Restructuring the country and the universities

[Mirror]

It is heartwarming to note that, at last, the Jonathan government and the Senate are bracing up to the nationwide call for dialogue to address the huge infrastructure and security deficits threatening to undermine the sovereignty of the Nigerian State. In all the countries that are in turmoil today, refusal of the political elite to listen to the voice of reason, to dialogue with the people and let their will prevail, has been the root cause of the boiling cauldron that those countries have now become.

From Iraq to Egypt, from Libya to Tunisia and Syria and a host of other countries, sit tight leaders who get political power and make it their private property, have been responsible for sending their countrymen to early and painful deaths. While all this is going on in societies that have not fully democratized, the Barack Obama government in the United States of America has embarked on a strike action, something they call a shutdown, to press home the point that healthcare delivery for the largest proportion of the people is public good for Americans who voted him into office about which he was not ready for any compromise.

Thus, public good, public welfare is not negotiable; and any leadership elite in any country that toys with it is doomed to a calamitous end, like the convulsing Arab nations of today. Majority of Nigerians have been calling for a national conference to discuss and resolve all the sore points of discord and mutual distrust that is making the country almost ungovernable. But the leadership elite who happen to be in control have always treated the call with contempt; often deliberately misconstruing it as open invitation to anarchy and the dismember-ship of the country. In doing so, they pretend that there are no living examples of countries that resolved their nationality issues without disintegrating.

There are confederate states with strong, independent federating units coordinated by a central government. Russia is one example. America is another. These countries are not disintegrated societies. On the contrary, they call the shot in world affairs. The more contented a people are, the greater their capacity to synergize for orderly growth and civilized progress. Corporate contentment comes when the distinct groups in a union are allowed to govern themselves, while affiliating constructively with the centre for collective strength in global affairs and negotiations. That more or less is my idea of restructuring for meaningful growth and development.

Let the different nationalities in Nigeria be restructured to constitute regions of federating, independent states, running their affairs and exploiting the resources of their environments while contributing to the centre; and the richer states supporting the so-called economically less endowed states in the union; in a scheme worked out constitutionally in percentages. All the roads criss-crossing each of the regions will become the responsibility of the regions, not the central government.

All federal institutions of higher learning including the universities will become the responsibility of the regional governments. The federal government should be assigned to retain one university in each region to be fully developed as models to guide the federating regions. All utilities such as water and electricity should be under the control of the regional governments; not the centre. Federal, regional, and local council legislatures should be elected to function only on part time basis.

The national President, regional governors and councilors should be elected for a non-renewable, non-consecutive tenure of six year for the President and regional governors and four year non-renewable tenure for the councilors. Details can be worked out by constitutional restructuring committees; the critical objective being to create an ambience of healthy competition at all levels for the federating regions in the country. Implied in all of this is the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the citizens to live first as they choose in their ethnic nationalities and then as citizens of the federal republic with clearly defined rights, duties and obligations to the fatherland.

The greatest strength of the Jonathan dispensation would not lie in choosing to insist on his constitutional right to stand for election for the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2015 as presently constituted, a position that he already enjoys, but to midwife a new Nigeria in which people will relate with one another as they choose; not as it is imposed by the 1999 military constitution that has outlived its usefulness or the Amalgamation Document of 1914 by the British Colonial Government of Sir Lord Luggard.

A restructured Nigeria is what will reposition the country in the part of peaceful, civilized and orderly growth and development. And this would be the greatest legacy that the political leadership elite under the statesmanship of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan can bequeath to Nigerians. The alternative, which is to continue the usual way of do-or-die political competition, from what I can see from the conduct of politicians, would be a final experiment with disintegration.

Source: Restructuring the country and the universities

[Folami David]

The university structure of this coumtry is just weak!