Chidi Amuta
9 July 2009
opinion
Lagos — On the effectiveness and impact of the Federal Government on our lives, there is perhaps a winter of performance and a crisis of expectations in the land. Wherever you go, it stares you in the face. State governments are taking over the rehabilitation and even running of what ought to be federal projects and installations. The vast majority of the infrastructure that the constitution reserved for the almighty federal level is today either in sorry disrepair or terminal dilapidation. Police and army barracks, unity schools, highways, bridges, prisons, secretariats etc.
If you find a terrible stretch of road, it is likely to be a so-called federal road. If you find a long queue of retirees whose benefits are not likely to be paid even if some of them drop dead while waiting, they are likely to be former federal officers: soldiers, policemen, teachers, customs officials, firemen etc. These are persons who spent the prime of their lives working for the central government which, for a long time, was seen as the last frontier of national resilience and repository of collective national endurance.
Time was when to work at the federal level was the aspiration of most of those who wanted a career in the nation's public service. The Federal Government paid higher wages, never defaulted on salaries and benefits and generally guaranteed a more secure tenure. Public officers in the employ of state governments aspired to be converted into federal officers because the financial and administrative resilience and prowess of the Federal Government were everywhere in evidence.
The relative respect and even awe in which the central government was held among our populace was captured by the term: "Federal Might". As a nation of disparate origins and orientations, we needed a more reassuring and inspiring political and psychological presence. It was perhaps the need to preserve that awe which led, in political terms, to the unitary character of the successive constitutions that we have repeatedly fashioned to run an otherwise compulsive federal system.
The origins of that feeling are historical. In the immediate post civil war years, the presence of an all powerful Federal Government was the greatest guarantee that our country held prospects of greatness. In the hearts of those to whom hope was still a possibility, there was an anchor of strength and a reassuring resort in a Federal Government that had just triumphed in a war to keep Nigeria in continuation. To those of us who experienced the civil war on the other side, the prowess of a conquering federal power that did not turn its guns against us was the greatest reassurance we had that it was perhaps still possible to reclaim our lives, our rights and our hopes in a safe and secure place that we could call home.
The Federal Government moved quickly then and with remarkable confidence on nearly every subject. Reconciliation of the Biafrans with their Nigerian kith and kin was more than rhetorical even if it left some vital questions unasked and therefore unanswered. But at least there was a feeling across the land that somebody was doing something to redress the recent sadness.
The physical reconstruction of the national economy with the added blessing of the oil boom of the 1970s was total and evident. New federal highways and bridges, new federal projects-military barracks, police stations, state and federal secretariats etc. were going on almost simultaneously nationwide. Therefore, the kind of mass unemployment that breeds an epidemic of crime and disaffection after a civil war did not quite afflict Nigeria. Instead, there was a boom of construction and a rash of programmes that absorbed the energies of people who would otherwise have been consumed by the fire of anger and the hangover of violence. In the face of today's diminishing chances, choices and opportunities, one man whose views should be sought is perhaps Yakubu Gowon. I believe he created easily the highest number of new jobs in a time of great challenge. Even if he didn't, he is one man who understands what it means to rebuild hope in a land at the brink of a precipice.
It may be argued that at a point, the compassion of government (an anomaly for a military government) may have been wrongly manifested in the rather generous Udoji public service salary awards which sent the entire nation literally shopping for luxuries. But at least the people partook in the ceremony sharing and "eating".
The federal cabinet then, even though unelected, consisted of a few good men (and no women?) who inspired respect and conducted themselves with admirable candour and maturity. The pronouncements of government were weighty, few, calculated and crafted in a manner that left the authority of the Federal Government unmistakable. Both our citizens and the rest of the world, especially fellow Africans, took Nigeria seriously. Our passport then was not a ticket for suspicion and global disdain.
