Text of an address by the former Lagos State Governor and National Leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, at the Nigerian Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos, Plateau State on 18th November 2011
PROTOCOLS
I thank the organizers of this event for the opportunity to share my views on Nigeria’s Pluralism: a theme central to the current challenges and future of our country. Pluralism is a key element to creativity, growth and improvement. And in an open society, subscribing to it helps in building a stable democracy and nurturing development. A nation that does not respect pluralism and the diversity of its own people can never achieve her full potentials. A disregard for pluralism means a disregard for the peculiarities of citizens. Any nation that operates with such herdsman mentality will only end up diminishing itself.
Pluralism defines our identity separateness on the grounds of ethnicity, religion and geography. In our nation of 270 ethnic groups, big and small, two dominant religions and motley of traditional faiths, 36 states and 774 local councils and 37 LCDAs in Lagos, pluralism assumes further ramifications. As a nation, we must ensure that we respect these differences and also ensure they are not exploited as a basis for discrimination or cronyism.
The National Institute of Strategic Studies is a good place to have this important discussion. NIPSS was established in 1979 as the supreme policy think tank for the country. Most policy makers in Nigeria have passed through NIPSS since its formation. The NIPSS Act set forth its cardinal objective, which is to serve as a centre of reflection, research and dialogue where academics of intellectual excellence, policy initiators and executors and other citizens of practical experience and wisdom, drawn from different sectors of national life in Nigeria, would meet to reflect and exchange ideas on the great issues of society, particularly as they relate to Nigeria.
Managing Nigeria’s Pluralism for Peace and National Development is an issue which the National Institute needs to deeply examine. How far have we come since independence? Has the 4th Republic learned from the experiences of the past to advance our goals of a pluralistic society? From the beginning of our journey to nationhood, the founding leaders built a country diverse but united. The opening lines of the national anthem we had at independence in 1960, drove home this diversity and our fraternal resolve to build ‘one nation’. We can straightaway deduce that the words were scripted to turn our diversity into prosperity. I recall with nostalgia those words and how we sang them with so much pride in school:
Nigeria, we hail thee: – which translates into a call to patriotism
Our own dear native land: – espouses nationalism and pride of being a native Nigerian
Though tribe and tongue may differ :- this strikes at the heart of our pluralism
In brotherhood we stand:- commitment to a spirit of peaceful co-existence, religious and political tolerance and respect for one another
Nigerians all, are proud to serve:- a declarative statement of service and to build a nation in diversity for posterity and not adversity
Our sovereign motherlan :- recognizes the sovereignty of the people. Democratic norms and values with an indivisible commitment to nationhood.
The outbreak of ethnic genocide in the mid-60s in some parts of the country and the civil war that followed showed that as a people, we failed to live up to the spirit of our anthem. It showed that the leaders and the followers at the time only paid lip service to the injunction of the anthem: “Though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood we stand”. We failed miserably to deploy this mantra for peaceful co-existence and national development.
About a decade after the war and the efforts at reconciliation, we jettisoned our post-independence anthem, which arguably evoked a strong spirit of patriotism and brotherliness, to compose a very drab replacement, far less inspirational. It was an example of the inconsistency in government thinking, moments when our leaders make unjustifiable ‘about turns’, as Fela, the afro-beat musician would have put it. I will suggest that we organise a referendum to guage the preference of Nigerians on the two anthems they have had. On my part, I would vote for the first one, because it embodies the spirit of a nation.
We also recorded ‘about turns’ in the restructuring of the regions. From three, and later four regions in the First Republic, with a lot of autonomy from the centre, we have created 36 states, with most of them heavily dependent on the central government for dole and survival. Of course, the price of dependence is the loss of autonomy, which undermines the spirit of federalism.
This brings me back to what the nation expects from NIPSS in our search for a more functional country. Before I throw my challenges to the National Institute, the graduating class and the Alumni, let me place on record that our tendency to continue to employ the same old policies in the vain hope that they may somehow dynamically change the situation has often failed. Matt Miller in his ground breaking work, “The Tyranny of Dead Ideas” said, “Our biggest problem is not the economic change that is upon us, but the way that our outdated thinking prevents us from responding forcefully in this new situation to improve our people’s lives”
In several areas, Nigeria is stuck in the past, applying decadent policies to new, and more virulent problems. At moments like this, the nation turns to the National Institute for new ideas that should make us break from the moribund past.
