President Tinubu and the unfinished business to restructure the federation – by Tunji Olaopa
One of the fundamental diagnoses of the Nigerian state is that its constitutional framework for governance is at variance with its plural reality. In other words, the Nigerian Constitution recognizes Nigeria as a federation with three tiers of government—federal, state and local. Unfortunately, the structural and institutional mechanisms of governance are so centralized and seemingly unitary in ways that deny the realities for all practical purpose. This is one key anomaly that explains why the local government structure has remained comatose since the Ironsi administration.
It also explains one of the crucial reasons why the democratic governance since 1999 has not really translated into a decisively significant positive and hence impactful package of democratic dividends especially in terms of local governance at the grassroots.
And this makes the challenge of restructuring the Nigerian constitution to achieve the essence of a genuine federation all the more cogent for any administration willing to make sense of the Nigerian predicament and find adequate resolution that unburden developmental and governance targets on behalf of millions of Nigerians. This agenda is most significant for the Tinubu administration for two fundamental reasons.
The first comes from Tinubu’s ideological attachment, to the task of restructuring the Nigerian governance system even before becoming the president, and even as he was never in the habit of playing to the gallery about it. One of the rallying points of his connection with the progressive elements in the Nigerian state is the imperative of constitutional restructuring of the Nigerian federation. The second reason derives from some of his key governance policies since assuming the position of the president of the federal republic of Nigeria.
A few examples of significant governance policies have been enacted that seem to signal that the administration has come to terms with the necessity of restructuring as a pathway to impactful governance reform. One significant policy is the creation of the Ministry of Regional Development that is meant to instigate socioeconomic and infrastructural progress across the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria. The ministry makes it possible to measure policy convergences and divergence across these zones in ways that facilitate harmonization.
This policy is followed by a correlative one: the establishment of six regional development commissions (RDCs) that would serve as the arrowhead of the policy initiatives, formulation and design. Next in line, and beyond all expectations of its possibility, the Tinubu government has pushed the bill legislating the creation of state police closer to realization.
Signing the 2023 Electricity Act significantly decentralized electricity generation, transmission and distribution away from the exclusive to the concurrent list, a policy which enables state to take charge of power generation. There are three separate amendments ongoing to the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act 2007 which are meant to undermine its rigid centralization of the ownership of solid minerals and other natural endowments in the hand of the federal government to the exclusion of the other tiers of government.
Fundamental to all these sweeping legislative overhaul and policy transformation, and coterminous with the Supreme Court ruling of July 2024 concerning the financial autonomy of local governments, is the urgency of incentivizing the subnational elements and entities in the Nigerian federation to commence the project of actively investing in their own regions and achieve governance distinction.
All these speak to the challenge of restructuring to unlock the governance potentials inherent in laying the foundation for a true federalism in Nigeria. How then can this trajectory towards restructuring the Nigerian federation become a significant plank in the Tinubu administration that yield solid governance reform and bring home the impact of the Renewed Hope Agenda, post-2027?
The endgame for that restructured federation is the objective of installing a framework of structurally permanent competitive federalism among the federating units and regions. This is the overall agenda that all the preceding policy initiatives must reach for; this is the blueprint that must structure the restructuring process in the next administration cycle.
Once we understand the brilliant strategy of piecemeal legislative approach that privileges decentralization through gradual policy advancement, then we see the significance of, for instance, the Ministry of Regional Development and the six regional development commissions. This is a pivotal transition that connects federalism to developmental local governance. The policy development serves as a cogent prelude to a full-fledged creation of local and regional economic corridors and growth poles that unravels the binding constraints around wealth generation at the grassroots level.
This is a fundamental consideration and pivot because the grassroot is what enables democratic governance. Democratic governance becomes meaningful when local governance is empowered. It is significant development at the local level—the level of the local government—that speaks to the connection of governance to the people. We had a very palpable demonstration of this relevance of local governance in the immediate post-independence period when the local government areas were significant spaces both for sociopolitical mobilization as well as efficient public works, and service provision and delivery. Local governance therefore facilitates the grassroots participation of the people who are the most fundamental factor in governance.
Indeed, the local governments constitute the framework for testing the transparency and responsiveness of government institutions. This is where the concepts of subsidiarity and social capital become fundamental in understanding local governance. The subsidiarity principle is targeted at undermining the centralization dynamics that is at work in the lopsidedness of the Nigerian federal constitution. The principle demands that whatever policy and development issues can be handled at the local and grassroots level must not be denied the third tier of government.
