The Awo legacy and challenges of political leadership and governance in present day Nigeria

Let me start by joining in welcoming you all to this special celebration of the Atayese Association to mark the 58th anniversary of the self-government of Western Nigeria in 1957. I note that the vision of the Atayese Association is “to promote a culture of governance to that in which the individual human being and the family (both nuclear and extended) become the focus and the measure of political activity and improvements to the quality of life of citizens”. In order to promote this vision, the Association sets itself the mission of encouraging civil and public officials to be mindful of three fundamental principles of governance. First, is the importance of sustaining public trust in government through ensuring that in all government business, strict codes of conduct and ethics are enforced, and leadership throughout the government hierarchy provides an impeccable example for others to follow in honor and integrity as becomes “an OMOLUABI”.

Second, is the principle that effective governance entails a responsive system that strives to bring decision-making closer to the end user through democratic involvement and accountability of elected officials. And third is the principle that effective governance is one which inspires and empowers innovation and productivity through equipping and empowering civil servants and other public officials with a modern mindset and ensures fiscal responsibility through the creation of a results-oriented government where productivity, accountability, integrity and honesty are reflected in the actuality of all elected and permanent officials.

In many ways, Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the twilight of the colonial period between 1952 and 1959 provided something of a template against which to evaluate what is happening in the country today. Both in his role as leader of a political party, that is the Action Group and the leader of government in the then Western Region of Nigeria, he exemplified what we expect of a political leader and a statesman. Of course, even before assuming either of these roles, Chief Awolowo had made his position abundantly clear that the only path to Nigeria’s freedom and development is through the adoption and serious commitment to a federal system of government. Today, there are many who will argue that the seeming failure of Nigeria to make significant progress in its socio-economic development is the departure from this system of government occasioned largely by the imposition of military rule on the nation for the greater part of the last five decades.

I have, therefore, divided this paper into six parts. First, I revisit the issue of Federalism and how critical it remains as a system of government for a country like Nigeria with such diverse ethnic groups and differing levels of socio-economic development. Secondly, I evaluate the role of Chief Awolowo in ensuring the installation of a federal system of government in Nigeria and what this tells us about the nature of the struggle for this cause within a national polity like ours. Third and fourthly, I examine the impact of the adoption of this system of government on both the nature of political leadership and governance of a region under him.

Fifthly, I comment on the incompatibility of such a system with a military system of organization and the fact that the nation’s socio-economic development continues to be hampered because of a deliberate disregard of the various distortions and misapplication that this incompatibility has inflicted on the polity. My sixth section then presents the various challenges that political leadership and governance that Nigeria continues to face in post-military Nigeria, especially the fact that neither the political leadership nor the informed segment of the populace seems to care about returning to the path of true federalism. I conclude by offering some propositions as to the way forward for Nigeria, bearing in mind that much has changes in the country and the world at large since Chief Awolowo’s time but that there are still concrete lessons to be learnt from his legacy not only in the area of political leadership but also of effective governance.

Federalism as imperative to Nigeria’s development and greatness
It took a number of meetings of the pre-independence London Conference for the proponents of a unitary system of government for Nigeria, exemplified by the advocacy of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), to accept that, given the ethnic diversity and different levels of socio-economic development of its peoples, federalism was imperative for the unity and progress of Nigeria.

Federalism, however, must not been seen as simply a matter of dividing a country into sub-national entities or aggregating these entities into one national system. Its significance depends first, on the relative size of the federating units and second, on the powers that inhere in those entities vis-a vis the central or federal authority. The issue of relative size is important in a federation like Nigeria since, for equity, it is argued that no one unit should be so large as to be able to subvert the will of the other units combined. This was the initial Achilles heel of the Nigerian federation with the Northern Region being so much bigger than the two other two regions put together. This, was, of course, what the British liked and until the Northern Region was broken up into six states on the eve of the Civil War in 1967, the asymmetry of size was a factor in the collapse of the first Republic.

