Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Welcome to another episode of Inside Stuff with me, Martins Olodja.
00:04 This week we are going to talk on our own celebration at The Guardian and launch of
00:11 a book on federalism titled, that is, The Guardian Federalist Papers.
00:17 I am the Professor of Political Science and the Director General of the Nigerian Institute
00:25 of International Affairs, Professor Ehusa Osagai, who has done so much on federalism,
00:36 was the reviewer of the book and he delivered a keynote on federalism.
00:45 We gave him some conundrum because our own title, If Federalism is the Answer, What is
00:53 the Question?
00:54 And he did a good job, which surprised everybody because he wrote a paper but he never looked
01:00 at the paper for even a minute.
01:03 And what he said convinced everybody that there are professors and there are professors.
01:09 And in the book itself, I was one of the three writers.
01:20 I wrote the introduction to the book and that is what I want to deconstruct this week.
01:26 We set out to write a few articles but we ended up, between 2021 and 2022, we wrote
01:37 these 61 articles, a serial as editorial.
01:45 It has never been done in this country that a newspaper would set out to write 61 editorials
01:53 on an issue.
01:55 It's wonderful.
01:57 But it goes to show that federalism really matters.
02:01 What is this federalism?
02:03 We borrowed the brilliance of the three musketeers between 1787 and 1788, S. James Madison, the
02:15 fourth president of the United States, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay.
02:21 These three musketeers worked on the Federalist Papers, which was ratified in their constitution
02:32 and they worked on a very strong central government with federating units in the United States
02:40 that is still working today.
02:43 We lost federalism effectively here in 1966 to the soldiers of fortune when they struck
02:51 down the regional government that we had at that time through a unification decree.
02:58 Since that time, we have not had access to federalism.
03:04 The democracy has been weakened in this place by a unitary system of government.
03:08 The conclusion of that book was that the military should not have interfered in the governance
03:15 of this country.
03:16 But that's not the issue now.
03:17 The issue is restoration of federalism, that we enable states to just take care of their
03:25 destiny, to use their resources, to even write their own constitution, and to have different
03:31 levels just as we had before 1966.
03:36 It may not be clear to young people that even the National Television Authority, the Nigerian
03:42 Television Authority, NTA, actually evolved from a regional television set up by the late
03:49 chief of Bafemia-Ulawa.
03:50 He set up as a regional leader, as premier of the Western region, set up the first television
03:57 station in Africa, the whole of Africa, as a regional government, not the federal government.
04:03 He did it and he also set up the first studio in Africa, this Liberty Studio in Nibada.
04:10 But the federal government just took over television stations in the country at the
04:15 time and then they found everything that was good about Western Nigerian television.
04:23 And in 1977, they seized it and even seized the general manager then, Engineer Vincent
04:29 Mfengi Chukwu Maduka.
04:31 He was general manager of the Western television station and they seized it.
04:37 It had become Nigerian Television Authority.
04:40 They began with that one as NTA, Ibada.
04:43 They seized the infrastructure and then the general manager became director general, first
04:48 director general of Nigerian Television Authority.
04:51 We don't have anything to do with that.
04:53 They also went ahead and seized, even secondary schools, they seized three universities.
04:59 They seized the one of Ife, which was also set up by regional government.
05:04 It was an act of parliament that set up the University of Ife.
05:09 And they also seized University of Nigeria, Unsuka.
05:15 They seized Amadou Belou University too.
05:18 These were regional universities.
05:21 At the time they were set up, but the federal government seized them.
05:24 They became federal institutions, quite unlike the universities of Lagos, universities of
05:30 Benin, and University of Ibada, which was set up in 1948.
05:36 Those ones were set up by the federal government.
05:39 But the one we are talking about, this was when federalism worked.
05:46 So we have been advocating a return to federalism.
05:50 This is the essence of the book that the Guardian pioneered, "Federalism is the Answer."
05:58 We said, so we were not unmindful of the fact that there were some regions when federalism
06:06 could not work, like Yugoslavia, that was always disruptive and it was actually disrupted.
06:15 But in our case here, we are not actually looking for a new deal.
06:19 We are just talking about a restoration of federalism that we lost soldiers of fortune
06:27 in 1966 through a unification decree we have not been able to get out of.
06:32 What are we talking about?
06:34 If you look at history, you will see that the Western regional government at that time,
06:42 by the same chief of staff, Ameya Oluo, Action Group, actually sent agent general to the
06:50 United Kingdom as their own ambassador before the federal government and one prominent lawyer,
06:59 M.E.R. Okoro Dudu, was the first agent general that the Western regional government sent
07:07 to the United Kingdom.
07:09 You can see that it is a paradox of development that even the residence that the Western region
07:20 purchased for the agent general is still the official residence of Nigeria's High Commissioner
07:31 to the United Kingdom.
07:33 What they seized is the infrastructure from the Western region because we now have a federal
07:40 government that was sending their own agent, their own High Commissioner after independence,
07:47 was sending High Commissioner to Commonwealth countries.
07:52 So what we are saying is that it once worked and you see that a regional government could
07:56 set up a great university like IFE.
08:00 Even the late Nnamdi Azikwe set up an American model.
08:08 The University of IFE was set up for tropical agriculture and tropical medicine for Western
08:14 Nigeria, not for the whole country.
08:16 It was supposed to be a model for Africa anyway.
08:19 It doesn't have to be federal before it can be good.
08:22 It can be good enough to serve even a continent.
08:27 State universities, regional universities, they seized them.
08:31 They seized the television station that was supposed to showcase pioneering advantage
08:36 here and there.
08:38 So what we are asking is a return to federalism.
08:42 We are not asking the return of this infrastructure but there should be a constitutional review
08:48 to grant autonomy to different states of the Federation so that they can just shape their
08:55 destiny on their own.
08:56 They can deal with some issues like that without having to talk about, "Oh, the federal government
09:04 is going to Abuja.
09:05 Abuja is handing out something.
09:07 Abuja is handling all the federal roads.
09:10 Abuja is handling schools.
09:12 Abuja is handling even some schools.
09:15 Abuja is handling this.
09:16 Abuja is handling that."
09:17 A subprime developer, the inspector general of police, will give order to 36 state commissioners
09:24 and AIGs that are in different zones.
09:26 It's not good.
09:27 It's not helping even security management.
09:30 There are so many issues like that that are too central to be efficient.
09:35 And this is exactly what we at The Guardian have been advocating.
09:42 We are still writing on it and we continue to pursue this until something happens.
09:46 If you have your view on this, you can send it to the comment section of Inside Stuff
09:53 with Martins Oloja.
09:55 Until we meet again.
09:56 [Music]
09:57 [Music]
09:58 [Music]
09:59 (upbeat music)