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Professor Bolaji Akinyemi’s testimony on Goodluck Jonathan’s Conference, of which he was the Deputy Chairman, rested on his idea that “there is nothing called true federalism; that each federal system is designed to address the peculiarities of the country, which, according to him, is why the Canadian Federalism is different from the Swiss one; the American is different from the French. Germany runs a federal structure, with each having its own peculiarity”. He ended by patting the Conference on the back saying they “reversed what looked like not just a trend, the rush towards a unification that started in 1966 and that then built up over the next 50 years, into a more structured federalism.”
The different forms of Federalism mentioned by Professor Akinyemi have a common denominator, the Constituent, defined by its socio-cultural parameters, without which they will not be Federal, hence true, whatever their form— and these are not “feeding bottle federalism”, as stated by Nigeria’s Deputy Senate President, where the Constituents are not only defined by the center, they exist at its mercy. For Professor Akinyemi, there “is” a Nigerian “federal state” from which certain issues were taken from the federal government and sent back to the states. But these states did not give away anything in the first instance; they were not even borne out of the free will of its residents; they were created by military fiat and made to submit to military diktat, hence it is false for Professor Akinyemi to now allude to that situation as a form of “giving back” to the states what they never gave away.
In the countries listed by Professor Akinyemi, the issue of the Constituent was settled as the foundation for their Federalism such that what he now calls “peculiarities” of those societies are simply the characteristics of the Constituent; where, in the US, it was the original colonies, as the Constituents, becoming States after independence with their socio-cultural attributes intact , which settled for a form of territorial Federalism; in Germany, the Constituents were the Ethno-National Germanic peoples in their natural geo-political boundaries while the Canadian Constituent is a combination of former British and French colonies whereas for France, “Federalism” was not a movement for a particular political solution but an object of definition for the resistance, coming especially from the provinces against Paris, where Jacobinism held sway. At no time was “federalism” in France a function of the nature of its Republic. Switzerland, we all know, is as much Ethno-National as it was territorial.
In all of these instances, the issue of the Federating, Constituent Unit was not treated as simply a matter of administrative convenience based on an existing structure; for their Federalism is a negation of that structure, which turned an American colony into an independent State with its own relationship with other former colonies through what is now recognized as Federal, which was why the preamble to the US Constitution started by looking forward to a “more perfect union”, thus making Federalism a process of rebirth, not only of the Nation State, but of its cultural essence in order to engender the coming into being of the Constituents and which can also be seen from all of the examples given by Professor Akinyemi; hence he cannot therefore ascribe a peculiarity to any of these outside the context of their Constituents’ pursuit in order to apply some form of peculiarity to Nigeria.
Up until 1966, each of the initial three regions were essentially based on the ethno-cultural and natural characteristics with control over their resources, with the possibilities of creating more Regions as initially envisaged before being truncated by military fiat and continued as such. So, if there were to be any peculiarities in Nigeria, it would be in strengthening that Federal system by ensuring the smaller minorities their autonomy without touching the derivation principle and this was not done by the Conference.
In any case, this “giving back” was also what the UK did to Scotland and Wales when it devolved powers to them and the UK is not Federal. So, taking powers away from the center and giving it to the states is not Federalism but at best devolution and in devolution, what is given can also be taken away by the giver. Federalism is the exact opposite where such powers are voluntarily surrendered by the Federators who must exist before a Federation comes into being and where any peculiarities may now influence the form.
So, saying that “taking some powers from the Federal government to the states, immunity, separation of office of Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, having a functional navy, issues of employment, youth, state Constitutions after the existence of the Federation, etc are all derivatives of Nigeria’s Federalism is to turn the concept on its head.
All of these issues are actually functions of the social, political and or economic philosophy that may be propounded and pursued by any government in power for its own sustenance or for the sustenance of the Nation State which may or may not have anything to do with its structure, be it Federalism or Unitarism. In Nigeria, the immunity clause was introduced by the military regime to protect itself and which was found useful by successive civilian administrations, as such it has nothing to do with Federalism but more with accountability and transparency which even unitary States like the UK pursue since it is vital to its economic health.
