Hello Mr President. Before I proceed with my main subject of today, namely, the increasing agitation for restructuring of the Nigerian state, I am requesting you to do one thing for me:  order the unconditional release of all those detained in respect of the #EndSARS protest of 2020 and the #EndBadGovernance protest of last month. Please ignore the zealotry of your security advisers who are yet to vanquish insurgents and grant my request to the rebound of the space of freedom in our dear fatherland.

President Jonathan may be pilloried for anything, not for his descent into authoritarianism. While in office, he was the dustbin for all forms of criticism and bore it with grace that was his evident humility. God bless you as you act.

In February 1990, the Republic du Benin convoked a national conference (NC) without the interference of the outgoing Matthew Kerekou regime which indeed surrendered to popular sovereignty upon the near collapse of the state. That event reverberated across much of Francophone Africa. Countries such as Togo, Niger, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Zaire, now DRC, took turns to renew governance structure.

It fired the imagination of our progressive compatriots, Alao Aka-Bashorun, Adamu Ciroma, and Beko Ransome-Kuti, among other prominent Nigerians, who sought to convoke a national conference under the auspices of the National Consultative Forum (NCF) on September 6, 1990. General Babangida sent amoured tanks to barricade the National Theatre, where the conference was billed to hold.

As a consequence, NC became a key item on the list of the demands of the pro-democracy movement in Nigeria. In the aftermath of the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election, I assumed editorship of The Victims, a human rights newsletter of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), under the leadership of Beko Ransome-Kuti. The Secretariat of the Campaign for Democracy (CD) mandated me to write a working document on how to convoke a national conference.

I set out to the francophone embassies in Lagos, Chad, Niger, Togo, and Benin among others, to hunt for data. I then put together a draft on how to convoke a NC that would be sovereign and presented it at the Ibadan Convention of the CD.  General Sani Abacha, in his quest for legitimacy, convoked one in 1995 which upended his quest for a self-transmutation agenda over which General Shehu Musa Yar’adua paid the supreme price. Around this period I who drafted the first modus operandi was incarcerated in Birnin Kebbi Prison.

Post-military rule, General Obasanjo conveyed one in 2005 and was stalemated over revenue sharing palaver and incipient intention for a third term. In 2014, Jonathan conveyed yet another one which was successful with a draft report which subsequent administrations enamoured of the rotten status quo buried under the carpet.

The continuous neglect of that report may have been spurred by the erroneous belief that the ills of the Nigerian state can be resolved through piecemeal amendment of the odious 1999 Constitution. Regrettably, those who control the levers of power at the centre, have continued to reinforce the central leash to the detriment of the health of the state.

Nevertheless, the joy is that the national conference idea has now gained national acceptability because the Nigerian project is not working. Recently, the Northern minority ethnic nationalities known as the Coalition of Indigenous Middle Belt Organisations (CIMBO), have called for restructuring of the country into three regions, namely, South, Middle-Belt and North.

The group also called for the revision of the extant 1999 Constitution as amended, and enactment of what they called a people’s constitution as a panacea for peace and development.

As it puts it, “The position of the Middle Belt on Restructuring, Boundary Adjustments, and Constitutional Review, called for restructuring of Nigeria into South, Middle-Belt and Northern regions…restructured Nigeria, with a number of units, will lead to true federalism, reduced corruption and over-reliance on statutory allocation from the centre.” In a botched memorial for Professor Abubakar Momoh at the Lagos State University, Professor Attahairu Jega was to address the same restructuring question under the topic: “Restructuring Nigeria: Challenges and Prospects.”

To be sure, many of the issues that were canvassed by the Southern initiators of restructuring initially seen as outlandish, are no longer so. The hen has now come home to roost. In the thick of the call for a sovereign national conference, I had called for the organisation of the material force of the state, the national army, based on the regional command to ensure a balance of terror.

The national army was the instrument employed by the Nigerian hegemons to perpetuate the status quo that is anti-development, anti-intellectual, and ‘fantastically corrupt.’ The conservative North has always viewed this as a recipe for disintegration. Anyone with a deep knowledge of global dynamics would know that we are better united for the sake of the black man seen as prey by the international vultures.

Mr President, my prayer is simple: do not run away from some of the recommendations of the 2014 conference. The state structure, including the economic base, needs to be altered. We cannot continue with the unwieldy and unproductive centre in ways that have made politics the only game in town.

Professor Akhaine is of the Department of Political Science, Lagos State University.