Reductionism and the national question: restructuring or grievance? (I), by Usman Sarki

“The co-existence of several nations under the same State is a test, as well as the best security, of its freedom.” — Lord Acton Nigeria’s convoluted debate on restructuring has endured for decades because it supposedly speaks to questions of power, identity, representation, resource distribution, security, federalism and belonging. Precisely because the debate has been driven largely by sectional advocates and habitual agitators, however, it has also become increasingly burdened and polarised by a tendency towards reductionism, or the habit of explaining the country’s many and complex difficulties through a single grievance, a single historical narrative, a single ethnic experience or a single constitutional remedy.

It is here that the discourse on the so-called “national question” becomes difficult, protracted and, at times, almost futile. Nigeria undoubtedly has structural problems, just as other countries do. It also has governance challenges, adversarial politics, elite misconduct, civic indiscipline, institutional weakness, manufactured discontents and problems arising from deep historical memories.

To collapse all these into one argument that Nigeria will work better only if one particular restructuring formula is adopted may be emotionally satisfying, but it is intellectually shallow and politically reactionary. The central question, therefore, is no longer simply whether Nigeria should restructure. It is whether restructuring is being presented as a panacea, pursued as a genuine national project, or increasingly deployed as an instrument of demagoguery, a mockery of democracy and a vocabulary through which competing groups selfishly articulate accumulated grievances.

That distinction is essential if an honest national discourse is to be undertaken. A federation is, by its nature, an arrangement for managing diversity. It seeks to reconcile unity with autonomy, common citizenship with regional identity, and national authority with sub-national self-government. Nigeria’s problem is not that diversity exists; that is an enduring fact.

The more difficult question is whether the state has developed institutions capable of managing that diversity fairly, equitably, peacefully and productively. Lord Acton’s dictum is instructive in this regard. The coexistence of several nations within one state is not necessarily evidence of political failure. It is, rather, a test of liberty and constitutional maturity.

The challenge is whether institutions can make diversity compatible with freedom, equality and political order. When those institutions are compromised and rendered incapable of delivering satisfactory governance, every disagreement acquires an ethnic or sectional interpretation. Administrative failures become evidence of domination. Economic inequalities are interpreted as deliberate marginalisation.

Political defeat is transformed into collective humiliation. Historical assumptions become territorial claims. Every federal appointment, budgetary allocation, state boundary or constitutional provision is then subjected to ethnic or regional arithmetic. It is at this point that restructuring ceases to be merely a constitutional discussion and becomes part of the broader politics of grievance.

There is nothing illegitimate about nursing a grievance or articulating it where it genuinely exists. Nations must allow legitimate grievances to be expressed freely and intelligently. Indeed, suppressing them may constitute a greater threat to national stability than openly debating them. But grievance must ultimately be converted into a constitutional proposition, not transformed into fuel for agitation and disunity.

It must answer practical questions. What precisely is wrong with the country? What institution should be rearranged or changed? By what process? To whose benefit? At whose cost? And how will the rights of others be safeguarded? Without this discipline, restructuring becomes an endlessly expanding concept into which every disappointment may be inserted.

For some Nigerians, restructuring means a return to the regional arrangement of the First Republic. For others, it means fiscal federalism and greater resource control. Some understand it as devolution of powers from the Federal Government to the states. Others advocate state police, constitutional recognition of traditional institutions or the creation of additional states.

Still others propose the consolidation of the present 36 states into larger regions. At the furthest end of the argument are those for whom restructuring is essentially a transitional language for confederation, self-determination or eventual separation. All these positions are described by the same word; however, they do not necessarily lead to the same destination.

That is why the restructuring debate must first be rescued from ambiguity, inconsistency, shallowness and opportunism. Recent arguments surrounding the idea of autonomous regions illustrate the difficulty. One school of t