Dr. Akin Fapounda is the Secretary General of the Western Region Organisation, a Yoruba think tank group based in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital. An advocate of restructuring, Fapounda in this interview with OLAOLU OLADIPO once again spoke on the imperfections of the 1999 Constitution. He also talked about moves by the National Assembly to amend the ground norm, saying what the country needs at this time is a holistic review and not the ‘piece meal’ approach to Constitutional amendment being carried out by the lawmakers. Excerpts:
National Assembly has been churning out bills relating to amending certain aspects of the 1999 Constitution. How do you see these moves? Do you think many of these bills align with your philosophy of reworking the country?
It’s unfortunate that we have a huge worn out cloth but sadly we are patching it in 39 places. Is it useful to patch a cloth that is worn out in 39 places? We are proposing 39 amendments and this is from the House of Representatives. Members of the Senate have not come up with their own amendments. Eventually, we might have between 50, 60 amendments in the Constitution. We need to have a serious document that can be readable in just 30 pages, that all Nigerians can memorise and know what it’s all about. The United Nations already has over 200 pages of amendments since 1999. Now we are having 39 amendments all over again. They are just wasting the time of the nation. And it is not fair.
One of the key items in the proposals that you made the other time was for the return of the country to Westminster Parliamentary order. This is one of the proposals being considered by the National Assembly. How do you see that?
This is the case when you pick and choose, when you don’t have a holistic framework of government other than just changing clauses in the Constitution. Have they amended the revenue allocation formula? Have they amended the electoral system? Have they amended the political party structure that would bring that out? What they are proposing is still vague, is this French model? Are we using the British model? But why are you picking and choosing areas to patch up? Why can’t they say that what we need is a regional government, a decentralised government, a referendum clause?
In all these, what is the role of the President?
The chief executive of the country is President Bola Tinubu. In any organisation, when the chief executive is not giving direction, all staff members can do what they like. They can be working when in actual fact they are doing nothing. In the absence of any direction or guidance, they will do what they like, whereas, the president should set the agenda and say, look; we want to change the Constitution. In fact, he can tell the attorney general to prepare a bill that takes a holistic view of the 1999 Constitution and makes comprehensive changes and passes the same to the National Assembly. That would be the right thing. But as of now, each member of the National Assembly is just bringing their own bill looking at areas that catch their fancy. We cannot pretend any longer. The country is not well governed. We need to decentralise. We need to reduce cost of governance. There are so many requirements that need to be debated. Last year, I drafted a bill. A letter was delivered to his office. And we still want him to take Nigeria seriously.
Did you eventually get a response from the Presidency with regards to the letter you wrote to President Bola Tinubu?
No. My appeal to Mr. President is that eminent Nigerians cannot be wrong. I mean the likes of Dr. Emeka Anyaoku, the late Chief F.R.A. Williams; people like the late Chief Edwin Clark, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, all these people were eminently qualified to observe that things are not right with us as a country. Their opinions should not be just swept aside at all.
Why do you think the president has been reticent moving towards constitutional reforms?
Let me give the president the credit that he is a very good person; we cannot impute motives to what is in his mind. But I remember when eminent leaders of The Patriots paid him a visit last year; he said he was interested in the economy and that he wasn’t interested in politics. The president would be making a very grave mistake because the economy is not the problem of Nigeria. Politics is the problem. We are appealing to him (the president). Whatever his reasons are, they (the reasons) cannot supersede those of eminent Nigerians I have mentioned. The people I have mentioned, their views must count.
The National Political Conference of 2014 came up with some far-reaching recommendations and some people argue that if former President, Goodluck Jonathan, had implemented the report, these issues would have been addressed. Do you think that the report is capable of solving all the problems that you have highlighted?
Timeliness is everything. If the report was implemented in 2014, that’s 11 years ago it would have made some sense but the atmosphere in the country then is very different from what we have now. We had 8 years of (President Muhammadu) Buhari that led the country on a very wrong path. As we speak, the little glue that binds Nigeria together has been removed by how Buhari managed the country in a pathetic manner. Maybe it would have made sense then. All the compromises of 2014 have expired. Even if it was implemented in 2014, in 2025 things have become so bad that it’s time now to forget the patch-up of 2014. We now need a fundamental change. A lot of water has passed under the bridge.
