Restructuring and the Yoruba agenda

The submission of the former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, GCON on the restructuring of the Nigerian political system is very instructive.

Likewise are the submissions also of Pastor Tunde Bakare, General Alani Ipoola Akinrinade (Rtd.), Mohammed Haruna, Senator Musa Adede, Bishop Mike Okonkwo, Chief Wole Olanipekun, Chief Chukwuemeka Ezeife, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Senator Femi Okunronmu and others.

I have read the four books by Colonel Tony Nyiam (Rtd.) especially his 169-page book on “TRUE FEDERAL DEMOCRACY OR AWAITING IMPLOSION?” I agree with his suggestion on the need for the creation for a National Institute for the strategic management of Nigeria’s Security. And those who know Nigeria well enough don’t joke with the views of Colonel Nyiam.

During the tenure of General Sani Abacha, leaders and Obas in Lagos, Oyo, Osun, Ondo and Ogun met on April 6, 1994 in Abeokuta. At the end of the meeting a draft memorandum was prepared by a committee. As a follow up of the Abeokuta meeting, a memorandum was prepared and approved at a meeting held on May 11 1994 in Akure. The memorandum was adopted by acclamation at the Akure meeting. That memorandum represented the soul and authoritative views of all the Obas, Chiefs, Leaders of Thought and the entire People of Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo states of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

To me the views represents till today the authentic views of the Yoruba people on the issue of restructuring.

They declared” We are convinced that the cause of Nigeria’s federalism will be well and truly advanced if we return to the pre-1996 evolutionary path: a balanced federal structure which recognizes fully the legitimate claims of all ethnic groups for self-determination and where no single entity among the federating units will be strong or powerful enough to hold the others to ransom, but where each of the federating units is large enough, both in terms of size and population as well as of resources, to be viable, self-reliant and dynamic. Other relevant factors include the homogeneity of each federating unit, geographic contiguity among the units of a region and demonstrable willingness to be together. In pursuance of the principle of self-determination and in the interest of the sustainability, any state or community shall have the opportunity to decide, through the democratic process, the region of its choice in the light of these criteria. In the light of the foregoing criteria, we propose the restructuring of Nigeria into six federating units to be known as regions. The six regions shall be Western, Eastern, Southern, North-Western, North-Eastern and Middle Belt Regions. The Western Region will group together the following States: Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo and all other Yoruba-speaking communities wherever they may be in the federation. The states that will constitute the other regions will be decided by their people subject to the observation of the principle of self-determination”. With the restructuring into six viable and potentially dynamic and prosperous regions, individually and collectively serving as a countervailing force to the centralizing tendencies of the centre, Nigeria will be constituted a federation of six regions. Each would have the power to prepare its own constitution and determine its political structure, its legislative organs and the structure of its executive, provided that nothing in the constitution of the regions conflicts with the fundamental tenets of federalism and with principles of the federal constitution.

The function of the federal government must be clearly spelt out. Residual powers must lie with the regions. The federal government shall have no power to interfere in or take over any function of the regional government. Similarly, it shall have no power to interfere with the operations of any regional government. Each region shall determine the number functions and power of its constituent institutions.

The National Assembly shall be bi-cameral: House of the People and the Upper House. Members shall be elected or designated for a period of four years with the possibility of re-election. Membership of the House of the People shall be by universal suffrage with constituencies delineated on the basis of population, contiguity, homogeneity and territorial expanse. Each region shall send an equal number of representatives to the Upper House, one-quarter of whom must be traditional ruler from within that region. Each region will be free to determine the basis and method of election/selection of its representative to that House.

The Head of Government shall be the Prime Minister who shall be appointed by the President. The person to be so appointed, shall be the leader of the party or of a coalition of parties which has the support of the majority of the members of the House of the People. Whenever he loses such support, he shall resign or be dismissed. The Prime Minister shall be free to form his government which must receive the immediate endorsement of the House of the people through a vote of confidence. The Prime Minister shall resign or be dismissed whenever the majority of the House of the People withdraws its support.

There shall be provision for power-sharing in the constitution. Power configuration shall be accorded a zoning status on rotational basis. For this purpose, five key portfolios (such as Internal Affairs and Petroleum) in addition to the office of the Prime Minister, shall be identified in the constitution and be assigned to five Deputy Prime Ministers drawn from the five regions, other than region from which the Prime Minster hails. For avoidance of doubt, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Ministers and all members of government shall be elected members of the House of the People.”

