On Federal Character [I]

But considering the fact that in implementing the federal character principle, the two – merit and ethnic background or, indeed, any of the other grounds that cause under-representation – are not supposed to be mutually exclusive; that refutation, instead of correcting the charge, actually-but inadvertently-only goes to validate it. At any event, this intervention by […]

But considering the fact that in implementing the federal character principle, the two – merit and ethnic background or, indeed, any of the other grounds that cause under-representation – are not supposed to be mutually exclusive; that refutation, instead of correcting the charge, actually-but inadvertently-only goes to validate it.
At any event, this intervention by the vice president has once again reopened the federal character debate which many will have thought has now been laid to final rest. But even if it has, the sentiment behind it – for or against – appears to be very much alive. While the debate raged in the 70’s and 80’s, Northern students at universities and civil servants in Federal service were made to become the butt of jokes, and were called pejorative names, from quotaists to parasites.
The founding principle behind federal character is the search for fairness and social equality in national togetherness; and its objective is to compensate for past discrimination or enforced deprivation. It seeks to create the kind of diversity in elite and leadership positions that gives everyone, especially its historical victims, the fact and satisfaction of participation in national affairs and a sense of belonging to the nation.
In any case, Nigeria is not the only, or even the first, country in which this principle is being applied. Known as affirmative action in the US, it seeks to provide redress and equal opportunity in education and employment to members of excluded groups-minority groups and women.
In the UK, it’s called positive discrimination, and the Equality Act of 2010, now supplanted by the EU’s Treaty of Amsterdam of 1998, provides penalties for ignoring its provisions in access to education, employment and public services. Called the reservation system in India, affirmative action in China and quota system in Brazil, it ensures preferential policies in education and employment for underrepresented groups in those countries.
Since its introduction in the US in 1961, affirmative action has remained a much-criticized concept, especially by those who see themselves as its victims. They have called it as reverse discrimination that exploits the past and today acts as an obstacle to the attainment of merit. It breeds inefficiency and aggravates division – statism, sectionalism, ethical differences – in society and in contradiction to its raison d’être, ends up creating irreversible stereotypes that make national integration that much more difficult. While it may indeed breed or accentuate sectionalism, ethnicity or statism as has been stated by many of its critics, in order to rise above such primordial sentiments, it is may be necessary first to affirm them.
As one of America’s leading judges, trying to defend the policy of affirmative action on one of the many occasions on which it would be challenged in court, said, ‘[I]n order to get beyond racism we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some person[s] equally, we must first treat them differently.’
Clearly, the argument for it is no less compelling. For its proponents the moral argument for it – to compensate for and overcome past discrimination and victimization – and promote justice in society remains unassailable. The fact of its social utility that so obviously uplifts the status of the disadvantaged and gives presence to the under-represented is incontestable. Affirmative action and federal character create healthy diversity, and, in addition, they produce elites and leaders who serve as role models to people in need of them. This creates a feeling and sense of belonging to people who will otherwise have been alienated from the system.
But isn’t it curious that the section of the country that has been most vehement in its opposition to the application of the principle of institutions and employment in government ministries, department and agencies has been the one most strident in its call and advocacy for the adoption of federal character – and even zonal character – in sharing political offices? These same critics of the principle accept and see nothing wrong with the existence of a gentleman’s agreement or a political party consensus or even special legislation to reserve particular political offices for some specified sections of the country.
Obviously, the issues of zoning and rationalizing presidency are in effect nothing but the extension of the principle of federal character onto the electoral political scene. In this case, the South, as it were, lacks ‘merit’ in population and needs to be helped by a non-democratic contraption to rise and occupy an elective office. The only difference between this and federal character is the absence of a birth control mechanism to deter the North, or the existence of special breeding scholarships to help the South catch up. The victim, the South, is, so to speak, population-disadvantaged and needed a political affirmative action to be able to get a shot at the presidency.
In fact it was when southern delegates to the Abacha National Constitutional Conference insisted on zoning that northern delegates insisted on the creation of Federal Character Commission. Established in 1996, the commission was mandated to enforce the federal character principles in order to make for fair and equitable distribution of posts, socio-economic amenities and infrastructural facilities among the nation’s zones, states and local governments. It has responsibility for promoting, monitoring and enforcing compliance with the application of the provisions of the federal character principle.
The entire issue of federal character is in fact all mutually tied up. The ability and possession of competence and skills to occupy distributed posts, for instance, will itself have depended on there being federal character in admission to educational institutions. And because the communal distribution of genius and talent is equitable and evenly-divided, an objective and impartial application of the federal character principle will not result in any lowering of the standards in educational attainment or inefficiency in the workplace.
Perhaps the way we should read the vice president’s refutation of the charge was not that in implementing federal character merit must come before ethnic consideration, but that it [merit] should be ensured while deprivation was being redressed. The two – ensuring merit and redressing discriminatedness  – should not be treated as mutually exclusive: or that one should or could come before the other; because they could only come together, since they are not incompatible. And it will appear that the issue of federal character in education has already gone beyond being a matter of theory or policy initiative; it has become concrete fact on the ground. The Federal government has a federal university and a federal polytechnic in each state of the federation.
Despite popular fears, federal character is not supposed to be some form of official discrimination in favour of disadvantaged groups that adversely affects other people; it is supposed to be an arrangement that seeks to promote equal opportunity and access for all to the goods and offices of a society.
While it is true that affirmative action in the US was necessitated by the deprivation caused by slavery and racism, backwardness of education in the North and underrepresentation in the nation’s workforce were in part caused by colonial education policy and the reluctance of Northern leaders of the time to allow unhindered spread of Western education in the region.
Though this has come at a high price, if the benefit to it has been this relative preservation of religious and moral values then perhaps the deprivation has been worth it. However, the objective of federal character is not to uncover the causes of deprivation and backwardness; the objective is to end it.
But on the backwardness in education and educational achievement, leaders in the North have had all of post-independence period to make a difference-a period of 55years. Today people in the North ought really to have no mouth to open, tongue to speak, much less reason to complain. If they really wanted to see the education gap closed, where were they when their governors were giving short shrift to education?
While dilapidated primary school and secondary school roofs and other support structures were collapsing-except perhaps in Kano-governors in the region were busy funding the construction of costly, unviable airports that not in the states are going to use; and building universities that will have no justifying number of candidates to admit from the catchment areas, the examination failure rate has not expectedly, continue to rise.
Of the 11 million children out of school in Nigeria today, 10 million are from the north. Last year, the failure rate in national senior secondary school certificate examination was a staggering, shameful 70%, almost double the rate of the year before and only a slight improvement over the 75% failure rate recorded in 2010.
Shameful as this national average is, the situation in the North is a lot worse. Eight Northern states [Adamawa, Jigawa, Sokoto, Zamfara, Kebbi, Gombe, Bauchi and Yobe, in descending order] scored less than 10% pass rate. The next eight had less than 30% while not a single state had anything near 50%. When will the North catch up?
No doubt, it must be irritating, especially to those who believe they are its victims, that federal character has not succeeded in ending discrimination and underrepresentation after almost 40 years of its implementation. Perhaps there should have been a time limit to it, because such a derided policy cannot stay forever; but the day the application of the federal character principle ends, that is the day the rotation of the presidency and the zoning of any political office should also come to an end.