How then must the initial policy initiatives of the Tinubu administration be strengthened to push the restructuring blueprint towards its ultimate objective of a competitive federalism? There are five policy and structural pathways that could serve as the basis of institutionally grounding the task of decentralizing the Nigerian governance systems. The first is legal and constitutional, and it is meant to ensure that the regional bodies already established do not become mere appendages pushing the centralizing logic of the federal government. Thus, the regional bodies and frameworks already set in place must be constitutionalized into significant economic spaces that reinforce Nigeria’s governance architecture.
The government must also legislate on the policy significance of streamlining the regional development plans, in the shape, for example, of the North Central 20-Year Economic Infrastructure and Social Development Plan. This allows for each of the six regions (or more) to develop along the line of their comparative advantages in terms of agriculture, trade, mining, fishing, and more.
The second reform consideration piggybacks on the first: the structural responsibilities that will unlock the economic growth and progress of the regional governance corridors must be attended by fiscal and financial autonomy. One immediate means of consolidating the financial strength of the Ministry and the regional development commissions is to allocate some specific empowering percentage to them from the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
They can also leverage alternative funding especially through public-private partnership or even through the Renewed Hope Infrastructure Development Fund (RHIDF). Without some concrete sources of revenues, the regional initiatives will regress into routine activities and eventually collapse. A critical dimension of this fiscal autonomy and responsibility must necessarily be the need to devolve management of resources to the regions.
This is critical if the comparative advantages of the regions would become competitive, and if the regions would truly take ownership of their development. The federal government can then be the recipient of some percentages benchmarked against the first republic modified model rather than be the one doling out peanuts to the regions.
The third reform pillar the Tinubu administration must explore is, as we have hinted, the pursuit and institutionalization of developmental local governance. True federalism is only meaningful when it is founded on a bedrock of local and self-sustaining governance. The administration can jumpstart this by submitting a comprehensive local government autonomy legislation that will leverage the landmark Supreme Court ruling on the financial autonomy of local governments.
This ensures that there are readily available funds that the local governments receive directly for developmental purposes. But then, a follow up legislation must make oversight and accountability possible by establishing structural procedures to track expenditures and tangible developments in terms of road networks, healthcare services, sewage maintenance, small businesses and enterprises, basic education, etc.
All these will necessarily lead to the fourth pillar that will draw the Nigerian federation closer to a very visible and competitive federalism—the need to establish the regions, and the regional development commissions, as “growth poles” or economic corridors that are interconnected and mutually reinforcing in terms of their harmonized policy, developmental and economic objectives. One starting point would be the strategic need to decentralize public assets and infrastructures, like military bases, national think tanks and training institutions.
This constitutes a solid gesture towards ensuring a secure base for economic growth and investment. The regional development commissions would also need to facilitate the interconnections of the regions through massive transit networks, like the proposed Lagos-Calabar coastal highway, and the Sokoto-Badagry superhighway that strategically connect the north-west and the south-west.
The transit networks will also focus on critical feeder roads that the regional commissions will manage together with the local governments. The economic corridors in the geopolitical zones also require electricity as a necessity. This makes it imperative for the government to start thinking about the strategic significance of decentralizing the energy and grid systems in ways that offload the pressures away from the national grid that keeps collapsing. This will make the regions the beneficiaries of an interconnected regional grids that service their developmental aspirations and blueprints.
The last reform mandate is, as is to be expected, security. Law and order are the basis of economic growth and developmental progress. This implies that it would be one of the greatest governance paradoxes to have achieved significant level of decentralization through the initiative the Tinubu had already taken while upholding a centralized security architecture. In the next administration development policy cycle, therefore, we expect that the state police initiative would have been completed. In other words, the government at the federal and state levels would have gone beyond the conceptualization to active deployment. However, it would then be left to the regional development commissions to coordinate and synergize intelligence gathering and sharing, joint operations, capacity building, and so on.
From the foregoing, it becomes obvious that achieving a decentralized federation possesses a key dimension of making democratic governance work for millions of Nigerians. The key objective of restructuring the federation is to unlock the binding constraints that disconnect democracy and governance from those who are its real motivation. The policy initiatives that have quietly commenced the decentralization mandate required to make federalism functional must be pressed to their logical conclusions once the next administration cycle begins, post-2027.
With the restructuring framework set in motion, the Tinubu administration would have firmly grasped by the horns the bull of a lopsided federal arrangement at keeps stifling developmental initiatives and prospects. This is a very tough prospect, but the administration, against all odds, has proven that it is not shy to make tough choices.
Prof. Tunji Olaopa, Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission, writes from Abuja