“The principle of derivation in which each region will retain an overwhelming share, if not all, of the revenue accruing from the tax imposed on the natural resources within its territory, shall apply. Revenue from the exploitation and custom duties shall be put in distributable pool account to be shared between the federal and the regional governments in accordance with an agreed formula, but with special consideration being given to the region(s) where the facilities for their collection are located. Every effort must be made to achieve self-reliance in mobilizing resources by all the regions and the federation. In particular, no region must take proportionally more than what it contributes to the federation financially. There shall be no direct federal allocation to state local governments. With regard to the power of personal and direct taxation, such as personal income tax, capital-gains tax, sales tax and property tax, governments shall have the right to levy them that provided that, in order to ensure efficiency, a uniform tax base should be applied and tax rate split between the federal and regional governments. The rate of tax can differ from region to region so that regional revenue can be enhanced to respond to the special needs of a particular region and in accordance with the ability and willingness if the citizens to pay higher taxes”.

These were the views expressed 22 years ago. These views are still being re-echoed today because they are important and vital to our co-existence as a nation. The question is no longer whether restructuring is desired or not; we have passed that stage. The issue is when and how it will be implemented without amending the present presidential constitution that is in use. Will the present legislators and the executives allow for such an amendment knowing fully well that the present system benefits them?

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Bye Bye, Bikinis! Miss Teen USA Eliminates Swimsuit Competiton

The pageant world is ditching the swimsuits. (Photo: Getty Images)

When you think of beauty pageants, you probably think of gowns, crowns, makeup, and sashes — and you also probably think of the swimsuit competition. For the first time, a major pageant is ditching bikinis in favor of athletic wear.

The swimsuit competition has supposedly been a chance for contestants to show off their grace and athleticism, but the pageant runners are hoping to create a healthier way of expressing that.

In an announcement, Miss Universe president Paula Shugart said the transition to athletic wear is meant to “celebrate women’s strength, confidence, and beauty” in a way that’s relevant to the 15- to 19-year-old participants — and the girls who watch them compete.

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“This decision reflects an important cultural shift we’re all celebrating that empowers women who lead active, purposeful lives and encourage those in their communities to do the same,” she said, according to USA Today. “Our hope is that this decision will help all of Miss Teen USA’s fans recognize these young women for the strong, inspiring individuals they are.”

Current Miss Teen USA Katherine Haik was extremely supportive of the new move. “I have been an athlete my entire life,” she explained. “As a member of a softball team and a competitive dance team, I spend a lot of time in athletic wear … This new direction for Miss Teen USA is a great way to celebrate the active lives that so many young women lead and set a strong example for our peers.”

According to psychologist Karla Ivankovich, it’s an important change to the standard pageant setup, especially for teen girls. “This removes the objectification of women and supports the idea that ‘athletic’ is more important than bikinis and just looking fit,” she tells Yahoo Beauty. “I think ditching the swimsuits is a sign of the times — that we are emphasizing that young women are more than a body type. I’m very excited for that.”

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Ivankovich says that it’s important to model the goal of staying active, of which sportswear is a huge part today. “Athleticism is linked to a conscious concern for one’s health and well-being through exercise,” she explains. “This promotes [a] healthy lifestyle choice, which is sorely needed in a community that has historically struggled with appearance issues and partaking in the ‘by any means necessary’ mindset when it comes to achieving a standard of beauty.”

Miss Teen USA’s shift from swimwear to athletic wear reinforces to young women that a healthy body is a beautiful body — a sentiment we can definitely get behind.

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African culture volunteer honoured by Prime Minister

A Liverpool man has been honoured by the Prime Minister for his work raising awareness of African culture.

Oladimeji Adisa, who runs the Osun Foundation, has been given a Point of Light award for teaching people about African heritage.

Mr Adisa has been running the arts initiative, which hosts a variety of activities such as cookery classes and mask making, for two decades.

David Cameron said Mr Adisa was "doing brilliant work".

The foundation has been involved with several high profile cultural performances, including the Queen's Jubilee and Commonwealth Games.

Mr Adisa has also worked with 500 schools around the UK with the aim of helping people understand Britain's multicultural society.

