 Thank you for staying with us. You're still watching the breakfast on plus TV Africa and right now it's time for our first hot topic Well, this one talks about why Nigeria needs decentralization and that was being said by the Nobel laureate Wally Schoenker Joining me to have a conversation in this is Nick Aguile. He's a public affairs analyst. Good morning Nick. Thank you for joining me good morning and Good morning to all of us. I view us globally. Yes. Good morning. Okay So the Nobel laureate Professor Wally Schoenker had said, you know, Nigeria needs Decentralization and he talked about things about poverty Hunger in the land and that's the reason why we need decentralization. In fact, he had cited security matters as well And he said let's not talk about restructuring. We should talk more of reconfiguration and Decentralization first. Do you agree with this statement? I will say yes and no Okay, I will say yes and no. All right. So I will say yes in terms of Returning paths to the sub-national governments. I will say no to split splinting Or breaking up Nigeria into different places And the reason why I say no is that the recent history of African nations that has split The end result has been war so I hope that the Nobel laureate understands that The problem that Nigeria is facing now Is political leaders Who are not empathetic of the people? Who take Political office as a business Where they can go in and grab as as much as they can Within their ten years in office And after their ten years in office They want to remain In one office or the other. So you will see a governor today After he has finished being a governor. He will be he wants to become a senator And after that he wants to contest for president I hope the Nobel laureate understands that this is the biggest problem in Nigeria today Political leaders who are not empathetic with the people Who think that political office? Is a tool to enrich themselves If we split Nigeria under this kind of terms to say All the six geopolitical zones go your separate ways And the political leaders that are going to those geopolitical zones Are the same political leaders that are so pretending over Nigeria now. Nothing is going to change Nothing I can assure the Nobel laureate that nothing which so if for instance the south east today Becomes a country of its own And the governors of the southeast are the governors that we have today in the southeast who are not delivering good governance But filling their pockets And the governors in the north central are doing the same Same with governors in the south west south south north east north central What's going to change? Nothing is going to change. So what the Nobel laureate must be advocating for is Leadership recruitment We need to get leadership recruitment Right in this same country. We have competent compassionate leaders with capacity To do the job the problem is that we are not putting them in office And so the people who end up putting in office are not the ones who are going to do the job So on that account that will be my my input in what the Nobel laureate has said On the on the account of releasing power to the sub-national government. I agree with him I keep saying this thing that we call ourselves our official name is the federal republic of nigeria And we are not operating a federation We are actually operating a unitary system of government So we call ourselves a federal republic and we are practicing unitary system of government because you see We have a constitution We're about 68 or so items on that constitution are exclusively reserved to the federal government Sort of federation is that Like the united states where we We copy the democracy form. We know what the states can do The states are in charge of their economies. They're in charge of their police. They're in charge of their in fact the states in america Send money to the center Not the other way around in nigeria where the federal government sends money To the states and local governments. So you can see they are normally there. Yeah So on that count. I agree totally with the Nobel laureate Our constitution in fact You see we don't have a constitution The constitution begins with the words we the people of nigeria Haven't agreed to come together as one nation blah blah blah Please this constitution Other we are operating now. When did the people of nigeria come together? To make this constitution this constitution was handed down to us by the military rulers And those military rulers both janara babangida and janara abacha They were intent on We used to call it that transmuting Yeah From khaki to abada So even as they wanted to wear abada They didn't want to release power to anybody. They wanted to hold onto maximum power just as they were when they were khaki And that is the constitution that tragically we have operated for 25 years So if we really want to get it right We need to bring this constitution and actually fashion A constitution that will reflect us as a federal republic a constitution where the local government will be empowered The states will be empowered and the federal government will be dealing with about six items Which will be defense foreign policy uh monetary policy And and issuance or currency issuance or passport like that because you only be the role of the federal government Every other thing should be at the state and in that case you will not see development coming up because It's not all states That are going to be this bad as we have a federal government because right now If you have a president who is not delivering the whole nigeria will not deliver because powers are rested in that president But if you have 36 state governors with so much powers to develop their states Perhaps maybe about 20 of them can be delivering the goods In the other 16 are not but nigeria will actually be a better place. So, uh, that's what I said Yes or no in my in my response to what the novella recent So a lot of people are you know always cited the fact that there is so much power in the center And that's the only way we can start to grow is to ensure the We decentralize that power that is in the center and from what you've said you said yes and no But now so let's just say, okay, for instance, we have this decentralization How can we start to benefit from it because? Decentralization is one thing but are we going to benefit from it? So is there going to be more? investors coming in for Maybe the local investment of the state Is there also going to be maybe for instance a state police that