There are two perspectives from which the apparent lopsidedness of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s appointments can be understood.There is the power politics perspective and there is the federalism compliant dimension. 

The emergent casus belli between the President and the custodians of the Northern Muslim electorate devolves on this lapse. It is amenable to being cited as the enactment of Yoruba/ Tinubu triumphalism on one end and the entitlement syndrome of the hegemonic North on the other.

The President has been quite deliberate and systematic in wielding this power politics instrument. There have been repeated pronouncements of the arrival of a new sheriff in town and a pharaoh who does not know Joseph. Thereby, Tinubu and Nigeria have embarked on a journey of no return to the status quo ante. This is the first time in the history of Nigeria that a President of Southern origins, will deliberately engage the custodians of the Northern Muslim electorate in a zero sum game. The latter has a vested interest in preserving the myth of Northern hegemony against which the former has thrown the gauntlet.

If the Tinubu Presidency is having problems with this constituency today it is largely on account of not adequately yielding to this entitlement syndrome. In so doing, he must have factored the potential consequences (including especially the challenge of seeking reelection) into the equation.

The role of the Yoruba intelligentsia in this dogfight is uncertain but when push comes to shove there is a limit to which a fellow Yoruba can lead the charge against a Nigerian President of Yoruba origins for the sin of overcompensating his Yoruba kith and kin within the context of the turn by turn predicate of Nigerian politics. Moreso at a time when the division across ethno regional lines is at a record high and when no silver lining is discernible in the horizon.

Without the awful precedent set by Buhari, it is well nigh impossible that his successor will ply the same route. Buhari has set the benchmark for how a divisive political leader can find the winning formula from the standpoint of exclusive discriminatory leadership. You would have noticed that notwithstanding his disastrous outing as President, his residence increasingly teems with vengeful and bitter anti-Tinubu standard bearers.

There is now an established Muhammadu Buhari model in which the political leader is wildly popular and commands a cult followership on account of his personification of ethno national irredentism. In a discussion with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu several years ago, he said he was realistically constrained to ally himself with the former President, on account of the “cult followership”the latter commands amongst the Muslim North electorate. In the effluxion of time, this realpolitik vision has been vindicated and amply rewarded.

Upon his ascension to the high office,Tinubu wasted no time in putting the Buhari model practice. In a cynical rationalisation of his nepotism, the argument was made (for Buhari) that the seeming lopsidedness of his appointments is extenuated by the rationale that those appointees are spread over the three Northern zones, North West, North Central and North East. In pursuit of this phantom explanation, Buhari actually argued on one or two occasions that he was compelled to make the appointments (the chief of Army staff in particular) because no officer of Southern origin was competent and capable enough.

In a similar replay of the Buhari mischief, Tinubu has proposed that the Yoruba lopsidedness of his appointments is merely a reflection of the fact that his appointees from kogi and kwara are only Yoruba in name but are Northern Nigerians by citizenship

Typical of such Yoruba Northerners is the newly appointed Group Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Mr Bayo Ojulari. Ulterior motives notwithstanding, I should not forget to commend the President for finally summoning the courage to get rid of Malam Mele Kyari from the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC. How a man who embodied all that was wrong with the NCNC, merits being reappointed, in the first place, beats the imagination hollow.

Albert Einstein must have had Nigeria in mind when he concluded that it is only a mad man who keeps doing the same thing and expects a different outcome. It is in the evasion of the fundamental issue at stake (federalism) that the federal character principle was manufactured. The failure of this escapist construct was heralded by the artful dodger propensities of Nigerian leaders (circumventing the law while studiously breaching the spirit). In its manifest inadequacy in addressing the problem of the Nigerian dysfunctional pluralism, the federal character principle is akin to the employment of a table knife to cut a tree; of mistaking the forest for the tree; of misconstruing leprosy as eczema.