He said it was "something special" to be chosen for the award "when there are so many people out there doing great things".

Point of Light awards recognise outstanding individual volunteers who are inspiring others.

They were developed in partnership with the Point of Light programme in the USA established by President George H. W. Bush.

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The Meaning Of African Culture

Ignorance has always been a variable in interpreting contexts and concepts. We rely on flawed and often hypocritical analyses in defining “African culture” and dismissing any label we consider as “foreign” or “alien to us”. Backhanded defences of Africa by those who like to think of themselves as “conservatives” romanticise obvious inelegances as “the beauty of Africa”. To these conservatives, Africa is literally a civilisation of unrefined people dressed in caftan, adire or kampala and living in, perhaps, mud-built huts of various exotic shapes.

In their conservativist defences, they pander to obvious contradictions. First, what these African culturalists label fixedly as “African” are a developing or evolving facet of a human civilisation. It’s actually an unprogressive mind that would in this day and age consider riding on donkeys to farm African and not what it really is – backwardness! But among them too, there is a conflict: in their clamour for what qualifies for the African, certain traditions of the foreigners who introduced Abrahamic religions are assimilated. Thus, they betray their touted aversions to influences. The main ignorance here is the inability to tell the Western apart from the Modern. Though the West leads modern civilisation, it’s inaccurate to lay all claim to ownership of this world of machines to it. What we call western civilisation is an evolution of the collective efforts of renowned scientists, explorers, inventors and scholars from different races and continents. The Whiteman, for instance, didn’t know what paper was until the Chinese invented it.

So I’m a child of the modern civilisation, a civilisation that replaced the ink-pot with fountain pen. A civilisation whose people are an unprogressive collective that cannot manufacture an ordinary car has automatically lost my membership. Culture is the way we live, which is why anything that eases the way I live must be embraced. Which is why I abandon hoes for tractors to feed a larger number of people. Which is why camels and donkeys are abandoned for cars and aeroplanes to make living easy. I wear clothes in the style that the billions of people on earth, having criticised and eventually found practical, endorsed. This is what culture is all about, a continuous intercourse of ideas, concepts and creativities!.

My culture is anything that redeems my identity, not the primitive emblems that reduce and mock my intellectual and artistic abilities. I’m open to influences that can redeem my humanity. I accept the education introduced by the Whiteman just as I accept the religion introduced to Africa by the Arabs. I accept to learn English Language to ease my academic pursuits in this anglophone entity just as I study Arabic Language to understand my Islamic faith. Doing so does not mean that I have lost pride in my African being, it doesn’t mean I have lost my pride in being a black man. It just means that they are valuable for assimilating the evolving culture. It doesn’t make Englishmen and Arabs more important than the black race. It doesn’t make English and Arabic more important than my mother-tongue. Our culture is now defined by all the things we domesticated from the zoos of alien creations!.

It is however unfortunate to see heavily influenced Africans screaming “this is not African!” in a market-square of foreign concepts. You lack the moral rights to decide what is or is not African unless you renounce your “foreign” religion-channelled worldviews.

The other day a non-Muslim friend of mine saw a Muslim lady dressed in hijab, and asked to know why she would be so dressed in that hot afternoon. Ironically he was a clear definition of what puzzled him, being also dressed in three-piece suit which was way thicker! “Why are you dressed in suit in this heat?” I asked. “I’m just returning from the office!” He said.

I replied, “You wear yours in fear of your boss, she wears hers in fear of her God. And she has her brains to choose a culture or life that comforts her.” The worse contradictions were the reactions of some Igbo Christians to the recent conversion of an Igbo monarch to Islam, which to them was against the culture of the Igbo – when did Christianity become the culture of the Igbo? Amadioha must not hear this!.

Civilisation is not built by our nostalgias and histories alone, but in our criticisms of identified drawbacks and letting go of them. Modern African culture must not be a romanticisation of the simply old and dated. Certain things are more useful in museums and history books. The irony is, even our fabrics which we wear like testimonials of accomplishments to international events or foreign trips were either produced in the countries – or with machines manufactured in the countries – we seek to intimidate with what we mistake for our inventions. The last time I checked, even what we refer to as African wax was actually started in Indonesia by English and Dutch merchants. May God save us from us!.

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