Last Friday a very important event took place, which many people may not have noticed because of their feverish preparation for the election of state governors and state Houses of Assembly members, which was to take place the next day. President Muhammadu Buhari signed into law some bills that indicate that power is being gradually devolved from the center to the states. The National Assembly and the President deserve to be given a pat on the back because, since 1999, efforts had been made to alter some parts of the Constitution to give the country the muscle of true federalism. All such efforts had failed due to the rigorous process of amending the Constitution. That process involves both houses of the National Assembly, the 36 state houses of assembly, two-thirds of which must give their nod to any constitutional amendment, and of course the President who must give his accent when all the processes are tidied up by these various bodies. Of course, the past sessions of the National Assembly also distracted themselves with their internal politics and the struggle for suzerainty with the executive, which led to a series of carpet crossings during the Eighth National Assembly. All of these issues compel us to say “thank you” to the President and presiding officers and members of the Ninth National Assembly for being able to pull through some amendments of some portions of the Constitution before the end of their tenure. This is no mean achievement because of the multiple interests involved in deciding how power should be shared in a federation of states with unequal demographics and unequal contributions to the advancement of the polity.
In a statement issued last Friday, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Senator Babajide Omoworare, informed us of the pleasant development from the Presidency. He told us that the President had signed a number of bills on constitution amendment. With the bills signed into law, matters such as Railways and Electricity, which were in the Exclusive List, are now on the Concurrent List. That means that state governments are free to provide train services within their states while the Federal Government will concentrate on providing inter-state train services. The same thing applies to electricity power generation, transmission and distribution in areas covered by the national grid. This will, hopefully, significantly improve the amount of electricity available to Nigerians. For several decades the Federal Government has spent billions of dollars trying to generate, transmit and distribute power to Nigerians but we still remain largely in darkness. The generator market has experienced a big boom over the years; big companies buy the mega generators while small persons buy the “I better pass my neighbor”, which produces a lot of fumes that have killed many people who live in “face me I face you” type of apartments.
With the President’s assent, state houses of assembly and the judiciary have now acquired financial independence. This will obviously add some blocks to the building of an independent judiciary and House of Assembly. The current view is that most, if not all, the Houses of Assembly are in the “breast pockets” of their governors because if they want money for their services they have to crawl, cap in hand, to meet the governors for money. This tends to compromise them. The same thing applies to the judiciary in their states. These two institutions are now in a position to assert their independence and autonomy.