The issue of the powers that inhere in those sub-national entitites vis-à-vis the central or federal authority, relates to whether we have a strong or weak federation. Theoretically, for a strong federation, the powers of the federal government are spelt out in an exclusive list whilst the sub-national entities have some concurrent powers to regulate their affairs, promote and enhance the development of all their nature-given resources both above and below the soil, and foster the socio-economic development of their citizens as well as residual powers to deal with issues not specifically stated. The federal government is usually assigned such exclusive powers as those to determine foreign policy, make treaties, declare war and control imports and exports whilst the states have powers to ratify the constitution. Most governmental responsibilities are thus shared by state and federal governments with both levels of governments being involved in such policy areas as taxation, business regulations, environmental protection and civil rights. Experience, however, indicates that the balance of power between the federal government and the states is often a matter of political bargaining over time.

In Nigeria, for instance, one of the most defining features of the pre-military constitution was the flexibility that allowed the exploration, exploitation and development of mineral resources in the hands of both the Federal and the Regional Government. It was this flexibility and constitutional mutuality of interest that allowed the Federal Government to continue to exploit the colonial tin mines in Jos and the coal mines in Enugu and establish the first cement factory in Nkalagu, Eastern Region whilst the Western and Northern Regional governments could also go on to establish their own cement works in Ewekoro and Sokoto respectively. It was the understanding, up to the 1963 Constitution, that 50 per cent of royalties from such mineral exploitation belongs to the Region whilst 30 per cent goes to the distributable pool to even out development in the country and 20 per cent goes direct to the Federal Government. The enormous royalty from petroleum exploration, coming during the unified command of a military regime when the country was virtually operating a unitary constitution, was to force the country to deviate from this equitable relationship and plunge the country into its first series of militant insurgency.

Awolowo’s Action Group & the Struggle for the Installation of a Federal System of Government

Within the framework of a colonial government, a unitary administration was, of course, inevitable. To install and implement a federal system of government in such circumstances can be seen as the product of a well calculated step-by-step struggle by the Action Group Government under the leadership of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Although the Richards’ Constitution of 1948 had regionalized the country and had resulted in the McPherson Constitution of 1951 which formally instituted a federal-type system of government in Nigeria and called for elections through electoral colleges to the regional Houses of Assembly, the intention was to see these Houses not much different from the former Legislative Council in Lagos which was no more than a talk shop, allowing Nigerians to ventilate their views on various policies provided by the Colonial government.

As such, the Assembly Chamber was arranged like a debating platform with no distinction as to the government and opposition benches for the majority and minority parties respectively as in a proper parliamentary system of government. When the Western House of Assembly, was inaugurated in 1952, the Action Group, being the majority party, refused to participate in the inauguration unless the seating arrangement in the House was re-arranged to give recognition to the existence of a government and an opposition party. This was the beginning of the real struggle for installing a truly federal system of government in the country but there was still a long way to go.

Chief Awolowo described the federal system proposed under the McPherson Constitution of 1951 as a very light one because it was unbearably restrictive and obstructive in operation with some of its provisions patently contradictory to the principles and norms of federalism. As such, it generated a constitutional crisis which led to a series of constitutional conferences in London and Lagos under the chairmanship of Oliver Lyttleton, the Secretary of States for the colonies starting in 1953.

It was at these conferences that the struggle for a truly federal system of government were eventually fought and won. Indeed, it was at the 1953 Conference that it was decided that there should be power sharing between the central and the regional governments; that the regions should be truly autonomous from the central government in respect of subjects under the residual powers; that the official designation of Lieutenant-Governor should be substituted for Governors in the regions whilst the Governor of Nigeria should be designated Governor-General; that Lagos should be excised from the Western Region to become a Federal territory; and that self-government should be granted by Her Majesty to regions that desired it.