In the Truly Federal first republic, Federalism was based on the fact that each of the Constituents had control over its resources such that their various governments can pursue economic objectives according to its own situation because it is in control of its resources, hence an AG government in the West could devise ways to maximize production and income from Cocoa world market and use its proceeds for whatever it considered a matter of high priority like either labor wages or education; a process which was neutralized during the military Federalism of Babangida, just as the same Babangida Federal administration created the office of the Director-General as a replacement for Permanent Secretary, without a Conference and it was still under Nigeria’s “federalism”.
Even if it is argued that states could play similar roles as Constituents in Professor Akinyemi’s Federation, the essential point, control of resources by the Constituent, is missing; so in his type of “Federalism” without this fundamental fact, a “return to the independence constitution” is impossible and the Conference’s 600 resolutions become mere administrative intendments.
In the world today, Ethno-National Federalism is in the forefront of political discourse in the Middle East, the UK to Spain to Asia to South Sudan, as a solution the contradictions of the modern Nation State as it applies to the crises facing them; yet we have, in Nigeria, an attempt to veer away from such a global phenomenon more-so when it is very apparent that the National Question is the basis for all of the conflicts in the country, and fifty years from now, when the issue would have been globally settled, Nigeria will then try to come out of its own self-inflicted “dark ages” after wasting generations of her most productive persons.
Professor Akinyemi glorifies the return to the “old national anthem” because, according to him, it reflects demilitarization. But this old anthem was about “tribes”—if in 2014, ethno-nationalities in Nigeria, some whose population are bigger than many countries in Europe that initially defined us as “tribes” are still considered as “tribes”—what is the jubilation about?
Glorifying “tribes” in 2014 by such a conference and regarding it as demilitarization is to sentence us to further militarization for that was exactly how colonial militarization constructed us. Yes, the military is the primary agent for de-federalizing Nigeria which starts from the nature of the Nation State that came into being through the militarization process—which we all know as the scrapping of the Regions and replaced by the states while taking away their ownership and control of their resources and banking it at the Center. When the 12 states were created in 1967, it followed largely the Regional pattern earlier advocated by the AG and subsequently after the war, derivation was done away with and the military assumed absolute control over the resources, which formed the basis for what we now have as “feeding bottle” federalism.
If therefore, we are to federalize, the foundation of such de-federalization must be rebuilt. It is not possible to simply tamper with such foundation in a cosmetic manner and pat ourselves on the back as having achieved federalization; otherwise what we are being told is that we are incapable of such redefinition in the context of our historical experience and existentialism but can only remain at the level of emotion which was what colonialism proposed and popularized by Senghor’s negritude; which essentially says the African is ruled by emotion and not reason.
Which would be why Professor Akinyemi would rail against what Cameroon is “doing to us” proposing that we should be more assertive and not apologetic when, at this critical juncture in world history, peoples of other lands are re-discovering their essence, so much so that the UK that carved us out is unraveling under our noses and where there are now calls for Federalism of the various Nations(not tribes) in the UK in the event of a No vote in the Scottish referendum on September 18 and here we have a congregation of Nigerians supposedly working out modalities for Nigeria’s greatness and all what they could come up with is the admiration and preference for the old national anthem as if things happening in other parts of the world are immaterial and we are expected to thank Goodluck Jonathan for that.
Rather than Professor Akinyemi decry the neighbors’ attitude, such a conference ought to have been the basis for advancing True Federalism on the African Continent rather than berating one country or the other as to what it is or is not doing to us; for at the foundation of every crisis in Africa is the problem associated with the National Question vis-à-vis the Nation State, one way or the other; and to demilitarize in Nigeria is to decolonize by changing the nature of the colonially-inspired Nation State which had been Africa’s albatross. Even if this seems too far out for other African countries, a template would have been created which can be utilized later-at least a contribution to the search for peaceful co-existence in Africa would have been made.

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