SOURCE- http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=84639:adebanwi-the-federalist-and-his-enemies-1&catid=38:columnists&Itemid=615

IN 1962, a combination of narrow-mindedness, dark mischief and reckless manoeuvre led the retrograde, even if dominant, political elite and their cronies across the country, particularly in Western Nigeria, to start an elaborate scheme of both political and physical liquidation of the man who was fighting hard to prevent the homogenisation of the ruling elite. As we mark the 50th anniversary of that infantile and self-defeating conspiracy, which eventually consumed the key elements whose intolerance produced the plan – their heirs are again showing that they are poor students of pertinent history.

If the latest scheme to steal the political patrimony of the people of western Nigeria, which was recently revealed, were not a path to a gaping tragedy, it would have constituted yet another humour in a country whose leadership and dominant conservative political elite are a tragic joke. But because of the bloody trail of such cruel jokes in the past and the collusion of the security forces with earlier jokers of this type, it is perhaps important to remind the inheritors of this mantle of national tragedy – and many Nigerians who might assume that it is a local or localised problem – that the room that the PDP mischief-makers in Osun State, their collaborators at the federal level and in the security services want to set on fire will lead to a conflagration, which could eventually consume the whole estate.

Recently, the Department of State Security (DSS) was reported to have received an “intelligence report” about a plan by Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State to “Islamise” the state and subsequently “secede” from Nigeria. Based on this, the SUN newspaper reported that “The Federal Government has mobilised virtually all security agencies in the country to put Osun State governor… on 24-hour surveillance.” If you thought the report was inaccurate or that the reported “instruction” to “all security agencies” to put the governor on “24-hour surveillance” was exaggerated, the silence of the DSS and the National Security Adviser (NSA) would seem to “confirm” that, indeed, there is sufficient “recognition” among the security agencies and their chiefs of a possible “security threat” emanating from the governor’s office and the Government House in Osogbo.

Yet, the “report” is so unintelligent that one would wonder about the ridiculous misuse of words that allows it to be called an “intelligence report”. Governor Aregbesola, in his broadcast to the people of the state and in subsequent media interviews, has already denied these allegations and pointed to the illogicality of the premises on which they are based. A truly intelligent analysis of these allegations would show that, if indeed the security agencies have taken them seriously, then they have elected to waste our collective resources and their otherwise precious time on pepper-soupy twaddle or beer-parlour, low-quality gossips. It is also evident that the “report” could not have emanated from any other quarters than from the reprobate ballot-pilferers in Osun State and their allies who stole Aregbesola’s mandate before it was retrieved through the courts.

Yet, it is important to go beyond the evident pranks of these elements to understand not only what is at stake locally and nationally, but also to put what we are witnessing in historical perspective. This will not be the first time that progressive political leaders in the west of Nigeria would be accused of planning to overthrow the Federal Government by force of arms and/or planning to secede from Nigeria. The additional accusation of “Islamisation” in the case of Aregbesola is only a distraction from the old script that the conservative power phalanx in Nigeria and their local collaborators in western Nigeria have always used. The question would be why always the west?

Before I attempt to provide the historical background that would illuminate the answer to this question, it is important to draw attention to a seemingly unrelated statement which was made in far-away Canada, only a few days after the spurious “intelligence report” was advertised in the newspapers. I do this to draw attention to the fundamental futility of Nigeria’s unrelenting, but ultimately futile, bid - even before independence - to forcefully and undemocratically homogenise a diverse people and impose a unitarist structure on a naturally federal polity.

As the contrived controversy over the “Islamisation” of Osun and its planned “secession” became a major item in the news, a critical statement attributed to the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, escaped the attention of many people. Speaking in Canada, Ekweremadu called for the immediate decentralisation of the police in line with the federal system in Nigeria. He also added, and this is crucial, that “Nigerians [should] spare a thought on a possible return to regionalism where the six geopolitical zones would become the federating units.”

Although Ekweremadu stated that he was making the second call based on the countless demands for the creation of states, what he said is of great significance. By the last count, these demands had reached 46. Ostensibly, in Ekweremadu’s view, adding 46 to the 36 mostly unviable states would only push Nigeria further into the unitarist embrace which has been the core idea or practice of two of the three key power-blocs in Nigeria’s history.

