Nigeria, land of my birth: the dangers ahead

To understand the concept of “zero-sum” game we can take the so-called “national cake” as an example. Because we keep on seeing the “cake” as one fixed entity, its division is always a fierce competition. The more one group gets, the less remains for the other groups to share. Economists borrowed the concept from game […]

To understand the concept of “zero-sum” game we can take the so-called “national cake” as an example. Because we keep on seeing the “cake” as one fixed entity, its division is always a fierce competition. The more one group gets, the less remains for the other groups to share. Economists borrowed the concept from game theory to represent a situation in which a participant’s gain (or loss) of utility is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the utility of the other participant(s). If the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero. Thus cutting a cake, where taking a larger piece reduces the amount of cake available for others, is a zero-sum game.
In our case, this “cake” is our oil revenue, and a group has emerged that is ready to fight for all of it to go to the Niger Delta, not just most of it. Right now the area gets more than the whole of the North put together but for some it is not even enough. To change the sharing formula needs a majority to agree and this North is seen to have the political weight to block any change in the current arrangement, so its “majority” must be toned down. While there are other reasons for a “national conference” these two aspects dominate the agenda of Nwabueze, Asemota, Nyiam and their fellow travellers. Under the banner of groups like “The Patriots”, “PRONACO” and so on, they saw the belated decision by President Goodluck Jonathan as an opening.
It is worth remembering that retired Col. Tony Nyiam, who was one of the masterminds of the Orka Coup that announced they had “excise” most of the North from Nigeria, was appointed a member of the Presidential Committee. Professor Ben Nwabueze (SAN), a well know advocate of the above agenda and who had on many occasions made his anti-Nigeria agenda very clear was the one initially billed to Chair the group. He opted out on “health” ground only to come up with a draft that he wanted to ram-rod through the Committee to be accepted as the new constitution, and which he would want to be adopted directly without going through the National Assembly, whose legitimacy he had in any case always disputed. Nwabueze’s sidekick, Solomon Asemota (SAN), ended up as a replacement with a pre-prepared script to act out, as we shall see.
The group’s agenda, which it tried to force on the Committee, was as simple as it was naïve. Propose a conference of “ethnic nationalities” where the major groups (especially Hausa, Fulani, Kanuri, Nupe, Tiv, Igala and others from the North, the Yoruba from the West, but even the Igbo if they choose to follow them) would be out voted. Any “agreement” subsequently arrived at would then be put directly to the Nigerian people in a referendum without recourse to the legislators, because the conference would have, in their mind, somehow seized “sovereignty” and any group that does not accept the fait accompli can go its own way.
Col. Nyiam was so convinced that he had some sort of official “understanding” that he rudely tried to shout down Gov. Adams Oshiomhole and other opposing views even within the Committee which subsequently demanded that he be removed. The “ethnic” representation formula proved unworkable not only because nobody knows how many ethnic groups there are, but also because, of those so-far identified over 70 percent is in the North. The referendum, it was pointed out by legal experts, would not be legal under the current Constitution. Ignoring the National Assembly would also be illegal and clearly unconstitutional and the Government seems to realize these two facts. Undaunted, Nwabueze offered to write the draft arrangements in his sitting room to be submitted to a “Yes” or “No” vote in a referendum. When that leaked, Asemota, who chaired the Legal Sub-committee, and had presented its report, turned around to say that he has a “minority report” which in actually fact was just a PRONACO draft which had been included as a memorandum, along with all the others, in the Committee’s Appendix.
Right now it appears there are problems with the timing and funding. The Government had set aside N7.0 billion for the Conference. Prof. Jega wants N22.0 billion for elections of delegates. No estimates yet for the conduct of a national referendum or other administrative and legal costs of incorporating the proposals into our laws, or drafting a brand new constitution. Time is also not on our side.
The most serious obstacle however is that the President does not have the constitutional powers to by-pass the National Assembly; they were both sworn in under the same 1999 Constitution, representing our “sovereignty” and nationhood. By-passing the National Assembly would be outright treason.
It is not clear what the PRONACO/Patriots and the like of Asari Dokubo and others would chose to do next. The dangers are basically two; if we continue to see a National conference as an anti-North project which the North fears then we are missing the point. Nobody is afraid of any conference, what most Nigerians fear is the possibility of chaotic break-up. And make no mistake; all breakups in history have been chaotic.
To go back to our game theory analogy, as long as we continue to see the issue as a zero-sum game of sharing a fixed “national cake” we miss the bakery, the wheat farmers, the sugar and margarine, salt and yeast producers. If we shift our focus, if we see our task as that of producing more cakes and more food (as well as textiles, building materials, chemicals, roads, schools, hospitals and so on) then we would realize that this unhealthy competition focusing on sharing what some oil companies dig up from the ground would lead us nowhere.
Development should have a positive-sum outcome where the interacting parties’ aggregate gains are more than zero. Our leaders are focused on sharing what we have. We are busy fighting on shifting what remains on the table from one section of the country to another. It is time to create more wealth, share it more justly and using the surplus to develop all our communities.   
Attempting to force some preconceived solution down our throat would not work. The elite agenda (all our elites) is to divert our attention and have us fighting over crumbs from their table. We need to go beyond this, and the solution cannot be forced on us by any one section of the country. Yes, we have many problems but we should work out our solutions together amicably and not under threats.