I ask that you develop new ideas on the three issues I will set before you today. After developing, forward them to the Federal Government to test the sincerity of the national leadership in accelerating national development and promoting peace.
The Agricultural sector presents Nigeria her surest escape from the ball-and-chain of unemployment and low economic activity. The shop-worn idea that the federal government must import fertilizer belongs to the junkyard. Fertilizer importation remains a vehicle of corruption bleeding the country of billions of naira yearly. The over 400 billion naira fertilizer subsidy can be channeled into new agricultural initiatives and support for farmers. Instead of the central government wasting huge resources on subsidy, it should use the money to provide free meals for primary and secondary school children. If government provided at least one decent, nutritious meal per day, the impact on our economy would be massive. Farming and small scale industry will be promoted creating tens of thousands of jobs in every part of the country. These little offerings to our young generation will promote nutritional health and take many poor children including the “almajiris” off the streets by sending them back to school. The urge to go to school becomes more intense, with the prospect of free food. In my view, allowing children to be kept from school is a recipe for national economic failure. We need to learn from China with over 75 per cent of its children in school. I challenge you to develop this idea and present it to the President for implementation.
Nigeria can also harvest big gains from the strategic development of agriculture. For instance, the federal government can mandate the Universities of Agriculture to lead in the agrarian revolution by generating new crop seedlings, adapting new scientific methods, and technologically driven systems of harvest. These institutions will be charged to make such applied research findings available to the public particularly on how to add value to our agricultural products. This is how we can save the over 1 trillion naira we currently spend on food importation.
Low storage capacity and weak storage infrastructure have combined to ensure that more than 50 per cent of our total harvest is lost. Nigeria must begin now invest in improving our storage capacity.
Furthermore, I want you as policy thinkers to advise the federal government strongly on the need to provide incentives for the agricultural sector. You should challenge the government to establish commodity exchange boards for domestic and exportable products while guaranteeing minimum prices (MPG) for the farm products. This will put money directly into the pockets of farmers while assuring their products will be purchased at the guaranteed price. Farming will become more attractive because income would be less erratic, thereby reducing migration to our urban centers.
The third issue I wish to challenge you upon has to do with giving meaning to that aspect of our old national anthem that celebrates our plurality and hails our brotherhood. The phrase “in brotherhood we stand” is a powerful commitment, exacting from every Nigerian the promise to live as brothers. Sadly, in the political choices we make, in the ways we ignore and violate the federal constitution and our failure to implement policies that help the masses, we imperil this brotherhood.
We must examine very deeply this idea of “Turn by Turn Nigeria Ltd”, when it comes to the aspiration for political offices particularly the Presidency. This practice is an assault on the sovereignty of the people. Does such a policy honestly do Nigeria well or is it a boon for a select few? Instead of promoting harmony, it is a source of conflict and disharmony. Constitutionally, every Nigerian has a right to aspire for any office, irrespective of religion, place of origin or political preference. Mandatory rotation of positions is an affront to democracy and places us further down the road of selection rather than election. It exalts mediocrity and access over talent and worth. I would rather we install in an important office a decent and able man from another region than a cruel and incapable man from my own family. I say this without hesitation because I speak from the heart and an unshakable commitment to democratic tenets.
This type of mind-set is what had fed the anachronistic and false distinction between indigenes and settlers that has cost so many lives, destroyed so many communities and marred our national identity. We must apply the constitutional guarantees in this kind of situation. If we must deploy tanks and armed soldiers for peace, we have already lost something. Government must give meaning to these words of our first anthem,” O God of all creation, Grant this our one request, Help us to build a nation, Where no man is oppressed .And so, with peace and plenty, Nigeria may be blessed’. I call upon NIPSS to further interrogate the ‘settler” issue within our constitutional and legal framework and be bold enough to come up with a policy paper on this matter to be presented to Abuja. No Nigerian should be discriminated against on the basis of religion, sex, ethnicity, place of birth or the place he or she chooses to reside. Unless we do this, Nigeria’s pluralism is mere talk.
Pluralism connotes diversity and should be used for the promotion of harmonious relationship, prosperity of the commonwealth and the development of knowledge irrespective of political or religious inclinations. And with over 250 ethnic groups, making up our country, there is no doubt that socio-cultural diversity is the defining feature of Nigeria.
