By Ramatu Abubakar
Governments all over the world tinker with some existing policies to achieve certain objectives or make sectoral governance more effective. Whatever might be the motive, changes generally are permanent fixtures in life and policy tinkering comes with political appointments as it is in the corporate world.
Governments, individuals, and corporate entities, not amenable to change either eventually atrophy or go under. However, in this country, policy initiatives, changes and or reversal attract a lot of hoopla and controversies and mostly interpreted to fit into existing divides and sentiments.
Such are the needless uproars trailing ordinary administrative procedures in the redeployment of staff and movement of a few departments and agencies of government of the same organisations lately. The recent deployment of some staff and relocation of a few departments of the apex bank plus the announced relocation of FAAN to Lagos have become talking points in Nigeria’s ethnically and regionally volatile political divides.
The opposition came from mainly influential northerners and its umbrella body, the Arewa Consultative Forum(ACF) without as much thought for the merit of the initiative. Its spokesman, Professor Tukur Muhammed-Baba, said “the ACF calls on the federal government and the National Assembly to call on those agencies to retrace their steps and apply other honest means of addressing the alleged overcrowding in offices. Against the situation in Lagos, there is plenty of land in the FCT for expansion of office and other infrastructural facilities and such factors should not be used to obfuscate sinister motives.
“The ACF wishes to remind all concerned that decades ago, the seat of the Federal Republic was moved from Lagos to Abuja for reasons that remain valid, and constitutional even more so today, although a section of the country never liked the decision”. There is no concord in joining a mere administrative formality to the issue of the movement of Nigeria’s capital from Lagos to Abuja except to exploit same for political advantage.
This is quite unfortunate considering that similar efforts in the past did not attract such condemnation and criticisms from the same groups or people. In 2020, former Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika ordered agencies under Aviation to move to Abuja and premised the decision on “current global economic situation and the need to reduce the cost of governance” even with protests from industry stakeholders. Unlike the protests then which came mainly from the unions and stakeholders, the opposition this time came mainly from a socio-cultural organization like ACF and Northern politicians and you wonder why, if not for the narrow interest of a few individuals cloaked in northern interest. The ACF spokesman’s insinuation can at best stoke the embers of conflicts among the people of Nigeria.
Former CBN governor and a highly regarded technocrat spoke out on the propriety of the apex bank’s decision saying moving some departments to Lagos will ‘streamline operation’, reduce cost and make departments concerned more effective. Besides, except for two or three, all commercial banks are situated in Africa’s biggest business hub-Lagos. What then is wrong if departments concerned with CBN’s oversight are moved to Lagos and still work with the Abuja office seamlessly. As a matter of fact, all agencies vital to the nation’s economy can effectively move to Lagos. For example, Securities and Exchange Commission should be headquartered in Lagos for the purpose of proximity to the Nigerian Stock Exchange which they work with, but has remained in Lagos since.
Another example is the US which we copy most of our political and economic programmes from. The US department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency, the Bureau of Land Management and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are not headquartered in Washinton DC, the capital of the US. I understand that the “the administrative capital of South Africa is Pretoria, where the President of South Africa must reside and do the business of government. The legislative capital is Cape Town and their houses of Parliament are there, while judicial capital is Bloemfontein where the South African Supreme Court is also situated”, yet this dispersal of the three arms of government has not detracted from their efficiency and effective administration,
We often complain about over-centralization of government; everything is about Abuja and Abuja is about everything. Yet any effort about dispersal and decentralization is met with stiff opposition This mischief makers deriding FAAN’s movement to Lagos will tomorrow turn around to clamour for devolution of power. How do you devolve powers, if we insist on all MDAs being in Abuja, resulting in high cost of living in the federal capital as against the country’s commercial capital. For me, this should be a continuous exercise. In this age of technology, all these MDAs can operate virtually. Didn’t Covid teach us that?
Meanwhile we do have some MDAs that are located outside Abuja but are still functional. Nobody has raised an eyebrow over that. The National Institute of Transport Technology, Zaria (NITT) under the Ministry of Transportation is outside Abuja, NECO is in Minna, Niger state; National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and National Teachers’ Institute (NTI) are situated in Kaduna, while Some others are sparsely distributed. They are National Institute for Fresh Fisheries Research in New Bussa, Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research, Benin, Institute of Agricultural Research and Training, Ibadan amongst others.
Our problem is self-serving politicians masquerading as champions and advocates for justice for their people. How does the location of an agency put food on the table of the average northern family? How does it solve the problem of banditry, boko haram insurgency and farmer-herder crisis? How do we tackle the big issues of insecurity hampering our development generally. These are issues the northern elite should ponder over and seek solutions to, and not where an MDA is located, or where the children of these elite are redeployed to.
Pitching Nigerians against themselves can at best set this country on fire, whereas we should work and preach peace, unity, and development. The north is not Nigeria and vice versa, and the country is bigger than any of its units. Let us remember that while our sojourn here is temporary, the country remains till eternity. This generation should not set the country on fire and leave the ashes for our children. Enough of this elite hypocrisy capable of polarizing us. And enough of blackmail and intimidation.
Ramatu Abubakar wrote in from Abuja
