WHY THE NORTH OPPOSES TOTAL RESTRUCTURING OF NIGERIA
WHY THE MORTH OPPOSES TOTAL RESTRUCTURING OF NIGERIARecently, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) issued a communiqué after its high-level meeting that highlighted national interest issues and focused on the incessant insecurity in the north and the entire Nigeria. ACF Board of Trustees Chairman, Alhaji Bashir Muhammad Dalhatu, went the extra mile to apologize to the northerners for the “collective failure of leaders”. Beyond that, ACF partly blamed the Federal Government for not doing enough and called for scaling up the community-driven defence models used in the North-East. This simple nation-building engagement by ACF was seized by the Nigerian Tribune Editorial and pivoted to something else. The editorial questioned the legitimacy of the meeting due to “the absence of attendance of leaders from the minority states in the North” and wondered why “throughout President Muhammadu Buhari’s eight years in office, a period that marked the deterioration of insecurity in the region, the ACF never issued this kind of statement”. Then the editorial offers the ultimate panacea to all Nigeria’s problems by insisting that the northern leaders should “embrace total restructuring of Nigeria”. The editorial is replete with misinformation and half-truths. Today, I will leave these matters for another opportunity and focus on the restructuring.Restructuring is natural in any organic entity such as Nigeria. However, there are optimum approaches to minimize costs towards desired benefits. Calls for restructuring Nigeria have been persistent, driven by dissatisfaction with the country’s political, economic, and social structures. Advocates for restructuring often argue that Nigeria’s current system is inefficient, unequal, and prone to ethnic tensions. The Nigerian Tribune editorial associated the “insecurity in Northern Nigeria” with “the fact that in the absence of restructuring, governments will only be presiding over mass bloodletting”. While there are merits to the restructuring debate, the idea of completely overhauling the nation’s structure comes with significant risks. As a history student, I would like to share lessons from other countries that have restructured. We can find cautionary tales that highlight the complexities and unintended consequences of such moves.Countries that undergo total restructuring often face challenges in maintaining national unity. A key argument for restructuring in Nigeria is the decentralization of power from the federal to state or local governments. While decentralization may allow more autonomy for regions, it can also deepen existing ethnic and religious divides. Nigeria is home to over 250 ethnic groups, and further restructuring could inflame separatist tendencies, as has happened in other countries. For instance, in Yugoslavia, the push for more autonomy and the eventual restructuring of the federation contributed to its violent disintegration in the 1990s. It broke up, at first into five countries. The ethnic and nationalist tensions that arose from the restructuring process led to civil wars, mass atrocities, and the eventual breakup of the country into smaller, ethnically defined states. Nigeria, with its own history of a civil war, must be cautious of any move that could reignite separatist movements or further fragment the country. The editorial seems to divisively highlight the issue of minority states in the North. It ignores the fact that every one of the six regions in Nigeria has minorities and each has its mistrust toward the dominant groups.One of the promises of restructuring is that it would allow regions or states to control their resources, enabling them to manage their development more effectively. However, this could also worsen economic disparities between regions. The north is generally less economically developed than the oil-rich southern regions or the Lagos State as the commercial hub of the region. A total restructuring that gives regions or states full control over their resources might lead to increased wealth for the south while leaving the north behind. The potential tension is obvious. This is similar to what happened…
Dons Eze