Religion is another critical aspect of Nigeria’s diversity. Apart from the major religions of Islam and Christianity, diverse forms of traditional religions are practised by significant populations. Nigeria’s pluralism is being abused and exploited using the historical demarcation between North and South and the current segmentation of the country into six zones – North- West, North-East, North-Central, South-South, South-West and South-East. Pluralism can only be talked about after diversity has turned into something constructive. Sadly, we are diverse but have yet to embrace and explore the full political and economic potentials of pluralism for our development. That we have a legion of unemployed youths today is traceable to this fact.
An unemployed man in Abuja has more in common with an unemployed man in Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt or Onitsha than he does with a rich man from the same religion and ethnic group living in Abuja. Hunger to a Yoruba is no different than hunger to an Hausa or Efik man. Progressive governance means the same thing to us all. It means a job with a living wage, it means safety and security, education and health care. It means the freedom of thought and speech and the dignity of person.
To free ourselves of the old mental shackles, we must discard old thinking. The problem is that we have not produced an alternative world view. People must think and act on something. Before they leave the old, you must offer them the new, which is superior or more preferable. The nation that we model our government on has a saying, ‘from many, one” to signify America’s unity. We have distorted this fine saying in our own regard. Our motto has become “from many, even more”.
Even before fixing the existing institutions that we have, we clamor for more states, more agencies, more commissions, more, more, and more. We all want our own because we see other Nigerians not as fellow citizens and definitely not as brothers but as potential adversaries. Because of this, our more, more, more really is less, less, less. If things were as easy as simple enlightenment, these matters would have been resolved long ago. We remain in the fog, however, because those who define our national politics and economics benefit sow these divisions. We have leaders who stoke fire because they get warm profits as the rest of us burn.
I am a son of Lagos, a vibrant sprawling mega-city where pluralism reigns and commerce is king. Yes, we have numerous small towns or villages where agriculture is king. Our factories are fed from these farms. Unfortunately, our farmers are struggling and barely productive. Food is scarce and costly. Money better spent amongst ourselves, is spent to fund imports. We all are made poorer by this. And our poverty makes us turn against each other, instead of embracing ourselves as fellow citizens of one destiny. We cannot build our nation in this manner.
I believe that with new and bold ideas, we can fix things and we can change our country by putting it back on the track of development. We can accomplish this by first focusing our political intellects on the key issues that affect the development and growth of Nigeria. In our national life we must go beyond operating a constitution that legally binds us together but lacks the socio-economic compact that can happily link us together in mutual benefit and reciprocity.
The old ideas and divisions that hold us down can thus be discarded. We must operate our constitutional democracy not only in principle but in practice. We must create a framework that permits Nigerians from all backgrounds to enjoy equal access to the federal, state and local council resources. We must develop sectors that are catalysts for national development. Take for instance electricity. The greatest invention of mankind in the past one thousand years has the capacity to spur development and lift millions of our youths out of unemployment.
The progressives want to change the way we interact politically and economically to bring greater democracy and economic development. The Conservatives believe in the status quo, hence have gotten us into this hole. The progressives’ believe in the development of new ideas and its operationalization. I believe when the progressives win power, they will be able to lift Nigeria out of the hole by turning our riotous diversity into cooperative pluralism. No more the lack of continuity in development planning which has seen different governments enunciates different and often confusing socio-economic policies. Are we still in the reform process or has transformation taken over? Are we still running on the Obasanjo reform mantra or the current transformation swan-song? What happened to the National Development Plans of the 60s and 70s? Policies like NEEDS, Vision 20-20 or 20-20-20 are symptomatic of the confusion and lack of focus in policy, hence our retarded national development. Can the National Institute investigate the failure or otherwise of these old policies and come up with newer and bolder ideas going forward?
After the civil war, the military sought to re-fashion Nigeria in its own centralist image. They thought the way to manage the country’s diversity was to bury it under the suffocating control of an all-powerful centre. By imposing a unitary state on a naturally federal society, the military sought to substitute a chaotic diversity with imposed uniformity, which they thought was necessary to promote order and development. Unfortunately, all the supposedly democratic dispensations since the civil war have substantially mirrored the over-centralized and unduly bureaucratic military political cultures. The consequence of this rigid model retards pluralism rather than advancing it. The Nigerian state thus presents the baffling paradox of appearing at once so powerful when protecting the narrow interests of the elites, yet so fragile in providing the barest services of a modern nation to the bulk of the populace. Nigeria is run like a closely held private corporation with a revolving ownership. While, the leaders may change, one thing remains constant. Those who run the corporation, run it solely for their own benefit.