The London Conference was followed by a Lagos Conference to finish the unfinished business of the 1953 Conference and consider the report of Sir Louis Chick, the Fiscal Commissioner appointed at the London Conference. The Conference agreed in principle with his recommendations on the allocation of resources between the Federal and regional governments based largely on the derivation principle whereby half of the proceeds from export duties and revenues from mineral resources were to be retained by the regions. The Conference also regionalized both the public service and the judiciary and established a Federal Supreme Court to replace the West African Court of Appeal. All of these provisions and a number of others formed the crux of the Lyttleton Constitution of 1954.

Buhari

The struggle, however, continued as there were still a number of unresolved issues. Another conference in London in 1957 under the chairmanship of Mr. Allan Lennox Boyd, the Colonial Secretary finally conceded self-government and universal adult suffrage instead of the unified electoral system to the Western and Eastern region with Northern Nigeria claiming not to be ready for this until 1959. Still another Conference in 1958 and in 1960 finally laid the strong foundation for a federal system of government with the regions having their own regionalized judiciary and a confirmed derivation principle for revenue generation and sharing arrangement. The point to stress in all of these was the continuous struggle that necessitated this series of conferences towards the emergence of a truly based federal system of government in Nigeria.
Impact on Political Leadership

The constitutional struggle for installing a federal system of government in Nigeria helped to highlight the nature and character of political leadership in the country especially as exemplified by Chief Obafemi Awolowo. The first and most important element in his leadership was the promotion of a clear vision of where the country should be heading. This vision was not one to be held just by the political leadership of the party alone but also to be shared with the Civil Service as well as by the supporter of the partyat all levels of government. Ensuring that this vision is held also by the Civil Service was crucial for any government interested in making serious impact on the socio-economic conditions of the populace and will be discussed in a little more detail in a later section.

As for the supporters of the party at the grassroot level, sensitization as to vision of the party is paramount. This requires a high degree of political mobilization whereby most intelligent members of the public not only understood but also appreciated the basis for the struggle and the frequent crises. Sensitization thus began with the widespread promotion of the party slogan of “Freedom for all, life more abundant”. It was deepened by frequent meetings in Ikenne of ward captains, local government leaders, legislators and others at which various issues germane to the understanding of the operations of a federal system of government were discussed. This was always with a view that the leadership at this highest level of the political organization would get back to their constituencies and similarly inform and sensitize the next level of leadership who in turn will enlighten and educate their followers on these issues and so on down the chain of leadership.

This system of mobilization and sensitization was further enhanced because of the strong emphasis on party discipline. Being a member of the party especially at the level of winning an election to represent your people in the House of Assembly entailed not only accountability but also subscription to a set of ethical principles both formal and informal. This was clearly spelt out or tacitly understood particularly in respect of financial claims on government. To this end, therefore, political parties in the House usually appoint a Chief Whip, sometimes with a Deputy, to ensure that all members comply with party directives especially in matters of attending the House or voting for particular legislation. The effectiveness of the role of the Whip in the Legislature is largely a function of the fact that in the British-type Parliamentary system being operated at the time politicians can have careers that go beyond just being an assembly man. He can become an Under-Secretary, a Junior Minister or even a Minister all on the basis of his performance as a party man. Discipline within the parliamentary party was thus a matter of carrot and stick, the motivation to toe the party line being also based on the possibility of advancement in rank and importance within the party.

It was thus relatively easy for the party to formulate a set of ethical principles and to expect party members to follow. The legislative process which often poses voting as members of the governing party as against those of the opposition gives vibrancy to the disciplinary capacity of the parties. It needs to be stressed that government within this federal set-up was still based on the British-type parliamentary system. This does not subscribe to a division of powers between the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. The Executive was also part of the Legislature and, at least in Britain, the House of Lords also acts as the final court of appeal. Consequently, the Prime Minister and his Ministers are members of the House of Commons and are subject to the oversight functions and enquiries by other members of the House.

