In the late 1960s and early 1970s, late African statesman, President Julius Kambarage Nyerere of Tanzania strongly advocated what he called “Nation building” for fragile post-Colonial African states. The fragility of these states soon became obvious and was exposed in several lights: Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi declared himself President-for-Life; In Lesotho, Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan voided the 1970 election which he had lost; King Sobhuza of Swaziland abolished the Parliament and the Constitution and reinstituted a monarchy. This was also the period when Zambia and Malawi were dissolving the Central African Federation, coinciding with the merger of Tanganyika and Zanzibar to form present-day Tanzania. A large number of African States soon fell into military dictatorships. In Nigeria, a series of events led to the collapse of democratic institutions in 1966 and subsequently, a bitter Civil War.
There is the usual temptation to reduce the meaning (albeit incorrectly) of Nation Building to: national integration, national development, political development, or the development of a national consciousness. The term includes all these, but to reduce it to any of them is to commit a “reductionist” fallacy. Simply put, it can mean the systematic process of making a people, who hitherto are from different cultural, ethnic, religious, racial, or national backgrounds to feel a sense of belonging together within a nation. Karl Deutch, in his book Nation Building identifies five stages of achieving this “systematic process”.
First, the group exists as a tribe, with its distinct language and proud culture, and will resist any attempt to integrate it with other groups. The next stage is to incorporate them forcefully into other groups with the use of force. The third stage is for them to minimally accept, often with the use of force or the threat of it, the new arrangement by cooperating minimally. At the fourth stage, their level of resistance is reduced to the minimum and their cooperation and obedience have risen astronomically, though they still keep their cultural identities intact. The fifth is when the group becomes almost indistinguishable from other groups within the state. This is when total assimilation is achieved. The last two stages will require minimal use of force. As a post-colonial nation, the first three stages ended with colonialism. The last two have proven difficult in Nigeria, either due to deliberate colonial policy or shameless neglect by leaders at independence.
At this point let us bring in a familiar concept, the Federal Character principle. It was one of the post-Civil War integration efforts introduced by the Constitutional Drafting Committee (CDC) in 1978, and formed part of the 1979 Constitution. Despite it featuring in the 1999 Constitution under the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy in Section 14(3) “…to promote national unity and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from few states or a few ethnic or other groups in Government or in any of its agencies”, only a few people have bothered about it until recently when President Muhammadu Buhari made some “key appointments”, leading to public outcry in some sections of the country.
We must be quick to admit that like many other provisions of the Constitution, the Federal Character principle was meant to correct some imbalances experienced in the past, but I believe it has created more problems than it has attempted to solve. Rather than promote national unity, it has disunited us more than we were before.
We must be quick to admit that like many other provisions of the Constitution, the Federal Character principle was meant to correct some imbalances experienced in the past, but I believe it has created more problems than it has attempted to solve. Rather than promote national unity, it has disunited us more than we were before.
In my understanding, the Federal Character principle assumes that in appointing a person from any part of Nigeria into a position, that person, first and foremost, must “carry his or her ethnic group along” in the scheme of things. Invariably, the appointee represents his “constituency”, not necessarily his portfolio(s). It looks more like “just get someone to fill in that position, so long as it gives everyone the feeling of inclusion, not so much whether they are competent for the position or not.”
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