ABUJA: BULKANISATION OR REORGANISATION?

Josef Omorotionmwan argues the need for Nigerians to stand by what is right

We saw it coming. We know that the issue of Abuja as a Federal Capital would always be a source of friction.

Has anyone ever sat down to calculate the cost of building Abuja, our nation’s capital, to its present state? Pray not to be given that assignment, because you will never come out of it. The hidden costs far outweigh the open ones.

At the inception of the Second Republic in October 1979, this writer was the Secretary of the House Committee on Appropriations, among other committees. At the presentation of the 1980 Appropriations, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) had a hefty budget.

Besides, in each ministry of the federal government as well as each parastatal and extra-ministerial department, there was buried, yet a very hefty provision for the development of one project or the other. 

At a point, it was “Abuja here, Abuja there, Abuja everywhere”. This was what led one UPN legislator in the House of Representatives to shout out, “Abuja, Abuja, we don’t want to be Abujalised!”

You can’t be complaining of corruption without remembering that most of those appropriations went directly into some private pockets. That was how some staffers became emergency contractors. 

Fast forward to 1988. That was the year of the inauguration of the General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida Constituent Assembly. That was also when the phrase “treating Abuja as if it were a state” began to creep into the Nigerian Constitution. Some of us saw this as an attempt to make Abuja a state through the back door. I led the fight against this.

For me, you are either a man or a woman. You cannot be one and be expected to be treated like the other. The fight was fierce, and the debate was acrimonious. We fell short of bringing down the roof of the International Conference Centre. With great debaters like the Late Ojo Maduekwe and Dr. Ademola Adebo, among others, behind me, victory was almost assured. On that fateful morning, when the question was put, it was not clear which side won. We forced a division; and we lost narrowly. I wouldn’t let go. 

I forfeited my lunch. I spent the lunch period preparing a one-man riot squad. I got two cardboards, and I had the following inscription on them:

“A MAN IS A MAN. HE CANNOT BE TREATED LIKE A WOMAN … ABUJA IS NOT A STATE. IT CANNOT BE TREATED LIKE A STATE”.

I got a rope to the cardboards together; wore them over my babariga and walked into the full Assembly. 

The House went into an uproar. Among our Northern colleagues, a storm of indignation burst forth and some of them could have wanted me dead. The Southerners hailed me to the high heavens and carried me up high.

Trust the power of protest in a democracy! I succeeded in re-introducing the matter, although it was ambushed in one procedural Point of Order or something else – not before it grabbed the major headlines in the major media of the time, which is important to any politician.

More than 36 years on, we have some facts that are incontrovertible, no matter how many times you want to turn them around: First, Abuja is the Federal Capital of Nigeria.

Secondly, this Federal Capital is a capital for the entire Nigeria – not for the North alone. 

Thirdly, Bola Ahmed Tinubu is today the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Fourthly, Tinubu is the one charged with the responsibility for pruning down the cost of running the federal government.

In our support for the concept of Reward and Punishment – reward good and punish evil – we vote 100 percent for the initial steps so far taken by the Tinubu-led Administration in this regard. 

Of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Tinubu says that the department charged with the responsibility for supervising the commercial banks, the Banking Supervision Department, should be moved to Lagos where most of the banks they supervise are virtually headquartered. The Northerners are crying foul. Why?

Most of the affected staff here are perhaps Northerners. They are mainly domiciled in Abuja. They go to do their Lagos supervision from Abuja! At the expense of the taxpayer, they jet to Lagos on Sunday evening; stay in the best hotels in Lagos throughout the week; collect all the estacode for working out of their station; and jet back to Abuja on Friday evening for the weekend!

The economist in the President we now have has seen that this single item shoots up the cost of running the government. The relocation here makes very sound economic sense.

Similarly, that Lagos is the hub of the aviation industry in Nigeria. Therefore, it makes sound economic sense to relocate the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) from Abuja to Lagos without distorting the status of Abuja as the nation’s capital city.

This is just the beginning. When we are not operating a dry port, one would wonder what the Ports Authority and the Maritime Authority are still doing with their headquarters in Abuja. For utmost efficiency, such should relocate quietly to the South, where the ports are situated. 

In large measure, our politicians are quick to show themselves as ethnic jingoists. They soon lose their reasons; and rather than listen to your argument, they quickly jump to the position of here we stand. 

That’s one way of explaining why a man like Senator Ali Ndume would throw caution to the wind, go on national television, condemn the idea in a very crude language and proceed from there to announce that this measure is Tinubu’s very albatross that will cost him the next election. 

Yet, to some, this is apparently Tinubu’s entry into the realm of good governance and must be sustained. We are already wondering what the headquarters of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited is doing outside the Niger Delta Region. The concepts of efficiency and effectiveness demand otherwise. 

One major pitfall continues to live with us. This monster is the obnoxious idea of succeeding presidents of the country assuming the role of Minister of Petroleum. It is responsible for the mess in which we find this vital industry today. 

The concept of Senate Advice and Consent, which involves proper screening and confirmation at the time of appointment as well as proper oversight of the administration are not supposed to be terms in the abstractions. They must be real!

Yet, those vital elements get missing when you have the blockade created by the Super Boss at the door of the life wire of our main stay. From the beginning to the end, the nation is handicapped in every direction – there is a Super Boss who cannot be asked the supplementary questions, a man who is too busy to closely look at what is happening in this industry. 

For the nation, it is doomsday foretold – head you lose; and tail, you do not win!

Shall we return to Shakespeare? “Oh time, thou must untangle this, not I; it is too hard a knot for me to untie”.

Omorotionmwan writes from Canada