THIS piece of memorandum is coming rather too late. It is my fault. I was locked up in the ambivalence of whether or not the proposition would make good sense and be included in the proposed amendment of the 1999 Constitution. I could not resolve this indecision early enough to meet the legislative deadline set for the submission of all memoranda towards the amendment. I am pleading therefore for the National Assembly to bend a little backward to accommodate it.

I am of the opinion that our democracy and federation do not need the governors. We shall run smoother and more efficiently if the 36 governors are struck out of the equation. Wait a minute! It does not call for my crucifixion because I can visualise all 36 governors and their deputies charging at me with cudgels.

It is my candid opinion and until it is debated and approved by the relevant institutions including the national and state houses of assemblies and then made part of the constitution, it will remain my wish and nothing more.

What I can do more, is to make the argument for the annihilation of the governors tight and compelling, so that the governors themselves will see the point and accept the sacrifice for the sake of all of us. We need democrats to operate this democracy and not necessarily politicians. The latter’s interpretation of democracy as a platform for power acquisition and influence peddling is dangerously shallow. It leaves out the real content of democracy, which is the systematic engagement of the great issues of the day to make life better. This is called leadership by another name.

The governors do not play by the rules. They do not engage; they dictate and are always seeking to be masters in a process that recognises only servants. Yet, by their special position as middlemen in the democratic value chain, they have a responsibility to constitute the balancing strings in the tightrope walking exercise called the Nigerian democracy. The governors are like the door, which sees both the inside and outside of the house. They relate with the federal government, which is at the upper end of the vertical axis and the local government, which is at the bottom.

My anger with them is that it is only when they deal with the upper end that they remember to recite all the beautiful principles of democratic practice in a federal structure. At such times, all 36 governors will become very learned men, quoting with magisterial ease what the constitution says or does not say about revenue sharing. Arguments usually arise when the international crude prices rise sharply above budgetary benchmarks and there is something extra to share. Sermons by the finance minister on a Sovereign Trust Fund to guard against rough weather or more precisely, to stabilise the ever-anaemic naira, will never sink. They simply want their share of the extra, Q.E.D.

And there is big trouble if madam minister refuses to disburse the money in accordance with the agreed sharing formula. The governors will literally mount the podium and shout the whole day for the whole world to hear. They will take the Federal Government to court, hold press conferences and make very loud statements about an overbearing central government in an imperfect federal system. Civil and human rights activists will be contracted to talk anyhow on radio and television and sometimes, stage demonstrations to protest the Federal Government’s handling of the matter.

Generally, an impression will be foisted that Abuja wants to pocket money that belongs to the 36 states and 774 local governments.

The ensuing staccato will be too unsettling for President Goodluck Jonathan to gain concentration to preside over his Federal Executive Council (FEC) meetings on Wednesdays. He will be forced to quickly summon a council of state meeting, where the accruing money or substantial part of it will be shared in principle among the three tiers of government—federal, state and local. Local government chairmen are not permitted (I cannot say for sure if that is constitutional) to sit at or even hang around the sharing table; the councils’ share is received on their behalf by the state governors. Thereafter, every governor is cool and smiles back home with deep pockets. Some may not immediately return home because there is need to use part of the money just shared to comb Europe and America in search of investors in solid minerals, tourism, agriculture, etc in their states.

Back in the states, the tone is so much different. The governors do not engage the local government chairmen on the same terms they engage the Federal Government. They say the councils do not have a separate life outside the states and that Section 7 of the 1999 Constitution, which recognises the local governments as a level of government in Nigeria is an unnecessary overstatement. By that, they mean the money from Abuja is for the state and not the council areas. Section 162 (3) is quite explicit. It says “any amount standing to the credit of the federation account shall be distributed among the Federal and State Governments and the local government councils in each state on such terms and in such manner as may be prescribed by the National Assembly.”

A little down in Subsection 6, there is contradiction. It says “each state shall maintain a special account to be called ‘State Joint Local Government Account’ into which shall be paid all allocations to the local government councils of the state from the Federation Account and from the Government of the State.” This is why everybody is complaining about the 1999 constitution. There are too many headaches in the document and for which no definite cure is provided.  The drafters ought to have known that even between husband and wife, the operation of a joint account is not usually a sweet experience. The constitution created a joint account between governors and council chairmen without defining the modalities for operating the account like, for instance, spelling out who between the two holders, is the approving signatory for withdrawals, and who should take custody of the cheque book to institute a balance and check system.

The governors have a point in insisting on the sanctity of the 1999 Constitution. The constitution is to blame for creating the joint account. The constitution is a supreme law and whatever it has joined together should not be put asunder by trouble markers. The local governments are the property of the governors and that appears constitutional and under the Nigerian law, a man has almost infinite right to do whatever he likes with his property. It is for this reason that the governors can decide to hand pick individuals into care-taker committee to manage the affairs of the councils instead of conducting proper elections to constitute government at that level.

The council areas do not have electoral timetable as other tiers of government. A Peter Obi for instance, can decide not to have a council election forever in Anambra State and nothing will happen. And a Rochas Okorocha can decide to use the State House of Assembly to abruptly terminate the tenure of elected council officials in Imo State and the move will be applauded across board as a political masterstroke. The kind of masterstroke that embattled Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi invoked to sack from office the chairmen of Okrika and Obio-Akpor local government areas.

Yet the picture is not complete if I do not go back to the relationship between the governors and the president. They are 36 men against one man who is too unwilling to be president. In the event of verbal altercation, it is almost impossible for the discerning public to hear something else outside the combined decibel of the 36-mega phones. Just make a governor taste a little of the raw deal that he so gladly forces down the throat of council chairmen and the entire landscape and skyline of Nigeria will come alive with an unusual noise. They throw blows that they themselves do not have capacity to absorb. They seek the purity of others at the equity table but do so little to attend the dinner with clean hands.

The governors want state police, which in any case is a sine qua non in a true federal structure. But nothing is true in the Nigerian situation and so the governors should bear with us. We do not want a parallel police force that will be used to completely annihilate the local government structure and chase political opponents out of town into caves. The guys are already drunk with power without the official instruments of coercion, which include the police. Why should we then, with our eyes wide open, add to the degree of their drunkenness?

Most things about the governors are in breach of the constitution. For instance, the 13 per cent derivation fund paid the South-South governors is constitutionally not part of the state’s statutory allocation and cannot be strictly applied as such. The money is specifically meant for the oil producing communities and same should be used to address the many socio-economic and ecologically challenges occasioned by oil exploration and exploitation in those areas. But much of the derivation money is usually locked up in the state headquarters for purposes outside the actual specifications. Little or nothing is getting down to the real people creating reason for a fresh proposal of a 10 per cent Host Community fund as contained in the slow moving Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB). This is one of the reasons for the North’s resistant to the bill.

The sins of the governors are many and they cannot be easily forgiven even if they become born again. My suggestion therefore is that they should be uprooted so that the flow between the shoot and the grassroots will be unhindered. The governors are middlemen and in all cases, middle men add more burden than they add value to the distribution chain.