As a result, the insatiable central government guzzles the country’s revenue. It claims over 52% of the Federation Account while the 36 State Governments and 774 Local Governments, where the people actually reside, are jointly allocated 48%. Once they meet their recurrent costs, most States and Local Governments have nothing left for public infrastructure or the provision of social services. We must manage pluralism in such a way that the entire country is not a dependent parasite on petroleum from the Niger Delta. Pluralistic innovation can turn all component parts of the nation into ‘cake baking’ centres themselves. By identifying and employing the abundant resources and human capital with which every part of this country is endowed, we can enhance economic growth and generate greater prosperity for all. It is important that we think of pluralism as an asset that can be used to accelerate our development. In the words of the former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku:
“There is a wide gulf between the vast potentials of Nigeria and her current reality of pervasive poverty and endemic instability. A country as endowed as this country simply has no business accommodating the degree of dehumanizing impoverishment suffered by majority of her citizens. But we cannot continue to do the same thing as a nation and expect a different outcome. We need to take decisive and urgent steps to return to the practice of true federalism bequeathed to us at independence and which served the country so well until the unfortunate prolonged military interruption of our political evolution.”
At this juncture in our evolution, we should focus on strengthening the foundations of true federalism to make the current 36-state federal structure a viable instrument for pluralistic and democratic growth development.
Proposed steps in this direction include but not limited to:
* Reducing the items on the Exclusive List and transferring them to the Residual List to enhance the powers and responsibilities of States and Local Governments for rapid development. Revise the Revenue Allocation Formula in favour of States and Local Governments to empower them fiscally to embark on a re-constructive agenda. The federal government presently is obese, suffering from elephantiasis and unable to spring Nigeria into new realms and possibilities.
* Transfer ownership, control and development of all natural, solid mineral and agricultural resources to the states while paying appropriate taxes and duties to the Federal Government.
* Strengthen the electoral process by removing the sole power of the President to appoint the Chairman of INEC and other electoral commissioners. Appointments should be open and competitive and not used as job for the boys. Kenyans have shown us a lead in this area, when they drew a new constitution recently, which denies the president of their country the power to appoint or influence the electoral chief, the Supreme Court President, the Director of Public Prosecution, and the Inspector General of the Police.
* Decentralize the power to generate, transmit and distribute electricity to liberalize the sector and ensure that uninterrupted electricity accelerates national economic growth within a two-three timeframe. Electricity should be treated as a commodity that should be tradable as a commodity on the stock exchange.
* Enact judicial reforms to reduce the abuse of power in the judiciary in order to strengthen the entire judicial system.
Conclusion:
The search for peace and national development has consumed our resources, our lives and our time. Yet, 51 years after independence, we are still trapped in old ideas instead of embracing new ideas that have worked in other climes.
The trouble is that we took a detour many years ago and have yet to return to the correct path. That detour was to institute highly centralized government.
In order to remain powerful and strong, that central government made the rest of the system weak and dependent. Thus, ethnicity, region and religion have been used as tools in a cynical game of political power retention.
While it may be easy for anyone from anywhere to steer the ship of the nation, it is not easy to chart a new course for the prosperity of a plural nation like Nigeria. But we can do it. Our pluralism is not a curse, but a unique instrument to conquer adversity.
We must strive to better our national circumstances. We do so not by acting as if these differences do not exist but in realizing that we all have common interests in education, economic development, power generation, ample food and water and the protection of the rights and liberties of every one of us. The more we think on these goals, the more our differences become irrelevant as factors shaping the political economy. We must change our mind-set from believing that a plural society can only be achieved by the imposition of forced consensus. Instead, we must regard pluralism as the creation of that atmosphere of relationship and energetic discourse that stimulates ideas, progress and rapid development.
Nigeria must chart a new path to an open, deliberative society, responsive leadership and equitable fiscal federalism. The ability to do this is within our grasp. Whether we do so or not has nothing to do with our capacity. It has all to do with our courage and our love of Nigeria. May we all, leaders and followers alike, find it in ourselves to do what is right.
God Bless You. God Bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I thank you all for listening.