The federal structure of Nigeria can be traced to Bernard Bourdillon, the Governor-General who was credited to have initiated and laid the foundation of federalism in Nigeria in 1939 by creating three provinces. He later handed over the constitution to his successor, Arthur Richards, and it became the Richards Constitution of 1946.
It was the Lyttleton Constitution, enacted in 1954, that gave Nigeria a full federal structure and firmly established the federal principle.
The constitution paved the way for Nigeria’s independence from Great Britain, October 1, 1960. At this juncture, it is time we start again to probe the federal structure of Nigeria; and the first question undoubtedly should be how did Nigeria come about her federal structure?
Clearly, Nigeria has a complex system of fiscal federalism; a large country both in terms of land area and population with considerable ethnic, religious, linguistic, and climatic diversity, all factors that speak for and favour decentralisation of governance. Having noticed this diversity, the regional fiscal autonomy was increasingly strengthened before 1960 and the regions were working and moving at their respective development paces, with physical evidence to show; not until the military happened in 1966 to destroy the regional fiscal autonomy, and weakened the power of the regions and provinces in them.
Since then, the federal structure and governance have moved from bad to worse, with Vagabonds (borrowing the word and its context from: “My Participation,” the book of Papa Bisi Akande) outwitting themselves to hijack the military version of the badly-flawed federal system they deploy to enable them help themselves to the wealth of different Communities they forcefully took to the centre to sit upon and appropriate.
Good government and beneficial governance is bottom up. Nothing, not even the desire, actions or manipulations by Nigeria’s political class, can change this very fact. Governance must start from the community to local government, then to state and to federal. The people own the economy. It is their duty to create and own wealth through the land God gave them.
Arising from this productive ventures is the social responsibility of individuals in a community to contribute tokens (called tax) for the sole purpose of administration of the communities, the provinces, local and state government, and advancing part of such taxes to the federal government to maintain firstly, social security and corporate welfare and maintenance of the territorial integrity. It is not the duty or role of the federal government to snatch the wealth of the people, by using whatever form or trick in the guise of rule or law, and later to cut in bits and pieces to give to the original owners of the wealth.
Come to querying the manner of federalism imposed on Nigeria by the ruling class, besides the acts and laws passed by the state houses of assembly, how many states or people of a state can bring out a copy of their states’ constitution where the opening paragraph reads, ‘We the people of Oyo State’, or ‘We the people of Taraba State’, or ‘We the people of Zamfara State’, or ‘We the people of Akwa Ibom State’ hereby agree to be governed…” What I am saying is that, in a truly federal country, each state is to be autonomous in both fiscal and political and performing their roles and responsibilities in the federal structure, and not that the federal will become the alpha and omega to all.
The way Nigeria does her things is documented even by non-Nigerians. In the words of Michael Mered while writing for the IMF eLibrary about Nigeria in the book, ‘Fiscal Federalism in Theory and Practice’ (pages 598-611) declares that “although all levels of government have their own independent sources of revenue, the funding of government expenditure comes to a large extent from federally collected revenues, which are accumulated in the Federation Account at the Central Bank of Nigeria and then distributed among the different branches of government according to statutory shares (statutory transfers). Not surprisingly, the question of how revenues should be shared among regions has always been a controversial issue in Nigeria”.
According to Adebayo, Akanmu Gafari in the thesis titled: “A history Of Revenue Allocation In Nigeria,” and submitted to Obafemi Awolowo University, “two main conclusions can be reached. The first is that the changes in the revenue allocation system positively cohered with the shifting administrative and political balance of power among the units of the Nigerian Federation. The second is that the politics of revenue allocation was significantly influenced by the increasing ideological tendency towards private accumulation of wealth among members of the ruling class.”
One will need to ask those in government: is governance about accumulation of private wealth among the ruling class at the expense of the governed?
The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission has its motto (or slogan) as Equity, Fairness and Justice. The Commission published on its website how things were done in Nigeria pre-independence, how changes occur and what now obtains.
The Philipson’s Commission (1946) recommended three (3) principles, namely: Derivation, Even Progress and Population. In the absence of statistical data, only the population principle was applied. Regional revenue was divided into two classes, namely: declared and non-declared revenues.
The declared revenues were those collected by the regions. The non-declared revenues were those collected by the Central Government and shared in the following horizontal ratio: Northern Region (46%), Western Region (30%), and Eastern Region (24%). And in its search to arrive at a progressively more equitable allocation formula, the Commission introduced some general principles, namely: Independent Revenue, Derivation, Need and National Interest in 1951. The independent revenue gave the regions powers to impose direct taxes such as jangali (cattle) tax, motor, liquor and other licences, etc. The regional governments had complete control over these taxes.
Also Read:
- Kenn Ayere’s Lifestyle Value Mall provides job opportunities for over 100 youths in Benin
- 2025 AFCON Qualifiers: Osimhen, Lookman score as Nigeria beat Benin Republic
- Buratai mourns Yar’Adua’s mother
- Why we are against using INEC officials from Imo, Kogi for Edo polls – Ighodalo
- FG implementing critical initiatives to train, equip police personnel – Tinubu
Now, the Derivation principle for the regions was applied as follows: 50% of the import and excise duties on tobacco and 100% of the import on motor spirit. In respect of the needs, the Commission gave capital grants to the Region using the 1931 Population figures as a measure of need while the national interest, the regions were given the following special grants 100% of the cost of maintaining the police in the regions, and 50% of the cost of maintaining the native authority police of the region; and 100% of the grants given by the regional governments to voluntary agencies and local authorities on education. Putting the fiscal structure in 2024 side-by-side pre-independence structure, one can ask the federal agency if it still believes in the motto of the Commission.
.Ola Emmanuel is a business planning consultant.