Modern societies should use the merits of computer technology in framing the synthesis of governance, rather than dwell on nostalgic reminiscences of old ideological postulates, long exploded.
Adam Smith, Owen, Karl Marx and V.I Lenin and others were the great thinkers, who propagated capitalist and socialist ideologies, as scientific postulates for socio-economic advancement of societies.
None of the above men ever saw nor used a computer. The amount of information now available to man is simply mind-boggling and so to rely on hackneyed political thoughts of these two groups of advanced souls, is to handcuff human intelligence.
Modern societies should be management development oriented. People possess unique competencies and skills necessary to power nations to achieve laudable results and sustainable growth.
Each state of the Nigerian Confederacy should be allowed to develop their competency models and statecraft. As of now, these states are bogged down by wrong federalist constraints The Federation is held together by party activists, military and police power and is anchored on legislative props.
The states should have efficient state police, state economic programmes, propelled by the manifestoes of the political party in power. What is happening now is that a state’s ruling party cannot implement its party manifesto because the state is tied to the apron strings of the Central Government, which some states did not vote for. This stultifies the political programmes of the dominant party in those states, where the party at the center did not have the mandate of the people.
In framing the jurisprudential synthesis of the Confederal Republic of Nigeria, each state should award contracts for projects, which it deems to have priority over others.
Under the present dispensation, the states have to wait for weekly Federal Executive Council meetings to see if their projects had been approved. Where their projects passed through the eye of the needle, the governor has to deploy strategies to receive the funds for the project, with great energy and sophistication. By this time, the project engineers have left the site! No-one can transform a state under such bad practices.
The methodology of running a Confederal state, hinges on the undisputed recognition of the fact the Central government is wholly in charge of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Finance. The Ministry of Finance should pursue wealth generation, in collaboration with the Ministry of Trade and Investment.
Every state should understudy its potentials for growth, manage its resources, and manage its people’s affairs in order to move their states to achieve social well-being and social justice. The human rights and social justice provisions of a Confederal Republic must be justifiable.
This will confer the inalienable rights to the Confederal citizen unlike the abridgment of those rights under the Federal Constitution.
The management ethos of a Confederal Republic is usually based on the competency models as practiced by blue chip companies like Huron Blue Company, little advertised but standing firm.
The traditional scope of Federal Governments is characterized by lobbying for ministerial positions and then relying on a coterie of advisers and other competent people.
In a Confederal state the educational standards of most citizens is very high that there are too many bright people to choose from.
With such a team or teams, it is easy to measure goal achievement and organizational effectiveness. Both Management and leadership competencies are always on display. The citizens can measure and evaluate the government’s strength and weaknesses, as well as the attitude and feelings of its ministers and officials.
A Confederal state kindles the spirit of competition and innovativesness as we witnessed under our regional system, before and shortly after our independence. The failure of regionalism stemmed from the monopoly of state power and privileges in Enugu, Ibadan, Kaduna and Lagos. Those, who were beneficiaries of that system, are still holding oppressive sway over others. Had General Gowon and General Ibrahim Babangida not dismantled the regional structure by military force, Ibadan, Kaduna, Enugu and Lagos, would have still been the place to be. Who would have thought of a Zamfara, Akwa Ibom and Bauchi indigenous governors? Who would have built a University for Gwaris?
Now that we have exhausted the guess-work in federating the nation, we can transform to a higher level of state organization, whose jurisprudence is easier to comprehend. The parameters are well-defined. It will be a state that promotes social justice. The governors are well educated and less greedy,
They have the advantage of high human intelligence, driven by civics, social ethics, illustrative behaviour, the power of shame and honour. They are adepts at promoting the interest of the confederal community.
Terror and corruption have degraded the Federal Republic. I joke our ministers on their extreme punctiliousness. The press has rained satirical sonnets on corruption, without success.
No-one has investigated some reasons why ordinarily honest people become corrupt in Nigeria. The Federal system corrupts both government officers and people in authority.
In a Confederal Republic, the state cares for its retired officers, its children from the cradle to the grave, the psychology of the populace is regularly monitored by social workers, and rehabilitation is available for citizens, who may have derailed at some juncture in their lives.
The perils, to which citizens in our Federal Republic are exposed, are hard to beat. They are regularly assailed, several times over by serious and disagreeable reflections. Field officers at BOSAS INTERNATIONAL LAW BUREAU, who have been tutored not to use hyperbole in their reports have thrown caution to the winds and have filed reports saying that our people are really hard put.
Rents are going up, prices are rising astronomically, wages are low, life expectancy is getting low and the future looks bleak. These are manifestations of despondency and failure.
In a Confederal Republic, relations between compatriots are well nurtured. Food can be sent to markets in neighbouring and adjoining states. People can move to neighbouring states where rent is cheap, food is available and social life is more tolerable.
Leaders in Confederal Republics are imbued with social consciousness. They worry about the welfare of their citizens and how they are doing.
In our Federal Republic, our leaders secure themselves, use sirens to drive those, who just voted for them off the roads and bigmanism is always on display.
