A former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Chidi Odinkalu, says President Bola Tinubu can’t champion the devolution of more powers to the federating units because it will threaten the powers enjoyed by the Federal Government.
Restructuring talks were a major issue in the build-up to the 2023 presidential election which was won by ex-Lagos governor Tinubu. Regional socio-political groups like Afenifere in the South-West zone, Ohanaeze Ndigbo in the South-East zone, and groups in the Middlebelt area had demanded restructuring along fiscal lines. Their demands include the removal of some responsibilities from the exclusive legislative list to the concurrent list to legally empower federating units like states to carry out such functions as policing, among others.
Hopes have been high that Tinubu would implement some of the tenets of restructuring but Odinkalu said the idea is not likely to fly because doing so will mean an attrition of the powers domiciled at the centre.
The law professor also said Lagos is not Nigeria so the President can’t govern the country the way he did in Lagos when he was governor from May 1999 to May 2007.
Odinkalu said, “President Tinubu is now seeing Nigeria from the centre, not from the circumference. I’ve lived in Lagos for clearly 40 years and I have tried to tell my friends that Lagos is not Nigeria; Lagos is Lagos. And I say this as a full-time Lagosian. Lagos is not Nigeria. All of that he was talking about is different when you are the President.
“So, the idea that Tinubu is going to come to the job with an idea of restructuring is not likely to fly. The mechanics of presidentialism make it unlikely that an incumbent President is going to be the advocate of the cannibalisation of that power. Even if the President were to be enthusiastic about that, the presidential team, many of whom would lose relevance, would slow workings.
“So, you are going to have two levels of resistance – one from the occupant of the office himself but more also from the people around him who don’t have interest in seeing that happen. So, the redesign of Nigeria from the centre is going to be very difficult.”
Unlike the proponents of restructuring who advocate a new constitution for the country, the human rights activist said Nigeria does not necessarily need a new constitution but a constitutional settlement where all the ethnic nationalities and the different heterogenous groups will sit down and agree on how they want to live as a country.
“I am not of the idea that we need a new constitution. What we need is a constitutional settlement. A constitution is a text, anyone can write it…A constitutional settlement precedes a constitution and we have never really had one; the closest we came to one was in 1971…but the military stepped in.
“We need a constitutional settlement to precede a constitution; to say, all of us in Nigeria, communities, ethnicities, whosoever we are, we discussed the things that matter and bind us together, the things we want and wish to have and you guys should make a constitution of it,” he said.
Peoplesmind