They bring their bills to the Commons to be passed into law although bills can also be generated from within the two Houses. The fact that passing a bill into law is a continuous process of testing how far a government enjoys the confidence of a majority of members in both Houses puts political parties constantly on their toes. Of course, it is not the passage of all the bills that call for a vote of confidence on the party in power. On special bills, the defeat of government sends signal of a failure enforce needed discipline on members of the parliamentary party or to correctly assess the feelings of the public on the particular issue, hence the importance of the feedback element in the continuous mobilization and sensitization of party members especially those in parliament.

Consequently, although there was nothing like a constituency budgetary vote for projects, parliamentarians were expected to spend time in their constituencies discussing forthcoming legislations with local party leaders and getting the feed-back from them as to the public acceptability or otherwise of various acts of government. In this way, the mobilization of all the communities in the region was assured. This, of course, did not mean that there was no opposition to the government at the local level but their members too were briefed about the basis of opposition to particular legislations of government. The type of indiscipline that was witnessed at the inauguration of the 8th National Assembly earlier this year would have been impossible in the parliamentary federal system operated in Chief Awolowo’s time.

Impact on Governance
The impact of the federal system of government was also very much felt in the effectiveness of governance at the regional level. This was in the sense that the Federal Constitution gave the regional government powers especially over their resources. The ever-green legacy of Chief Obafemi Awolowo has been based on how he harnessed this residual power to dramatically enhance the welfare and well-being of the people of the region in such areas as education and healthcare and to systematically transform the socio-economic conditions under which they have to live. In order to appreciate the enormity of the powers of regional government in a truly federal system, I will limit consideration of its impact on three areas for which Awolowo’s regional government has remained the icon of what sub-national government can do within a truly federal constitution. The three areas are in education, mineral exploitation and agricultural development.

The Awolowo legacy in the area of free primary education is now almost like a legend. In 1951, when this idea was first mooted by Chief Ajasin at the Owo meeting of the Action Group, it sounded so impractical and impracticable. There were so many stumbling blocks in the way. How many children would be involved? Where are the schools? Where are the teachers, the teaching materials, the books, the paper, the pencils and so on. And, more importantly, where would the financial resources to fully implement the idea come from? It is important to stress that at this point in time, the colonial government was little involved in providing primary education to its subjects. Except for the three or four secondary schools, primary schools and most of the secondary schools in the region were the creation of missionary bodies and community effort with the colonial government providing only what was called “grants-in-aid” to them. Thus, to the colonial administration and even to many citizens at the time, making free primary education a major plank in the manifesto of the Action Group sounded almost fool-hardy. And yet, with orderly step-by-step, systematic execution and focused determination, the period 1952-55 saw the government recording successes in this area one after the other.

The 1952-53 Census had just been completed but it was not too clear what it says about how many children would have attained the age of 6 years by January 1955 when the scheme was expected to be launched. This was a job for a demographer. No such person was available in the country at the time. But through various enquiries, it was discovered that a Western Nigeria demographer was working for the United Nations at the time. Successful effort was thus undertaken to attract him back to the country to help resolve this challenge of providing the requisite data on the number of expected pupils and their distribution within the region. On the basis of these preliminary demographic estimates, the number of classrooms to be built and of teachers to be trained as well as the number of books, writing materials, uniforms and other paraphernalia of schooling had to be made available for the parents to purchase on the open market.

The issue of funding became the litmus test of the determination of government to achieve this major element of its electoral promise. It must be remembered that there was no petroleum or gas at this point in the nation’s history. All the government had to depend on was taxation and its ability to persuade the majority of the populace of the critical importance of this programme for the development of the region and their children. Capitation tax was raised from sixpence to ten shillings and six pence for all adult males and in some local government areas adult females. Part of the sensitization and mobilization was to explain to the citizens that the scheme was to be funded by all tax-paying adults, whether they had children of school going age or not. Sales tax on salt and entertainment tax on any consumption in public places were introduced. It became necessary to press for the regionalization of Commodity Marketing Boards so that export tax could also be levied on cocoa and other agricultural exports from the Western Region. These and other creative fiscal strategies had to be employed to finance this revolutionary programme of the government.

