“The third cluster of propositions is the principle of triple balancing in Nigeria’s geopolitical restructuring. The picture is like this: split each of the Southsouth and Northcentral geopolitical zones into two. This raises the number of geopolitical zones from six to eight. Now, go to Nigeria’s pre-independence geopolitical structure: the three regions – West (plus Lagos), East and North – where the first two regions (plus Lagos) were also regarded as the South. With the new eight – zone structure, the former North and the former South will have four each; the former East and former West (plus Lagos) will have two zones each; the Southsouth and Northcentral will, together, have four zones while the “big” groups – the Southwest, the Southeast, the Northeast and the Northwest – will together have four zones. So, the North balances the South; the East balances the West; and the historical “Minorities” balances the historical “Majorities.”
“The fourth cluster of propositions relates to the levels of responsibility and exercise of power or, in more familiar language, tiers of government. Here we move from the current three tiers to five tiers of government as follows: Federal, zonal (between federal and state), state, local government and community (below the local government). Each zone will be constituted by a number of states while a local government ward will be constituted into one or more communities. At the federal level, the president will be replaced by a presidential council of eight equal members – a member representing a zone – with rotational headship within a presidential council term of four years. The zone may or may not be a “government” as such, but minimally it will be a unit for some strategic appointments and location of some strategic industries, state institutions and infrastructure. The communities will be the domain of direct mass involvement in development, social welfare and security.
“So, what will this type of restructuring – which we have called “popular-democratic restructuring” – look like when it has been constructed and set in motion? This question summons the fifth cluster of propositions. The answer here is that the picture is fragmentary and tentative. Only discussions can refine it. But the clear features include: Nigeria will remain a federal republic; the current principles of citizenship, fundamental human, political, occupational and civil rights, as well as principles of state policy will be enhanced; the Federal Government will give up a substantial fraction of its current responsibility and appropriation to the states and local governments. The states, in turn, will finance the zones and the local governments will finance the communities. Finally, and this is the “magic” of popular democracy – the “cost of governance,” both in relative and absolute terms, will be much less than what it is at present.” End of excerpts.
A short description for the structure I am proposing could be: A republican, secular and popular-democratic federal system under a collective presidency with rotational headship. It is necessary to emphasize that although I have drawn from several sources to sketch this structure, in the final analysis, the construction has been informed by the Nigerian political history, the set of premises earlier articulated, current realities and debates, the need to preserve the unity of the country – which is the conscious ideological and political choice of the Nigerian Left: in particular, the need to resolve the quarrel over the location and movement of the presidency and prevent Nigeria’s ruling class from plunging the nation into another civil war; and, above all, the need and prospects of advancing the interests of the popular masses in three directions: political empowerment at the grassroots, substantive and substantial amelioration of their material condition and expansion of the national democratic space. Unstated here is how the Nigerian Left can use this structure to advance the struggle of the working, toiling and poor masses of Nigeria.
For the avoidance of doubt, “national unity,” the “conscious ideological and political choice of the Nigerian Left” is not an idle or class-collaborationist or Bonapartist choice. Nor is it a compromise with, or surrender to neofascism. It is an independent and responsible choice premised uncompromisingly on socialist vision of the future, permanent revolutionary struggle for popular democracy and socialism in Nigeria and revolutionary internationalism.
Fighters against ethnic oppression in Nigeria should make or be assisted by the Nigerian Left to make a distinction, as Rosa Luxemburg did at the beginning of the 20th century, between “the right to be free from ethnic oppression” and “the right to national or ethnic self-determination” (which historically – and for Marxists – has included the right to secession). In the Nigerian context the former is a popular-democratic aspiration; it is legitimate; it is correct and it can and will be realised. The latter is unrealisable, even through war. Ethnic nationality fighters should expand their attention to a particular root cause of our current national calamity. This is, on the one hand, the exploitative socio-economic foundation of the Nigerian nation – that is Capitalism, the guarantor of all causes – and, on the other hand, the severely limited definition of democracy, freedom and citizenship adopted, in practice, by Nigeria’s rulers.
Nigerian Marxists and Leftists should also come to terms with the fact that there is no real contradiction between their categorically upholding the right to self-determination (up to and including the right to secession) and their campaigning against exercising that right in a given historical context. Our ideology and our history have abundantly taught us that. What looks like a contradiction will be swept away by the victory of socialism globally.
In conclusion, I would like to identify three statements recounted in this essay as statements of three main, definitive and successive moments in the development of my thoughts on the question of National Unity in Nigeria. These are my 1979 article in the Nigerian Chronicle, Calabar, reproduced in my 1982 book, “Problems of Socialism: the Nigerian Challenge” and titled, “A comment on National Unity”; my contribution to the December 3, 1997 Seminar on “Ethnicity and National Unity” organised by the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Cross River State Council, Calabar, and titled, “The National Question, Power Blocs and Popular-Democratic Transformation of Nigeria” and my essay: “Restructuring: Propositions summarized”, which appeared in The Guardian of Thursday, April 12, 2018.
I re-affirm the main propositions in the three statements and propose that they are consistent and reflect, on the one hand, the historical development of the country, and, on the other hand, the historical development of the Nigerian Left and of myself. I affirm that the only rupture in the development was the leap from “criticism” to “criticism plus manifesto” by a movement and one of its products that have grown to see political power as not only a realistic and realisable political objective but also an immediate one. I am however prepared and indeed inclined to consign to our archives the term “Restructuring” which I started using in my column and in the press long before many of the current professional politicians became politically conscious. In the place of “popular-democratic restructuring,” I may revive my 1997 formulation: “popular-democratic transformation.”
However, the concept, “power bloc,” the way I have described it in this essay, with inspiration from aspects of Nicos Poulanzas’ “Political Power and Social Classes,” is a Marxist category and cannot be so easily consigned to the archives. As a last word, I would request young Nigerian Marxists and Leftists to do a search of our national newspapers of late 1980s to early 1990s and my The Guardian column of that period and determine the emergence and employment of the following terms: Sovereign National Conference (SNC), Geopolitical Restructuring, Power Blocs, Neofascism and Bonapartism. They all developed during the fight against the Babangida dictatorship.