This tradition of seriousness at the federal level persisted with varying degrees of intensity in subsequent administrations whether military or civilian. Former President Shehu Shagari built roads and bridges, established federal universities, maintained the operational readiness of the military and kept criminals reasonably at bay. Gen. Ibrahim Babangida built and commissioned a large quantum of federal projects with oil at $9 for most of his eight years. He even projected Nigeria's power abroad in Liberia and Sierra Leone in pursuit of a clear national foreign policy objective. The Technical Aid Corps was instituted and some strange animal called economic diplomacy was born. Even late Gen. Sani Abacha can be said to have run a decisive federal government even if its human rights records were perpetually in deficit. In the post Abacha years, something went tragically wrong with the federal machinery.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo's eight years in power raise certain curious questions with regard to the tragic dilution and diminution of the federal will. Obasanjo traversed the length and breadth of this nation as he did of the world. In over 95 per cent of his visits to the states, the President was busy inspecting and inaugurating projects initiated and executed by the state governments with their federal allocations and internally generated revenues. He even sent Prof. Jerry Gana to travel the land; awarding marks to state governments for projects implemented without any contributions from the bloated federal treasury. At the end of the charade, Gana compiled a dubious report card and even printed certificates for state governments on the delivery of the "dividends of democracy"!
For whatever reason, there were hardly any federal projects undertaken or completed by the Obasanjo civilian administration in eight years except perhaps the over $300 million Abuja National Stadium whose priority, usefulness and cost profile are still subjects of debate. I am told that the project was even initiated by a previous administration. And yet, the Federal Government has always received the greater percentage of national revenue than both state and local governments put together.
It was not just the lack of new federal projects that afflicted the Obasanjo civilian years. Existing institutions and structures were deliberately left to rot, even the most strategic of them. It took the repeated plane crashes under Obasanjo to begin the critical overhaul of the national aviation infrastructure. The rot in the universities continued unchecked. The refineries hardly worked for a decent month at reasonable capacity, perhaps to make room for Obasanjo's oligarch friends to bleed the nation through refined petroleum imports.
Nearly all federal roads went without repairs and hardly any new ones were designed or constructed. The police repeatedly threatened to go on strike for the first time in our national history. Soldiers in the barracks took to circulating leaflets and writing anonymous letters about their basic welfare. The prisons, whose illustrious alumnus Obasanjo was, never received much attention nor was any new one built even though the President presided over a regime that drove an unprecedented number of Nigerians into avoidable crime while creating perhaps the highest number of executive gangsters in recent African history. What went wrong?
Some have attributed the anomaly to democracy, insisting that only military dictatorships have the latitude to arbitrarily spend money on infrastructure. But the governors whose projects Obasanjo kept going to inspect were also products of democracy! Nor was the period 1999 to 2007 the first democratic dispensation we have had. The Shagari administration in four years built and maintained more federal infrastructure than the Obasanjo civilian administration in eight years.
So we must look elsewhere for the legacy of neglect and criminal insensitivity that Yar'Adua inherited from his predecessor and has now canonized. Perhaps if we look more carefully at the proceedings of the ongoing probes into nearly all spheres of federal undertaking, we may discover the reasons why no worthwhile project other than personal interest and primitive accumulation were pursued in the eight years preceding Yar'Adua's anointment.
A more charitable interpretation may be that Obasanjo's reform agenda de-emphasized big government in favour of the empowerment of the private sector and therefore the Federal Government could not be expected to be as omnipresent as in previous state dominated dispensations. But the untidy privatization which the administration undertook ensured that strategic federal assets and installations were run aground in order to be sold off at ridiculous prices to cronies and government nurtured oligarchs. Either way, it is an attractive proposition, albeit one borne out by unfolding forensic evidence, that we are at the receiving end of a rapacious autocracy that hid under the guise of democracy to strip key national assets and whittle the executive capacity of the Federal Government leading to the present state of near total collapse of the federal resolve in the most strategic spheres.
Whatever the contending arguments, we are at crossroads. The waning of the federal presence in our consciousness and the weakening of its capacity is manifesting in the most dangerous places. A festering low intensity insurgency in the Niger Delta is repeatedly exposing the naked underbelly of our military. An underpaid and badly run police apparatus is leaving our people at the mercy of all manner of petty criminals and retail kidnappers. However, the growing abdication of federal responsibility is perhaps the more convincing argument in favour of those who insist that both the revenue allocation formula and the present unitary constitution need urgent and radical review. We may need to strip the Federal Government of the money and excessive authority which it currently controls but hardly deploys to our collective advantage.
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