Our institutions do not lighten the citizen’s plight. When they approach ministries for normal and formal requests, they are faced with occasional degradation, frustrations and hopelessness. Such institutions must change or yield place to embodiments of national aspiration.
Nigeria has developed the features of a Confederal Republic. The states in the North need autonomy to grapple with their people’s under-development
In an essay which Hegel wrote in 1802 on the Constitution of Germany, he observed that “Germany was no longer a state”. “Hegel made good this with an exceedingly able analysis of the decline of the empire after the peace of Westphalia. Germany, he argued had become merely an anarchical collection of virtually independent units.”
With the recent democratic elections in Nigeria, and the establishment of a cabinet that reflects the diverse nation-state units, there is need to democratize the political freedom of composite units of the Federal sates.
This thought must be expanded and concretized by constitutional experts, with special reference to the existing geo-political conditions of Nigeria.
There is complete discrepancy in our societal engineering, which is at once a cause for despondency, pessimism and futility. Yet, the c
oncern of well-meaning citizens permits new hope and activity.
In Nigeria, the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, which has advanced the cause of constitutionalism, democracy and the Rule of Law, undertook an intellectual study of the “Path to People’s Constitution” and published its findings in July 2000.
It is a foremost effort to discuss constitutionalism in Nigeria from both theoretical and practical stand points.
The authors of the book also examined constitution-making in other African states. Perhaps in framing the synthesis of a Confederal state, the contents of the essays in the book, will be very instructive, since the emphasis is on human rights, social justice and a just social system.
For the wrong reasons, confused ideological neophytes, with little learning, are orchestrating the prolongation of the tenure of a government, whose activities are still on the drawing board. It is better to wait and see where we are going before we march nowhere slowly. This “GEHEIM” plot has no place in our statecraft. It is trite logic to argue that the President will not benefit from the elongation of the tenure.
It is amazing how politicians think when they feel secure. Hosni Mubarak was secure. President Ali of Yemen was secure. Muamar Khadafy was very secure. Al Assad of Syria was secure after his father was secured for many years. As a result of the people’s political awareness and a deteriorating world order, no leader is secure any more.
After watching how the Benghazi rebels, the Egyptian political mal-contents, the Syrian rebels, the Tunisian rebels, the Bahrain rebels, the Jordanian rebels and the Moroccan rebels brought their governments to their knees, I am inclined to take the Tottenham rebels seriously.
I am now very sure that Euclid was right, when he said that “Things that are equal to the same things are equal to one another.” It is very ironical that states that recently recognized rebels and aided and abetted rebellion are now unwittingly victims of mindless violence as we recently witnessed in the North of London.
The banditry that was televised was simply appalling. The blinkered attitude of the rioters exuded a beastly irreverence.
Nigerians are not given to extremism. They accept that any condition is bearable. Fela Anikulapo Kuti captured this phenomenon beautifully, when he sang that Nigerians are fond of “suffering and smiling.”
We shall further address the philosophical and legal underpinnings of our Confederacy model in due course.
We have tried mathematical, constitutional formulas, which have never worked. The search for a new path to Confederacy and the understanding of its tenets will not end with a religious or partisan vision. It will be a continuous process, with well-defined jurisprudential attributes.
Our recent elections, which dealt with a rearrangement of the voting system and leaves undisturbed the system that strengthens elite monopoly of 80 percent of our corporate commonwealth, is not liberation.
The way forward for Nigeria is not the subject of a National Conference of confederated states, but is being decided by the actual correlation of class forces, which have recently come to power, with an unclear transformation agenda and the policies that underpin it.
The role of the working people in the transformation process must be well-defined. The working class is a political vanguard, which will respond to the caliber of leadership on the ground and not by mere proclamation.
There will be no ambiguity about their place in the transformation process. Their going on strike, not in the vulgar sense of the term, sets a disquieting stage for lost hours, resulting in economic waste and unnecessary upheavals, with governors threatening hale and brimstone.
When the crisis matures, the nation is the loser. The world is experiencing the sharpest economic deterioration in twenty years. To disrupt social production in any form is unwise.
More imaginative thinking must come forth from the Three Arms Zone. Alleged influences on our leaders by psychics and mystics, principalities and powers, witches and wizards, bearing concoctions consisting of bats blood, white chalk, honey and black soot, do not resonate with me.
My interest in arcane matters once took me to visit the House of F.W.H Meyers, one of the founder members of the Society of Psychic research in England. Sir Oliver Lodge often visited the adept, Mr. F.H.W Meyers in Cambridge. At the Fellow’s Garden at Trinity College, I was tutored in the art of mystical and psychic engagements. One should not cross the Rubicon! Influence peddlers create timorous scenes for the faint-hearted in order to manipulate and control their objects. A timely call on JESUS, the Christ will send the demons away.
In this RAMADAN SEASON, I wish our compatriots well.
Allah Biabukata! Allah kawo Alheri! Allah kawo Kudi! Allah Bamusah!