But how is this related to the fabrications against Aregbesola? Aregbesola’s fundamental political beliefs and practical actions as the governor of State of Osun (as he is “accused” of calling his state) is precisely the validation of the federal principle which is, at least theoretically, and clearly also constitutionally, the very basis of the political unity of Nigeria. Politically, Aregbesola is convinced that the “dwindling fortunes of our federalism”, among others things, is dictated primarily by the massive assault on federalism, which has been systematically engineered by the dominant (national) ruling elite. Practically and symbolically, he is taking steps to ensure that in word and in deed, his state operates and is recognised as a federating unit in Nigeria, which, even within the limitations of this era, can be viable, self-reliant and well-governed. The symbols of his state, which he has conceived and promoted are all within the constitutional powers of a federating unit. Beyond that, Aregbesola is also prepared to engage with the process that would ensure a healthy competition among the federating units in Nigeria towards the achievement of an egalitarian life for all – or what Obafemi Awolowo famously described as “freedom for all and life more abundant.”

Ekweremadu’s view is yet another indication that the unresolved questions in the Nigerian polity about the basis of national structural unity and the practices of freedom and difference by the federating units are at the centre of the national crisis. Even if the spurious allegations against a practising federalist such as Governor Aregbesola mirror the contemporary struggle for a democratic and federal Nigeria, it would be wrong to conclude that this is a local plot that is limited by the wild ambition of the conservative (and unpopular) politicians in the south-west PDP (particularly in Osun State), evident in the attempt to hang the burden of “terrorist” and “secessionist” on Aregbesola’s neck to destroy him. The truth is that this local, even if immediately limited, plot is linked to a larger national struggle by the conservative coalition to “force” the west of Nigeria into their villainous “mainstream” – as President Olusegun Obasanjo once boasted; it is also part of an old battle to ensure that Nigeria is not a federal state in principle, or in practice.

To be able to understand the long-term implications of this battle, of which Aregbesola is the latest victim, it is important to return to the experience of the man, Obafemi Awolowo, who has been, even in death, the greatest stumbling block to the unrelenting attempt to homogenise the Nigerian political class, terminate the country’s plurality, nullify the egalitarian principles, which have fuelled the home base of progressive politics in Nigeria, and therefore annul the possibility of Nigeria ever becoming a truly federal, truly democratic, and truly just polity, one about which every component part and all her citizens would be truly proud. The central argument about why and how to compose a federal state in Nigeria and the absolute necessity of egalitarian rule is essentially an Awolowo argument. He continues to be the embodiment of that twin principle.

This returns me to the question I asked earlier, why always the west? Why do they always want to “capture” the west (as a “matter of life and death” as one of the most brazen of their leaders once described it)? Why do “they” always pronounce the west’s passion for plurality as a plot for secession?

There is a fundamental logic to why the west is always the target. The central point has been elaborated repeatedly and most brilliantly by the great poet and one of the finest minds of our time, Odia Ofeimun. Since the late 1940s, Nigeria has been having a debate with Obafemi Awolowo, the ultimate-federalist, whom a combination of prejudice and ignorance continues to approach as the “arch-tribalist”. He was the first among the major leaders of Nigeria to recognize and articulate the basis of political organisation in a plural state such as Nigeria.

When, in the 1940s, he first began to articulate federalism as the most fitting system of political organisation for Nigeria, superficiality and prejudice dismissed him as a “Pakistanist” – one who wanted the partitioning of Nigeria. They insisted that the only way for Nigeria to be a “united” country was for it to operate a unitarist system. But by the 1950s, his accusers had started to sing the song of federalism too. They had seen the practical sense in the ideas he espoused, even if, at heart, they remained unitarists. Eventually, the unitarists, on the one hand, who were hopeful to centrally command the enterprise that would emerge after independence, and the separatists, on the other, who were initially afraid of being dominated by other people, eventually both agreed to the fundamentally just proposition that, even though the centre must be greater than the sum of its parts, that centre must be composed of, be sustained by, and be answerable to, its parts.• To be continued.

• Adebanwi is an associate professor at the University of California-Davis.