From Tony Osauzo, Benin
A Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law and Governance at the University of Benin, Prof. Edoba Bright Omoregie, has warned that if the country continues resistance to federalism reforms as experienced in the last few years, the risk of disintegration may escalate.
To arrest this, he advocated urgent correction to the anomalies in the Nigeria’s federal system in order to avoid the looming “violent disintegration.”
Prof. Omoregie, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), gave the warning while delivering University of Benin Inaugural Lecture titled ‘Nigeria’s Federal System In a Quandary: The Whys and Hows to fix it.’
He identified the principle of power sharing; incoherent system of federal solidarity and non-obligation to provide minimum standard of living for citizens and others as major problems of Nigeria’s federal system.
He is optimistic that the “adoption in the quest for federalism reforms in Nigeria would be realised if the current imbalance in the distribution of powers is reversed.
“We must do everything possible to avoid the looming violent disintegration, because we are heading towards that direction. The sign of possible disintegration is glaring. This is happening in Ethiopia and other countries. So, we need to fix our faulty federal system to avoid violent disintegration”, Prof. Edoba stressed.
He identified lack of autonomy in horizontal and management of the states; lack of autonomy in access to significant tax revenue sources, amongst others as major challenges causing agitation for disintegration.
“The 1999 Constitution institutes a federal system which denies the states their autonomy relative to the Federal Government… It is manifest in fiscal allocation and inter-government revenue relationship by which the states are denied direct and autonomous access to significant tax revenue source.
“State governments have also been denied autonomy in the horizontal organisation and management of their internal adminstration. The first point where this is manifest is the enacting of a single national constitution and the implied prohibition of sub-national constitutions. This is in constrast to the country’s pre-1966 federal system when the regions had their own regional constitutions in addition to the national constitution”, Prof. Edoba noted.
He suggested that “high premium should be placed on federalism expertise to promote the imperative of federalisation and reform constested aspects of the Nigeria’s federal system, while forestalling unprincipled constitution alteration of the system”, just as he called for “a well-resourced expert-driven reform and constitution alteration of unsatisfactory aspects of the Nigeria’s federal system to be put in place”.
Besides, Prof. Edoba called for “the deployment of policy federalism to address gaps in the dysfunctional aspects of Nigeria’s federal system pending constitutional alteration”.
He noted that the Federal Government has taken more than it can deliver and advocated for the establishment of institutions wherein true federalism would be taught.
In his goodwill message, a former Minority Whip of the House of Representatives, Dr. Samson Osagie said the guest lecturer placed within context of the complicated federal structure Nigeria pretends to be operating at the moment.
“Indeed in the midst of the confusion created by the constitution which vests all powers on the Federal Government, (as items in both the Exclusive and Concurrent lists are items on which the Federal Government has powers to legislate) Nigeria in actual practice is actually a Unitary State with abundant and unworkable principles of Federalism”, Osagie stated.