we've been talking about for a while because that's also Some form of decentralization Of power from the igp of police. So it's not just in the center. Is there going to be that? What are the benefits can we start to see if we go ahead to implement this decentralization? Benefits are going to be humongous if we actually get a People-oriented Constitution that devotes power as to the subnational governments the state and local governments the benefits are going to be humongous Let me give you one example. Let's say security Today we call the state governors the chief security officers of your states But no commander no single commander in that state reports to the governor The commissioner of police reports to the ag who reports to the president The commander of the civil defense reports to the commander of civil defense Who reports to the president the commander of the dss in that state reports to the dg of dss Who reports to the president all the security architecture in a state they report to the federa Yet we are calling the governor a chief security officer of his state If we decentralize power And the states are not responsible for their security You will now see that some state governors even if it's not all of them some state governors are going to invest heavily in security Get their police to work both in terms of crime prevention and crime Control if a crime happens And for those states you begin to see a flood of investments coming to the state because people will feel safe Going to those states Right now we have a single inspector general of police. If that inspector general of police is incompetent Is not effective has no capacity the entire 36 states and the fcd of the nagiran police Will be incompetent with that capacity because one man sitting in abuja who is their leader is incompetent But if you have 36 state commissioners of police and the fcd All of them reporting to their governors You will see that some of them if not most of them are going to be doing the work of keeping their state safe And that would then mean that Parts of nagiria will become much safer than what we have today Let me give you an example When states are being fed by the federal government as it is happening today You expect that they will be lazy Because even me who is sitting here if my father Even now that it's not alive. He has set up an endowment where every month I get like five to ten million Naira Into my account. Do you think I will work? Will not work now. Will not work When a ten million Naira a lot is going to come every month. I would not be cruising But if for a last case to generate your revenue and spend it You will discover that every state will not start looking inwards. What do I have if you go to the united states, you know We we heard the news the tragic news of the of the of the Chopper crash of That I had on board the the access CEO of the access audience, you know where they were going They were going to To las vegas You know, do you know what happens in las vegas? Las vegas is in a state called Nevada In the u.s Do you know about this state this state for the benefit of our viewers who don't know is desert land The state is totally desert the Nevada desert covers the state So this state has no land nothing nothing to trans survive You know what they did because there is no big papa at the federal government to send them money They decided to develop tourism And that is why you can go and make your money in the other states then you bring it to las vegas and spend it And that money So like you take a $10,000 into las vegas You will leave that money in las vegas and carry yourself and go back to wherever you're coming from And that is how they are surviving. This is kind of ingenuity that will come Even in states here in Nigeria, but once you leave them to their to their distance like i mean beno states here You know that no governor of beno state in the past 25 years has given attention to agriculture As i speak to the Yes, let me tell you that that full basket is empty That full basket basket is empty for twin problems. The first problem is that the farmers are using manual labor And manual labor is not going to produce much But even with the manual labor A large swatch of farming communities have been driven away by insecurity from their farming communities And the state governor has no place of his to say to go and clear the bandits to allow the farmers to work So if you decent say decentralized power now and say that mr. Governor You are in charge of your security. Of course, you know, the state governor is going to invest in security to ensure that his state is safe And mr. Governor will suddenly see the federal land in his state and start investing in it so that he will start making money From the agriculture that will now be booming because he knows that there will be no money coming from the center And if he doesn't take creative measures to survive, he will be dead So this is the reason why their decentralization is going to be very good But when this happens right with what you've just cited Couldn't it be that some states will start to flourish, you know Even more than the others. How about, you know states that cannot do so much, you know, agriculture or look for other things I I just don't want a situation whereby there's envy and rivalry between different states because they're not playing on the same field It's absolutely fine It is better that in Nigeria we have some states that are doing better than others that have a Nigeria totally That is not doing well So in terms of holistic numbers, for us it's better that out of 36 states we have 20 doing well And 16 are not doing well instead of 36 that are not doing well now So that is the kind of thing that will happen. But so once you decentralize And some states begin to do well Indigene of the states that are not doing well, we start putting pressure on their political leaders Like say if Benue now Industrializes agriculture and Benue is now producing a lot of food their farmers are becoming Billonaires and billonaires and Nassarawa state the neighboring state of Taraba is not doing same with their Rich Keter Arab land. You know that is the the the the indigenous in those states will be putting pressure on their leaders They say what can't you see what's happening in Benue and then you leave us a poverty That is what we need. We need citizens to put pressure on the elected representatives and leaders at all levels For us to enjoy this democracy Okay, but walk me through You know with every