In spite of this, when the time came in August 1954 to register the children, Chief Awolowo noted in his Speech on the Supplementary Appropriation Bill at the House of Assembly on March 2, 1955 that, instead of the 170,000 originally anticipated on the basis of the 1952 Census figure, they now had to provide for over 400,000 children (Voice of Reason: Selected Speeches of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Fagbamigbe Publishers, Akure, Nigeria 1981, p.99). Undaunted, they had to call on the communities to assist with building additional classrooms with government providing corrugated iron sheets as roofing materials, appeal to all citizens who had had any teaching experience to come to the aid of government to make up the shortfall in the number of teachers and, as noted above, seek for a supplementary budget to cover the additional expenses. For the region, the success of the scheme became a patriotic challenge to unprecedented dimension. It raised the primary school population from 430,000 in 1953 to over 1 million in 1959 and introduced a new culture of education as the birth-right of every child in the region.

In anticipation of the transition of students from these primary schools to secondary institution, communities were encouraged to start their own secondary schools. To deal with the excess that was bound to occur after taking account of those who would not go beyond the primary, the government introduced an intermediate institution which it called “secondary modern”.

Again, according to Chief Awolowo (op.cit., p.127), the number of secondary schools rose from 46 in 1953 to 139 in 1959 whilst the number of the secondary modern schools went from 0 in 1953 to 363 by 1959, providing places for over 50 per cent of the primary school leavers. In short, by 1959, the number of secondary school population in the region had risen to 84,374 compared to only about 9,000 in 1954. All of these dramatic developments were possible not only because the Western Region was a federating unit within a truly federal constitution but also because it was was in total control of all its resources – agricultural, mineral, financial and fiscal.
The control of its mineral resources was evident in the manner in which it developed its cement industry. Although the Colonial Government still retained exclusive control over minerals and mines, a control still reflected in putting these two issues in the exclusive federal list up to the present constitution, the derivation fiscal principle of the initial federal constitutions of 1960 and 1963 conceded that any region where minerals were being exploited would be paid 50 per cent of the royalty received by the Federation on this account. This provided the necessary incentive for regional governments to want to promote the development of the mineral resources within their territory. Thus, in 1957, whilst the Federal Government developed a cement industry at Nkalagu in Eastern Nigeria and had plans for another for the Northern Region, it had no plans to develop same in the Western Region because the Nigerian Geological Survey indicated that there was no limestone deposits in that part of the country. The Western Regional Government, however, did not believe or accept this statement. It hired its own consultants to investigate the situation. Through consultations with colleagues in Benin Republic, it was discovered that a limestone bed located in that country was getting wider and thicker as it proceeded eastward into Nigeria. On the basis of this, the Western Regional Government initiated the development of its own cement industry at Ewekoro, which was commissioned in 1960, well ahead of the federally sponsored Northern Nigerian Cement industry. From this limestone belt were to follow two other cement industries at Shagamu and the more recent development by Dangote at Ibeshe.
This situation was in sharp contrast to what happened when later the Western State under the governorship of Chief Bola Ige was to try to develop the Igbetti marbles. The Federal Government had become more assertive of minerals and mining being on the Exclusive List as a result of the boom in petroleum exploitation that it insists that all licences to prospect for minerals now reside only at the federal level even though land matters remained under the control of state governments. The confusion that arose as prospective developers try to negotiate between these two contending authorities has been partly responsible for the slow pace of solid mineral development in the country. Even today, the Igbetti marble is still awaiting development in spite of all the talk about efforts to promote solid mineral development. The same can be said for the bitumen deposits in Ondo State and phosphate deposits in Ogun State, among many others whose development could dramatically transform the socio-economic circumstances of these states.
In respect of agricultural development, the Western Regional Government concentrated on organizing the farmers through promoting the cooperative movement amongst them. The movement, of course, covered other activities such as producer, marketing, consumer, thrift, credit and craft co-operatives but the cocoa farmers marketing cooperative was its linchpin. Under the Action Group Government, a major effort was launched to organize the farmers into co-operatives especially to be able to train them on how to produce their cocoa to Grade 1 standard. The Regional Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources worked hard to mobilize most farmers in the region into co-operatives under such outstanding leadership as Chief Obisesan and Chief Ayorinde such that by 1953, the Movement could open its own Co-operative Bank with an initial capital of GBP 1 milion. The Movement went on by 1957 to develop the Co-operative Buildings in Ibadan with its ten-storey block of offices, an Assembly Hall and a shop (op. cit., p. 126), all of which constituted a novel and striking architectural landmark in Ibadan at that time and even up till today.
All of these remarkable developments in governance would not have been possible without the political leadership paying serious attention to the quality of its civil service. It is on record that it was Chief Awolowo who went to Lagos to persuade Chief Simeon Adebo to come over to help build an efficient, effective and result-oriented Civil Service in the region. The importance of this crucial relationship between political leadership and the Civil Service has been well documented in many of the publications of Professor Ladipo Adamolekun. A major outcome of this relationship was the manner in which the Civil Service saw to the effective implementation of the various policies of the government of the day. In this regard, I am reminded of the story told me by late Chief A.A.K.Degun, one of the product of the Adebo School, that when he was the Secretary to the Military Government of Ogun State, he was already used to keeping a small note book in which he recorded on a weekly basis the level of performance of different Ministries in the execution of various programmes or projects of the State Government as provided by their Permanent Secretaries. Such constant monitoring was the basis for going out to the field periodically to confirm the performance information to the presented to the political leadership. From all this, it must be obvious that a well-trained and committed Civil Service is a sine qua non for a political leadership that seeks to deliver services of various kind to promote the welfare and well-being of its citizens.

