A
low housing index is a reflection of several other poor living indices like
unemployment, health, etc. From such a huge housing deficit, we shall not be wrong
to guess that we are suffering from high unemployment, poor medical facilities,
paucity of clean drinking water, etc. Government is supposed to protect the
lives and properties of its citizens and to raise their living standards. Our past
and present governments stand indicted in these areas.
Cost of Governance:
Most
Nigerians are agreed that our cost of governance is unnecessarily high. The
size of the Federal government is big with about 263 Ministries, Departments
and Agencies (MDAs). Many of these have duplicated functions. We have whole
Ministries that could comfortable be reduced to mere Departments in other
Ministries. For example, the Aviation Ministry can be an agency in the
Transport ministry. The Ministry for Women Affairs is an unnecessary drain pipe
that should be a department in the Ministry of Youth Sports and Culture. As
advanced as the Federal Republic of Germany is, it has just 14 ministers and
one federal house of Parliament.
Coupled
with a big central government, we have a wasteful duplication of functions in
the 36 States’ governments. Most of the 36 States have extravagant emperors as
Governors and over bloated personnel portfolios. The exorbitant recurrent
expenditure of the 36 States, which is about N2 Trillion, can be shrank to a
small fraction of this amount if we merge our States in a restructuring
exercise into 12 States/Regions. At the moment, only 8 States are economically
viable. Lagos State’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of N290 billion in
2016 was more than that of all the 19 States in the northern half of the
country. Such a huge inequality calls for urgent review and correction.
We
must also question the rationale in having two legislative houses in the
National Assembly in view of the high cost of running them. Their annual
budgetary allocation has reached N150 billion in the past. This figure is far
in excess of the entire budgets of many States in the country that have
millions of citizens to cater for. Many of our 469 federal legislators complete
their four-year tenure without much to show for it. It is my firm belief that one
chamber with only one-third of the current number can comfortably perform the
legislation functions of the National Assembly at one-tenth of their current
budgetary allocation, that is N15 Billion. Recall that Gambia recently adopted
a unicameral parliament because the $15 Million the former two chambers were
costing the Government was considered a waste.
We
should all agree that the wasteful duplication of duties and high numbers of
personnel in our country’s public service has arisen due to the desire of
political office holders to accommodate their political associates. Government
therefore does have to be so large and expensive. The report of the Oronsanye Presidential
Committee on the Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government
Parastatals and Commissions submitted in June 2012 contains
excellent recommendations for addressing this malaise. The 800-page Report
prepared for the Jonathan administration should not be overlooked. It
recommended the merger or scrapping of some of the current 263 MDAs to 161. To
the contrary, the current NASS is proposing to create 25 new agencies, if
newspaper reports are to be relied on.
Conclusion:
From
the foregoing, the following four conclusions have been drawn:
1. The failure
of past leaders to administer the country well has bequeathed to us a faulty
substructure which cannot be sustained much longer. The unequal and baseless
distribution of administrative units, revenue, seats in parliament, employment
to public offices, etc, have resulted in feelings of marginalisation in a large
segment of the polity, militant agitations for fairer sharing of the national
cake, marginalisation of minority groups, avoidable underdevelopment in some
regions, and the emergence of an elite political class that is lording it over others.
This faulty substructure and the resultant state of affairs need to be
redressed quickly.
2. Democratic
practice in Nigeria has glaring inadequacies. The elite and the rich dominate.
The poor are being taken for a ride. Our electoral laws do not permit the most
popular and most credible candidates to run for elective offices but only the well-connected, the rich and the corrupt.
Representative democracy is also absent
in our system of winner-takes-all. We will continue to produce weak and corrupt
leaders if we do not overhaul our electoral system.
3. Constitutionalism
exists in Nigeria only in theory. The Constitution was written by a clique that
had put parochial interests above everything else. This document was also not
subjected to a general referendum for Nigerians to have an input in it. Many
sections are contradictory, controversial, vexations and outright
retrogressive. Attempting to amend these many sections will not yield desired
result. An entirely new Constitution should be written in line with the
aspirations of all Nigerians.
4. The
cost of running all three tiers of government in Nigeria is far too high.
Recurrent expenditure takes up most of our revenues. The present level of
capital expenditure of about 20% of the annual budget is too low for rapid
development. Standards of living are very low with up 70% below the United
Nation’s poverty line. There is therefore the need to drastically prune down
the size of government in order to achieve sustained economic growth.
Recommendations:
In
view of the many urgent and important matters of state that past and present
administrations have badly addressed or refused to address, which has resulted
in insecurity, underdevelopment, non-representative democracy, bloated
governments, bad governance, etc, there is only one option left for Nigeria. We
need to restructure our substructure. Several ordinary and prominent Nigerians
have already made this call.
Restructuring
the country has been called for by not a few prominent Nigerians. Some of these
are Dr. Alex Ekwueme, former Vice President of Nigeria, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku,
former Vice President of Nigeria, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, former Secretary General
of the Commonwealth, Prof. Jerry Gana, Chairman of the Middle Belt Forum and
former Minister, Prof. Yusufu Turaki, ECWA Theological Seminary, Chief Sehinde
Arogbofa, Secretary General of Afenifere,
Barr. Agbakoba, former Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association, Alhaji
Balarabe Musa, former Governor of Kaduna State and Senator Shehu Sani, 8th
National Assembly. Their perceptions of what restructuring entails are
certainly varied. However, to me it means the following things:
1. Ending
the current administrative and fiscal arrangement of having a large and powerful
Federal Government, 36 powerless States and 774 Local Governments. These should
be replaced by a Federal Government that is lean and having fewer roles and 12
semi-autonomous States/Regions identical to Gowon’s 1967 12 States. These 12
States/Regions will have greater roles and responsibilities than the current 36
States. The Local Government system as third tier of government should be
abolished.
2. Shortening
the Exclusive Legislative List and lengthening the Concurrent List. Items such
as Military, External Affairs, Immigration, etc, should remain on the exclusive
preserve of the Federal Government while items such as Police, Prisons, Roads,
Railways, Power generation, etc, should move to the Concurrent List.
3. Each of
the 12 State/Regional governments should have separate Constitutions that spell
out their peculiar circumstances and preferences, but which are subservient to
a new Federal Constitution to be written and submitted to a national referendum.
4. Write
an entirely new Constitution for the Federal Government that will put into
place the arrangements described in (1), (2) and (3) above and be approved by
the Nigerian people in a referendum.
The
fine details of these recommendations should be worked out at a round table
conference by representatives of the 12 States created by Gen. Gowon’s
administration in 1967. All matters that these representatives wish to discuss
shall be placed on the agenda. No areas shall be ‘no-go’ areas. Decisions of this conference shall also be
final and binding. The conference shall therefore have sovereign powers.
Rev.
James Pam, PIIMA