On the eve of his departure from office, former President Buhari took some items, railways and electricity, from the Exclusive to the Concurrent List. Don’t you think this is a form of decentralising the government?
Our problem is more complex than applying cosmetic changes to them. If it is on power generation, the states are not able to pay salaries. Power investment is huge. You need a lot of dollars to build turbines, to build generation, to do transmission lines. The states haven’t got the funds. They are bloated with bureaucracy, no money. Lagos is the only state that can do anything meaningful in power generation; we’ve to decentralise government and scale down political leadership. For the country to develop, we must reduce recurrent expenditure from 80 per cent to nothing more than 30 per cent so that we can have enough money to execute capital projects. In last year’s budget, only 25 per cent of the capital budget was implemented while recurrent was implemented 100 per cent. There is no money to do any major initiatives that would move the country forward. We have to cut areas of waste so that we can free enough money to do critical things for the next five, for the next 10 to 20 years. In fact, we need five-year plans for our budgeting cycles. Cosmetic approach will never take us anywhere.
Recently, the president declared emergency rule in River State. How do you see that?
Well, again, all the brightest minds of law in Nigeria have commented on the issue and they have continued to maintain that the president was in grave error in doing that. He was not even fair-minded. He was not equitable because Rivers is a case of two people fighting, I mean between the governor, (Sim) Fubara, and Minister of the FCT, (Nyesom) Wike. You tackled one totally, and you pat the other one on the back. That’s not equitable at all. If the president could have said, look, Mr. Wike, just face your FCT assignment and don’t go to Rivers (State) again. He has enough to do, and he’s doing well in Abuja. I must commend Minister Wike. But from what I’m seeing, Mr. President himself is entrenching his grip on River State. And it’s all towards 2027. And it is not enough.
And you believe that a new constitution will address this kind of infractions that you have noticed?
I’m going to credit the National Assembly for the creation of regional commissions. That’s an admission that Nigeria must be run in a modular manner, in modules of regions because each of the regions has peculiarities so that they will have to be managed differently. So, if we have a constitution that recognises decentralised regions, each region should have control of its own resources, to have control on its own education, health, and infrastructure. And each region now will generate its own revenue and maintain the Federal Government as if it is a club. We’re back to the time when the late Sir Ahmadu Bello said, ‘look, I’m not interested in Lagos as a capital. I want to stay in Kaduna. Let (Sir Abubakar) Tafawa-Balewa go to Lagos and be the prime minister.’ We should make the centre unattractive. In fact, President Tinubu would have made a better prime minister of Western region with Lagos as its base. He knows Lagos. He knows more about the Western areas than any other part of the country because he’s not lived in the other places. He doesn’t know how the people there look at issues. And I know Peter Obi will be better as premier of the Eastern Region. Nigeria needs to be managed in a decentralised manner. There will be fair competition. There will be development across the country. If there is any mistake, eight governments or six governments cannot make mistakes at the same time.
Finally, what do you look forward to in this agitation? And what would have satisfied you in terms of the kind of changes that you want?
Not only me, other groups, such as The Patriots led by Dr. Emeka Anyaoku, the Eminent Elders Forum and many other bodies are saying the same thing. The Western Region Organisation, our voice is clear that we need a Constituent Assembly. And it can be done. In fact, all these groups already have drafts that reflect what we are saying now. It is to just synthesize them and publish for Nigerians to agree. And within three months, we can promulgate a new constitution into law to replace the 1999 Constitution. And if we do it before the end of the year, it means the 2027 election will be based on the new framework where you don’t need to do more than win elections in your constituency and from there onwards, it will be an electoral college to get to office. If you win elections in your local government, from there you can become prime minister without spending money. You don’t need a nationwide campaign to be prime minister. It will reduce the tension of people doing the campaign, people manoeuvring and people backbiting and cheating one another. And people are raising crazy money to finance such campaigns nationwide. There will be no need to be looking for money, spending money to just run elections. That is what we are hoping for. The president must listen. He has the next six months to prepare the good ground that his name will be remembered forever for.
What advice do you have for President Tinubu with regards to the agitation that you are canvassing for?
As a country, we have been fumbling and we are wobbling but it’s time to do some corrections with regards to moving the country forward. We will not be forgiven in history if we drive Nigeria through the next elections with the way we are doing now. On the other hand, he might just be the kind of person that history will say, here lies President Bola Tinubu as the real father of modern Nigeria.