implementation, right? There's always the people who would Actually have that push back and say, oh, no, this is not what we want. This is not what we need For instance, a lot of people have been talking about a parliamentary system of government Instead of the presidential system of government and you hear people say, oh, no, that's not what we need We like where we are a lot of times people are scared to Scared to make any change in particular So do you walk me through the potential challenges that could be with this? I mean, we're saying we need to decentralize But are there potential challenges that we could possibly face when it comes to decentralization So for me, um When people talk about parliamentary system And the presidential system that we're running I try to make the analogy that These bands and the BMW They are both good cars And they are selling those that buy them. Yeah, but if you have a bad driver Then it's regardless of which car you give him if you give him a city's best, he will crash it Right, if you give him a BMW, he will crash it. That's right. You know, so This thing is more about the people operating the system This same presidential system that doesn't seem to be working well for us. It's working well for the the united states And this where we actually want to copy it the parliamentary system is also working in places like The united kingdom australia canada and all of that. Do you understand? So it's not really about the system. It's about the operators of the system So if nagira today switches from the presidential system to the parliamentary system And we still have political leaders who don't understand their role as servants of the people But rather they see themselves are using their political offices to correctly enrich themselves Then we still corrupt the parliamentary system that we have. So that is one thing. That's the first thing But if we now handle The operators, let's say we have competent operators now. We're taking care of that I will always say the parliamentary system is a better system of government. Why because it's cheaper Is more representative and in the parliamentary system is where both The legislative and more government and the executive and more government are together So that foster has Government policy makes it more seamless to operate and all of that in the parliamentary system We don't actually have a presidential election. We don't have a presidential election You know, the prime minister of the uk didn't go about asking for voters to vote him as prime minister He only went to his own constituency And so to the votes of his constituents Who voted him to parliament because because he is the leader of the party that has The majority of MPs in parliament. He automatically becomes prime minister You know and every week on the Wednesday He's on the on the soapbox. He's facing the opposition party And you know imagine in Nigeria now every week Um, president tini boys on one side Atika abu baka who came second in the election is on the other side and they are facing each other You know, I think we're back is challenging president tini boy. His policies are president tini will face so much under pressure Yeah, the kind of things he will say like his statement yesterday when he was commissioning Uh, the red line red line where he now said Level union have not given him time that in nine months Atika abu baka will run into him We try to tear him apart appealing to Nigeria to see a president who is insensitive who is unsympathetic with their flight So that is parliamentary system and also in the parliamentary system atika abu baka as your position leader will also be a government employee He will provide him with offices He will provide him with everything that is needed to run his government as an opposition leader So if president tini boy has a minister for education atika abu baka will have a shadow Minister for education who is also being paid by government. Of course who is also an mp Having been elected to parliament So if atika abu baka's minister of finance comes to sorry if president tini boys minister of finance Comes to make a policy statement atika abu baka's shadow minister of finance We hold this old press conference. Yeah, and we give nigerians the alternative view You know, so that that's a parliamentary system. It's actually all right. Let me take let me take your final words on this whole decentralization Okay, so I wanted to take your final words because we have to wrap it up now So I want to take your final words on this whole decentralization You had earlier said yes and no but after having this conversation or what do you think we should do as a nation moving forward So my final words is that our name the federal republic of nigeria is not backed up by our constitution Yeah, we have a name federal republic of nigeria. Our constitution is Unitary republic of nigeria the area we take steps To sync our name and our constitution the better So we either have to agree that we change our name to the fed to the to the unitary republic of nigeria To align with the constitution or we change the constitution to a true federal system A true federal system. Well, there's a there's a restructuring They're looking at sorry. Um, excuse me They are looking at, you know, just restructuring the constitution and they said that should be ready in 2025 So that might just possibly happen Do you see what they are doing? With the constitution They are doing patching. They are patching the constitution here and there What we need to do is that we just need to bring this constitution And have a truly federal constitution, right? You know, some people call say let's have a constituted assembly national sovereign conference The national assembly has currently constituted and also do it because they are representing all of us in nigeria This constitution they are patching here and there who have been patching it for the past 25 years Is not done the job. We just need to have a time to have a new one a constitution that hands powers to the sub-national governments All right. Thank you so much. It was so nice. Um having a conversation with you nika ugly. Thank you I thank you and have a nice day. You too sir. Thank you All right, so we're speaking with nick ugly is a public affairs analyst and we're talking about decentralization because Our noble laureates professor walley showing her said nigeria needs decentralization Anyways, we're going to short break when we return. We'll be looking at our next hot topic. Please stay with us