By Lucky Okoedion
1)
A sensitive social contract which controls the present possibilities and future hopes of millions, as in a document such as the constitution of a delicate “Nation” like Nigeria, shouldn’t have been created in this manner.
2) 
If you didn’t know before, be informed now that according to this constitution, the Governor your people elected in your state and the state legislators who practically represent each tribe must wallow in the toxic political sentiments at the federal level before they can acquire capital for development.
Whereas the Federal government has the right to get outrageous loans and squander same on ridiculous projects like Buhari building a railway to Niger Republic for his tribesmen who are not Nigerians or simply loot them, and yet use money generated by your people and natural resource from your state to service such loans.
3)
The consequence of this is that your state government does not have the right to know the real number of people in the state. People are born, they live and die in this country without any record of their existence. Even a poultry farmer will not treat fowls the way the 1999 constitution treats us.
Only a dangerously insincere and deliberately mischievous individual will claim that they believe that a federally coordinated censors can ever be authentic in Nigeria under our peculiar circumstances.
The implication is that all development plans in Nigeria are flawed by default because we don’t have accurate data about our citizens.
And nobody is angry about it.
Why operate a system that first makes everyone dependent on allocation from the federal and also makes population the basis for the political power that influences the sharing, and yet you expect your census to be authentic? You expect that vested interests under a weak government system as ours will not manipulate the process given our peculiar circumstances? How stupid is that ! The 1999 constitution set the system up to fail. It is like setting out to build a house but using your own hand to design the building plan and specifications in a way that the building will always collapse half way.
Yet for over two decades, we have refused to say enough is enough.
4)
I challenge you to point out any progressive country in the world where this is the case. There is none. This is another way by which the 1999 constitution has boxed the country into a corner for perpetual failure. So much that even if an angel with superpowers becomes the president of Nigeria, there will still not be reasonable progress.
This provision in the constitution means that you must be poor if your neighbor is poor, even if that his poverty is due to his own laziness or lack of conscience and courage to demand for competent leadership from his leaders who run his state. Or even if his poverty is due to him being purely paralysed by tribal and ethnic sentiments, and blinded by religious deceptions. Yet you have to earn peanuts and live poor because they have chosen to be poor. That is the injustice in the 1999 constitution. Yet for over two decades, nobody is angry about it.
But the point is that each state has its individual level of poverty and development and should be able to arrive at separate and independent minimum wage and terms of employment agreements with its state workers. A national minimum wage and Federalism are a contradiction in terms. There can be no uniform wages system in a true Federation.
5) 
Can you imagine ? I am sure 90% of Nigerians don’t know this. This evil 1999 constitution foolishly provides opportunity for hundreds of millions of naira every month to be given to state governors to protect their states, yet the same constitution gives the police the power to refuse to take instructions from the state governors, thereby encouraging the police force to loot the funds if the governors “foolishly” gives the money to them since the governors can only fund but cannot supervise or hold them accountable. In fact, a Governor can procure vehicles for the police in his state today and if the vehicles are deployed to another state tomorrow on orders from Abuja, the governor cannot do anything about it. That is how foolish this constitution that controls the affairs of this country is. So bad that I think those who drafted it should be tried for treason if they are still alive.
As if that is not bad enough, the constitution does not have any rules to ensure that the governors don’t pocket the monthly hundreds of millions of naira called “security votes”. As a matter of fact, the constitution discourages the governors from spending the money on the security of the people since through lack of oversight powers for the governors and lack of powers to set up their own security architecture or fund vigilante groups, it is as good as the governors pocketing the monies by themselves instead of giving it to the famously corrupt Nigerian police to loot. This coupled with the fact that there is no law requiring the governors to give account of the money, thereby technically encouraging the governors to pocket it.
Put yourself in the shoes of the governors. You are asked to choose between pocketing millions of naira or giving it to another group to loot. And in fact the constitution encourages you to pocket it, and you are not pastor WF Kumuyi. Won’t you pocket it instead of allowing others to loot it?
We are talking about approximately 300 to 500 million naira every month.