The doctrine of ‘Federal Character’ emerged from the 1979 Constitution, and it calls for the distribution of federal appointments to reflect equitably the different dimensions of the nation’s ethnic, regional and religious, heterogeneity, in order to ‘promote a sense of belonging and loyalty” among the diverse peoples of Nigeria. The doctrine did not stand up to scrutiny. In the assessment of the principle, Peter Ekeh denounces it (‘Federal Character)’ as the ‘solution that has deepened the problem it was devised to tackle’. Afigbo believes that the present structure of the Nigerian federation has not succeeded in meeting and solving the problems which necessitated the emergence of ‘ Federal Character’. He is of the view that the Nigerian North-South dichotomy remains a thorny issue, in spite of attempts to obliterate it by demarcating the nation into smaller states

The principle did not self-destruct, it was subverted by those who were contracted to ensure its application. And this is the problem with those who argue that the random variable of good leadership rather than the restoration of federalism (the relationship between the center of a political regime and its constituent parts, however those parts are conceived) holds the key to the solution of the problem of Nigeria. Let us apply this argument to the fourth Republic and ask of the extent to which leadership has complied with the implementation of the federal character principle.

I think that of the five Presidents who had governed Nigeria since 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo is the only one who can be fairly judged as passing the implementation of the federal character litmus test. The extrapolation here is that, in generic terms, the chances of getting a good Nigerian President is 20%. In other words, for every successful Nigerian President, you are going to get four failures.

In this scenario the realistic and scientific attitude (otherwise known as the worst case scenario) is to hope and not expect that Nigeria will get good leadership. If the problem is formulated in this manner, you will then put your expectation first on constitutional guardrails and secondarily on the hope for the elusive good leadership.

Potentially and notionally, you assume that the likelihood is that bad (not good people who need to be curtailed and constrained) will find their way to power. Such constraints are what you call checks and balances. In the case of Nigeria, the risk of national damage is directly proportional to centralisation. In other words, bad leadership will have limited capacity (especially at the centre) to wreak damage the less centralised the system.

Because of the inevitability of bad leadership and the dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, the less the concentration of power at one source and the more the dispersal of power, the more constrained is the wielder of power. According to Rotimi Suberu “federalism in Nigeria is subverted by de facto hypercentralization, as resource distribution devolves top-down from the center. Second, politics within Nigeria’s federal order focuses on access to and distribution of the centrally distributed wealth, rather than on its production”

It is a constant in the history of mankind that the development of any society is founded on the extent to which the two variables of hard work and reward are wedded in a direct proportional relationship. And since this is a rational concept, it follows that the ethic abides as the organising principle of rationally designed societies. Nigeria has chosen to be an exception to this rationality – with dire consequences.

Let me call it a day with a helicopter view of the concept, applicability and indispensability of federalism to Nigeria.

Professor Wole Soyinka, has been criticised for being tepid in his reaction to the declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers state yet he made the important point that an unintended consequence is the impoverishment of federalism. My position is that any structure that makes it possible for the President to be this powerful cannot be right for Nigeria

“ Federalism, according to our definition, is a means of governing that grants partial autonomy to a polity’s geographically defined subunits. Combined, the elements of geography and autonomy distinguish federalism from other consociative strategies. The issue is the relationship between the center of a political regime and its constituent parts, however those parts are conceived. (Feeley, Malcolm M., and Edward L. Rubin).

The basic political dilemma of pluralism is to reconcile the common interests of the society as a whole with the particular interests of its subgroups. The spatial basis for social partitioning inherent in regionalism offers a very attractive solution to this problem, for territoriality provides clearly demarcated zones of jurisdiction. Central to the logic of the federalist solution, therefore, is the concept of regionalism. However, its intrinsic simplicity may create difficulties”. (H. LITHWICK )

“Federalism becomes useful when people’s political identities conflict but their political lives are intertwined as members of a single polity or as members of different polities that want to join together. Inevitably, it involves a compromise; a central government is established or maintained, but some or all regions of the polity are granted autonomy over specified governmental functions”

“Federalism has to do with the need of people and polities to unite for common purposes yet remain separate to preserve their respective integrities. Federalism itself is not optimal; it is a suboptimal compromise designed to resolve situations that threaten to descend into even less attractive possibilities” Nigerian pluralism is, for instance, uniquely bound to conflict and crisis and highly resistant to national integration. (Dan Elazar)

“Most of the problems confronting Nigeria were results of the structure. if a structure is not working we have a responsibility to make adjustments to that structure.”(Agboola Gambari)

Rather than animus and mutually assured destruction, If this moment can serve to indicate that in the present dispensation of pseudo-federalism, all of us are losers, the purpose of reinventing Nigeria would have been achieved.