•Why I support restructuring, by VP
From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar yesterday restated his belief in Nigeria’s restructuring to enhance development. He said there was no need to create more states, but to make the existing ones stronger.
He said with a stronger economically viable states, reports of salaries being owed or schools being shut down as a result of shortfall in revenue would be a thing of the past.
Besides, he said the Federal Government has no business in building roads, schools and hospitals. He also restated his call for state police as well.
The former vice president spoke as the Chief Presenter at the presentation of a book, “Nigerian federalism: Continuing quest for stability and nationhood”, in Abuja. It was edited by Okechukwu Ibeanu and Mohammed J. Kuba.
Atiku said Nigerians are calling for restructuring because the present arrangement is not favouring their areas.
He said: “We are all witnesses to the agitations and complaints by different sections of the country at different times about being marginalized or shortchanged in fiscal allocation and the distribution of such other public resources such political positions, jobs, school admissions, provision of infrastructure, and even social honour. In response, many Nigerians have been calling for some form of restructuring of our federal system, while some small fringe groups insist on their part of the country separating from the federation all together.
“I have been shouting myself hoarse asking why we should have federal roads, federal schools, federal hospitals, etc. I have called for state police, for the states that so desire, to help us provide more effective security. In 2012 I went before ALGON in Enugu and told them that their clamour for local government autonomy from state governments is misguided.
“I told them that it is wrong for the Federal Government to be creating local governments and giving them money directly from the Federation Account. What is the meaning of “local” then, I asked? How does the transfer of local government dependence on state to central government translate to autonomy? Even our state governments are nearly totally dependent on the federal government, meaning they do not even have the autonomy that we are trying to give to the local governments that are below them.
“This is a complete absurdity. Can anyone honestly claim that our local governments have performed better since the introduction of the joint state/local government account than they did prior to the coming into effect of that constitutional provision? We must end our culture of institutional escapism in this country. By that I mean our tendency to create new institutions to solve problems for which we already have institutions just so we avoid dealing with the shortcomings of the existing institutions.
“Think about this: sales taxes ought to be collected and used by states and local governments. Of course there is nothing inherently wrong in a federal sales tax but states must agree with the Federal Government what items should be taxed, at what rate and how the proceeds are to be shared. They ought to be uniform. If a state is opposed to cattle tax or bicycle tax or alcohol tax, or pollution tax, for instance, it should not expect to share in the tax proceeds from those items. That is called fairness. In fact, states should be the ones collecting those taxes on behalf of the federal government and get compensated for their work, through an agreed sharing formula, rather than duplicating the cost of collection. Federal intrusion makes it more difficult for a state to collect taxes from items that may be peculiar to it, thereby narrowing the tax base. And it makes enforcement even more difficult.
“No section of this country can claim correctly that its people are better served by the current structure of our federation. When we were not dependent on oil revenues and when the federating units had greater autonomy of action and were largely responsible for their affairs, they, that is our regional governments, did not owe workers their salaries for several months. They did not shut down schools and universities for several months because of teacher strikes and inadequate funding.
“Take a look at the industries that the regional governments established and ran and the quality of schools that they established, and see if you can see a state government or a group of state governments that have bested them since the emergence of our unitary federalism. And also ask yourself which of those establishments taken over or established by the federal government since, has performed as well as they did under our pre-1966 federal system,” he said.
“Atiku said when the country was not solely dependent on oil revenue, reports of states not paying salaries or shutting down of schools were alien because the states collect revenue to opeate.
“We must acknowledge that what got us to our current over-centralised, and centre-dominated federal system is political expediency and fear, and bolstered by the command and control character of military regimes. But after 50 years of “unitary federalism” we are now in a position to clearly see that it has not worked well.
“The federating units in the First Republic had their disagreements but none claimed to lack autonomy of action, and none waited for federal fiscal allocations before it could implement its programs and pay salaries. The current structure may be working for some elite, but it has clearly not worked well for any section of this country and the country as a whole. We should take deliberate steps to change this structure to serve us better. And we should not dither for too long that we let fear and expediency stampede us into another disastrous policy shift that may not serve us well either,” the vice president said.