Of Land, Federal Projects and Democracy Dividends
“The idea of chasing away contractors’ on-site or making undue demands from them by local communities or the deliberate actions of state governments to frustrate the allocation of lands for federal projects is an antithesis of the people’s welfare…”
-The Presidency
Irked by the problems hampering the smooth take-off or uninterrupted implementation of Federal projects in some states, the recent threat, by the Federal Government, to withdraw such projects from those areas, could not have come as a complete surprise. According to a statement credited to the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, henceforth, any state that is unable to resolve such problems will have the project taken away and awarded to other states.
For those familiar with the problem, the Presidency’s position deserves sympathy. The Federal Government is right in insisting that state governments should take the lead in resolving the problems associated largely with payment of compensation; the demand for employment of indigenes of beneficiary areas and the provision of land, for Federal Government projects. As the Government argued, obstruction caused by multiplicity of demands from rent seeking entities, not only delays the execution and delivery of projects, it also leads to avoidable escalation in the contract costs. This is akin to the omonile factor (Yoruba expression for those who demand rents from land developers by virtue of being sons-of-the-soil). It is a cancer that has eaten deeply into project execution in Nigeria; nobody will agree that the practice must stop if government is to deliver, as rightly implied in the release, the ‘dividends of democracy’.
What is, perhaps, contentious is the issue of compensation; in cases where people have been displaced from either their residences or means of livelihood. Experience has shown that, in most cases, the bone of contention is that either compensation has been paid to the wrong persons or that the legitimate beneficiaries have been short-changed. Sadly, the short-changing is a manifestation of the absence of accountability and transparency, on the part of political actors, at all levels of government. In other words, head or tail, it is still within the province of the Federal Government to liaise with the states and local governments towards holding people accountable for misappropriation or misuse of funds, earmarked for compensation. On the other hand, where it is established, as does happen, that individuals and communities wilfully pose a cog, in the wheel of progress, state governments, who are vested with all urban lands should invoke their powers and weigh in, on the side of the public. That will, of course, presuppose that such a state government and the people subscribe to the project in question.
The second contentious issue is the insinuation that some states obstruct or deny Federal projects; based essentially on denial of land, only to later complain of marginalisation. In our considered opinion, this angle deserves some deeper and more honest introspection; based on historical knowledge and the constitutional realities of inter-governmental relations, in Nigeria. For a start, it should be acknowledged that this unfortunate position is not a recent development. We have walked this path before. From our recent history, we can recall the conflict over the low cost housing programme of the Shehu Shagari Administration, in the early eighties.
The crux of the matter was the Shagari Administration’s decision to build Federal Low Cost Housing Schemes in various states of the Federation. Most of the states controlled by opposition parties rejected the idea outright. In Oyo State, in particular, the conflict almost turned violent.
Any rational observer will consider the trend, whereby a level of government would resist development initiatives and projects of other levels of government as at once, anachronistic and unbelievable. Yet, at the end of the day, the state gets away with its position. You begin to wonder why there couldn’t have been a meeting of minds, given that the project, as bemoaned by the Federal Government, has been adjudged to be beneficial to the people. Incidentally, that raises a fundamental constitutional question that is also crucial to unknotting the complex political jigsaw gnawing ominously at every developmental effort: who determines what is good for the people, under what circumstance and at what level?
The recent national debate over the Rural Grazing Area (RUGA) Plan, of the Federal Government, is a case in point and it is possible that the Federal Government statement, on obstruction of its projects, was partly prompted by the controversy. The plan was for the Federal Government to acquire large expanses of land in each state of the Federation for the establishment of cattle colonies. Reminiscent of Shagari’s low cost houses, many states, mainly from the south, rejected the plan, with their people claiming that the RUGA program was a well-laid out exercise in political gerrymandering; with the ultimate aim of grafting new ethnic majorities unto their territories. Thus, the project was suspended; some people claim that it was simply rechristened National Livestock Programme.
Be that as it may, it is as if fate had bonded the two Presidents together; like the Shagari Plan, the Buhari RUGA initiative came amidst the most daunting political divisions and acrimony the country has witnessed in recent years; with ethnic and religious distrust so prominent that agreement on any government policy or plan stood the risk of being dead on arrival.
However, chances are that if there had been prior wide consultations and public enlightenment, the reactions to the two projects would not have been as hostile as they turned out to be. Another possibility is that some bipartisan discussion would have thrown open a wider range of choices, for government to pursue, all in a genuine desire to accelerate economic development across the nation. For instance, nothing suggests that every part of the country must pursue the same path to economic development. Thus, nothing stopped the Federal Government from designing economic programmes that reflected the diversity, complementarity and comparative advantages of states within certain zones. Such an approach would have followed the glorious path of the First Republic: Cotton, groundnuts and hides and skins (cattle-based) in the north, Cocoa in the West and Oil palm production in the East; and variants of these to accommodate the emerging geo-political configuration of the country. Adopting such a bottom up approach would engender stakeholder buy-in, boost loyalty and create a greater impetus for the success, of government programs.
In this regard, the Federal Government should always recognise that people are usually defined by their occupation. By extension, their occupation is, in great measure, an index of their way of life; it defines their cosmos. To seek to supplant their way of life, through the imposition of occupational traditions completely alien to them, is akin to defying the laws of gravity. It seldom succeeds. Therefore, it will be uncharitable to chastise, as the Government statement sought to do, some people, zones or states that complain, most often with justification, that they are being marginalised. Let us face it; it is doubtful that anybody would have complained about voting billions of naira for cattle colonies, in any state, in the north, if the Federal Government had allocated commensurate funds to rail or ports development in the south east and south-south zones and development of other critical infrastructure in the Western part of the country. Such resource allocation would have been consistent with the universally accepted ‘felt need’ development paradigm. To stretch the argument, why run a unitary system in a federation? Besides, why should the Federal Government dissipate energy and resources in the establishment of agricultural projects; instead of focusing on macro-economic policies that drive enterprise?
It is the inability to resolve the challenge of intergovernmental relations that has exacerbated the deep distrust plaguing the entire polity. To move forward, genuine consensus-building should precede certain policies and programs of the Federal Government. However, no lasting and reliable genuine consensus can emerge without political inclusion and participation all stakeholder entities.
That said; some will argue that, the threat to ‘punish’ states that do not resolve challenges, to project implementation wreaks of subtle blackmail; a subterfuge to justify skewed allocation of resources, against ‘hostile’ states. If that is correct, such a move will fuel deeper resentment and worsen the problems of political stability and national unity. As pointed out earlier, the solution lies with government emphasising the felt need approach to development; taking time to intervene only in those areas that, within the ambits of its overall macro-economic framework, qualify for specific and urgent remediation, in the states of the federation.
Do you agree with the position of the Federal Government?
Please let us have your view!