Some of you must have heard so much about community policing of recent and governors training state security men under the community policing scheme. But let me shock you. Do you know that the so called security men being trained are under the same federal police even if it is the state governors that will be paying their salaries from the security votes? They can even be redeployed from the state on orders from Abuja and the governor cannot do anything about it. They are not authorized to carry arms. They are only to serve the purpose of gathering information from their communities, and giving feedback to the REAL police. Like reporting the bad boys in their area to the police without carrying arms. Imagine when the boys find out who is reporting them to the police. LOL…
But in all Federations all over the World, both the Federal and State authorities have their own police forces. In the U.S.A., the Federal authorities have the F.B.I and the state and municipal authorities, have Police Forces. Even in the U.K. which is not a Federated country, the counties have their own Police establishments. There is therefore no reason why the States cannot have their own Police Forces in Nigeria, instead of the Nigeria Police Force being put under the exclusive control of the Federal Government.
So, just imagine. Our security arrangement in Nigeria is the kind that does not exist anywhere else in the world. We are using an approach that has not worked anywhere in the world. And our constitution forbids us from having state police like the rest of the world. Are you still wondering why there is so much insecurity in Nigeria?
6)
In other words, States can only organise the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity under a rural electricity scheme. They are in effect prohibited from establishing or organising any system of electricity supply in competition with the dead Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN). States are thus condemned to the under-development which PHCN respresents. The only electricity initiatives your state government can embark on are those endorsed by PHCN.
As critical as electricity problems are in Nigeria, is there supposed to be restrictions to how the states can intervene to provide electricity for us?
7)
The processes are:
(i) The national assembly must receive a request supported by two-thirds majority of members representing the area demanding the new state in each of the following:
( a) The Senate;
(b) The House of Representative;
(c) The State House or Houses of the Assembly in respect of the area;
(d) The local government councils in respect of the areas;
(ii) next a proposal for the creation of the state is put to a referendum in the area concerned and approved by at least two-thirds majority of the people of that area. This provision does not say two-thirds of those who voted. It does not even say two-thirds of the registered voters. Rather it says “two-thirds majority of the people of the area where the demand for creation of the state originated”. Technically, this means two-thirds of the whole population including babies, toddlers, pre-teenagers, lunatics etc.
(iii) if the proposal survives these barriers, it is then put before all the 36 states Houses of Assembly, and for it to survive, it must be approved by a simple majority of the States houses, and finally;
(iv) The proposal must be approved by a resolution passed by at least two-thirds majority of each House of the national assembly.
The result of these daunting provIsIons is to effectively suppress the right of self-determination of communities seeking statehood, thereby tying them unwillingly to other communities with whom they are not compatible. The autonomy. and self-government associated with Federalism are thus stitled, giving rise to resentment and conflicts.
SUMMARY:
The constitution encourages laziness so much that in some parts of Nigeria, especially the North, local government council offices are not opened most days of the month except when they want to share crude oil allocation and pay salaries of mostly ghost workers. It is that bad. How do you expect such a nation not to be the poverty, hunger and insecurity headquarters of the world?
For those who are wondering how come the framers of this constitution did not care about these details, the answer is that they were more concerned about giving some vested interests access to Niger Delta crude oil money than in the growth and future of this nation. Not knowing that you cannot sow injustice and reap prosperity. Though their individual families and interested group of elites have become extremely rich over the years as a result, the nation itself is now a shadow of itself.
They didn’t know that depriving the states of the power to control their resources and development does not only lead to access to Niger Delta crude oil money. It also leads to their own Northern state governors being over dependent on the federal government, and thus disconnected from their people, of which the people are the most important of all resources. That is how foolish you unknowingly become when you are driven by greed.
Now, the people are extremely impoverished, making it easy for terrorists to recruit them. The North has practically become a war zone, and millions of their people are in IDP camps scattered all over the nation. And it can still get worse. Many predict that a time will come when the angry Northern youths will rise up and begin to attack every rich family in the North the same way hoodlums plundered the palace of the Oba of Lagos and some homes of politicians recently after the Lekki Massacre of innocent protesters by the federal government.
The Southern politicians didn’t initially care about the flaws in the constitution because they were going to produce the first civilian president in the person of Obasanjo under the new constitution and also own oil wells. Since the constitution was giving all the powers to the federal and they will be in charge of the federal government, they didn’t care. And that has been the story of the compromise of Southern Nigerian politicians. So long as they get their own share and have the hope of aspiring for northern votes to pursue their presidential or ministerial ambitions, they don’t care. They forget that it is only when the country is in existence that they will be able to run for president. Such a prodigal elderly generation that has squandered the fortunes of the current and future generations for the past decades.
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Lucky Okoedion is a believer of a new Nigeria where true democracy is practiced. He writes from Benin City, Nigeria. He can be reached on +2347038820118.