The Incompatibility with a Military System of Organization
It must, however, be stressed that this Awolowo legacy both in political leadership and governance was spawned largely under the colonial regime. As soon as political independence was attained in October 1960, the struggle for hegemonic control of the new Nigerian State saw the weakness of the “flawed constitutional contraption” which the British was bequeathing to the people, a contraption in which one region was large enough to bend the will of the Federation to itself. As Harold Smith, an Oxford-trained but defiant British Civil Servant who refused to play the game at the time and suffered great personal deprivation for this, noted in his publication Libertas Homepage, “The British did not plan the military coups of 1966. They simply made it inevitable” The mismanagement of the first coup of January 1966 led to a second coup in July 1966 which virtually returned the country to the status quo ante even with the subsequent attempts to create more states which turned out to be a necessary but not sufficient bases for a true federation.
More serious, however, was the negative impact of the imposition of the unified command structure of the military on a supposedly federally articulated governance system. The position got further distorted with the remarkable rise of the returns from petroleum resources gradually accounting for over 70 per cent of the annual budget of the federation. This development greatly challenged the earlier fiscal arrangement whereby regional governments kept fifty percent of royalties from mineral development in their area whilst the remaining 50 per cent went into a centrally controlled distributable pool that would be used to even up development in all parts of the country. This would have made some of the oil-producing states vastly richer than the federal government itself, a situation which have undermined the hierarchical discipline of the military organization. In consequence, instead of the derivation fiscal principle of the Federation in the Awolowo era, all royalties from mineral exploitation as well as other sources of revenue such as sales tax were now to be deposited in what is now called a Federation Account from which some basis or formula for distribution between the three tiers of government would be put worked out.

The result of this incompatibility of the unified military command and a truly federal system of government was to make states no longer pro-active in seeking new sources of revenue to enable them initiate