Winding back the hands of the clock, By Dan Agbese

For forms of government, says the poet, let fools contend. Nearly 64 years after independence from British colonial rule, we are still contending with

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For forms of government, says the poet, let fools contend. Nearly 64 years after independence from British colonial rule, we are still contending with a form of government best suited to our country. Some eminent Nigerians, one of whom is the much respected Chief Anyaoku, former secretary-general of the Commonwealth, want us to discard the presidential system and revert to the parliamentary system Britain bequeathed to us at independence. They want a new constitution for the country because the current constitution would not be suitable for the parliamentary system they are advocating.

We contend, not because we are fools but because our leaders at various times believed that there is a unique system of government waiting to be discovered and which will, with all things being equal, help Nigeria make the leap from a potentially great nation to a great nation in law and in fact. It is always back and forth in our country. Follow me for a brief tour of our long but fruitless search for that unique system. If the ancient Greek gave the world democracy Nigeria could also give the world a modern alternative to that ancient system of government. Here we go. 

In 1966, our first military ruler, the late Major-General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, appointed a technocrat, Francis Nwokedi, as a one-man panel to recommend to him the measures he needed to take for the “establishment of an administrative machinery for a united Nigeria.” He did not explicitly say so, but Ironsi believed that the parliamentary system needed tweaking to beat the fractious regions into a united country. The general settled for and replaced the federal system with a unitary system.

In the heat of the political crises in 1966, General Yakubu Gowon took Ironsi’s uncompleted job further when he appointed an ad-hoc constitutional conference made up of representatives of the four regions to consider four options for a new constitution as a glue to hold the country together. These were “a federal system with a weak central government, a federal system with a strong central government, a confederation and an entirely new arrangement which will be peculiar to Nigeria, and which has not yet found its way into any political dictionary.”  

The unfolding crises did not allow the ad-hoc constitutional conference to engage fully in the search. The came General Murtala Ramat Muhammed. He appointed a 50-man constitution drafting committee headed by the late F.R.A. Williams, to draft a new constitution for the country. The late Chief Obafemi Awolowo refused to serve on the committee. So, 49 wise men did the job. 

Muhammed told the committee to do away with the parliamentary system and devise a constitution that would “eliminate cut-throat political competition based in a system of winner-takes-all.” He wanted a new constitution that would also “discourage institutionalised opposition to the Government in power and, instead, develop consensus politics and Government based on a community of all interests rather than the interests of sections of the country.” 

He wanted a system in which the president would be the father of the nation. The wise men followed his script and produced a draft constitution ratified by the constituent assembly that became the 1979 constitution. The new constitution moved the country from the parliamentary to the executive presidential system similar to what obtains in the United States of America.

Our search was not over. After four years and three months with the new system, the military men returned to power. They were arguably dissatisfied with the new system or how the civilians operated it. After he ousted Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, General Ibrahim Babangida began the search once more for that elusive system. He set up a political bureau headed by an educationist, Samuel Cookey, and charged it with finding that system. He told the bureau that his administration did not “want a regurgitation of the political models of the so-called advanced countries of the world (because) we cannot, indeed we must not, lift foreign models (because) we share neither the political history nor the political cultures of these lands.” 

The bureau did not find the system Babangida believed was waiting to be discovered. It took us back to the executive presidential system. So, here we are. Our country has had a surfeit of constitutions in its nearly 64 years as an independent nation. Three years after the British left, we replaced our independence constitution with the republican constitution. The 1979 constitution became the model for the 1988 constitution, the Abacha constitution of 1996 and the current constitution birthed by the General Abdulsalami Abubakar administration in 1999.

            The eminent Nigerians pushing for the country to wind back the hands of the clock mean well. But they miss the point. TheGuardian editorial of March 24, 2024, was a reply to the agitation by the eminent Nigerians. This country has been a political laboratory for most of its independence. Our gain is a confused system such that we do not quite know if we are running a federal system, a unitary system, or a combination of the two that is strange to the political dictionary. We cannot continue with marching forward and marching backward because we are dissatisfied with how the system is operated. Neither the executive presidential system nor the parliamentary will on its own birth a perfect system and a perfect constitution. A perfect system of government and a perfect constitution do not exist. 

Our reversion to the parliamentary system will not solve our political, economic, and social problems. A constitution, perfect or not, is a tool of governance.  No more and no less. How it is used depends on those entrusted with using it to achieve the desired national objectives in a country’s political, economic, and social development. The challenge we have is how to make the system we have work for us as a nation in advancing our development in the critical areas of human progress. Every constitution and all forms of government are prone to abuse by those who operate them. We have laws to prevent the crass abuse of the system, but they are emasculated by those who run the system at national and sub-national levels. The African big man does not believe he is bound by laws that make the community of interest possible.

To move forward, we need to pay attention to three fundamental problems that afflict us as a nation. One, we need to re-examine the current stifling military federalism that has imposed on the nation a system of government that is strange to true federalism and the best practices in that form of government. No nation operates a hybrid system of government. 

Two, we must find the will to restructure the country and allow our federalism system to breathe. Restructuring is long overdue. A system that allows 811 governments to feed from the same trough weakens both federalism and democracy. Restructuring will help us place the local government system where it belongs as an administrative system funded by the state governments.

Three, we need to re-examine, in the light of our experience so far, the role of the political parties in our leadership recruitment process and in our national development. Fluidity in the system with the to-ing and fro-ing by politicians in search of greener pastures incapacitates the entire system as a critical element in our national development. We must get this right if we desire to make meaningful rather than cosmetic progress in our national development. We must stop blaming the system and admit that we are where we are because we are who we are.

TheGuardian editorial in its issue under reference, argued, and it is difficult to disagree with the newspaper, that “For Nigeria, the choice between presidential and parliamentary systems remains only a gamble if politics continues to be essentially transactional and without adherence to integrity, transparency and accountability.”

Blame the work men; absolve the tool.