A recent report by an American-based crisis-monitoring group, has warned that the country risks disintegration unless the Federal Government significantly addresses the causes of violence in the country.
The report, from the International Crisis Group and titled: Nigeria’s Faltering Federal Experiment, said the country has a deeply flawed political system, which contributes to violence and threatens its stability.
The Group�s Senior Analyst in Nigeria, Nnamdi Obasi, said: “Poor governance, lack of leadership and pervasive corruption are the root causes of the failing system and these are the issues government must tackle to avoid destabilisation.”
In the 46 years since the country gained independence from Britain, successive governments have attempted, with varying degrees of sincerity and commitment, to fashion federal institutions that can accommodate the country’s multi-ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic diversity and nurture a sense of national unity, the report said.
However, governments at all levels have failed to live up to their obligations to offer good governance based on equitable political arrangements, transparent administrative practices and accountable public conduct.
It noted that having failed to encourage a genuine power sharing formula, they have sparked dangerous rivalries between the centre and the 36 states over revenue from the country’s oil and other natural resources. “They promoted no-holds-barred struggles between interest groups to capture the state and its wealth and facilitated the emergence of violent ethnic militias, while they play on and exacerbate inter communal tensions to cover up their corruption,” the report added.
The Federal Government has been too quick to brand many of the symptoms, especially the rise of militancy, as simple criminality to be dealt with by more police and more troops. It needs to engage with the underlying issues of resource control, equal rights, power sharing and accountability.
The Federal Government should grant a significant level of resource control to local communities and replace the indigenisation policy with a residence test when applying the federal character principle.
“Perhaps most fundamentally, it should create a democratic constitutional reform process that would allow Nigerians, so often since independence under military governments, to engage for the first time in a free and wide-ranging debate over restructuring the country’s power sharing arrangements.”