Essentially there are three forms of governments: unitary, federal and confederal. In a unitary form of government, one central or national government governs the entire polity. This form of government exists in Britain, France and Italy. Her Majesty’s Government at London governs the Realm. The decisions made at Westminster affect all of Britain. There were no other governments in the realm that the national government competed with. In so far that there were city governments, they derived their power to govern from the national government and, indeed, Whitehall could remove them. (Even with Tony Blair’s recent devolution of government, giving Scotland, Wells and Northern Ireland some local government powers, yet Britain remains a unitary form of government for the center can remove the local parliaments.)

France is a unitary government for the government at Paris governs all of France. France is divided into 95 or so departments/prefectures, equivalent to American counties, and the central government appoints prefects for each of these to govern it. Though there are elected city councils everywhere the national government can overrule them and even remove them from office. Simply stated France is ruled by one central government hence is a unitary government. The same goes for Italy.

In a confederation, on the other hand, the central government is very weak, whereas the governments of the constituting parts are very strong. Such situations are rare in the world, for such countries generally are weak countries and very few countries want to be that weak. An example of such a country is Switzerland.

This little central European country has a unique situation. It is composed of citizens from several countries, including France, Italy and Germany. The part that speaks French wants to retain their French identity, so do the parts that speak German and Italian. Thus, the various groups retain their ethnic identities and form of governing themselves, while forming a central government that, more or less, does not really tell them what to do. The central government is so weak that the country is one only in name.

This type of government works out in Switzerland for several reasons, including that the European governments around it agree for it to be so. The Concert of Europe (See the writings of Prince Metternich of Austria) agreed to retain Switzerland as it is, a weak non-military power, so that it acts as a place where all could take refuge. All agreed not to attack Switzerland, to leave it as a heaven where refugees from European countries wars could take refuge. Its financial institutions are deliberately structured so that other countries can hide their wealth in it. Simply stated, Switzerland exists because its powerful neighbors agreed to keep it weak, so that they have buffer zones between them and a place they could meet, a neutral territory, to hash out their problems. They do not want it to become another powerful country challenging them.

The United States of America began out as a confederation. If you recall, there were original thirteen colonies in British North America. For any number of reasons, these colonies united to fight Britain. They were essentially thirteen different countries that banded together to fight a common enemy, their colonial master, Britain and its King George the third. It is commonly believed that the war is initiated by the colonies anger at being taxed by Westminster without representation. However, the causal factors were more than that.

We shall not go into the specifics of American history here. Suffice it to say that originally the thirteen states wrote what was called Articles of Confederation to guide them. That Article did not really call for a national government. Instead, each state governed itself and periodically sent delegates to a Congress to go talk with other states on how to manage their common affairs. There was no federal government, no president, no common judiciary etc.

Eventually, many issues arose between the states, including trading issues, the same very issues that led to war with England. Remember that England had prevented the colonies from importing goods from wherever they wanted and imposed taxation on the goods they imported from different countries other than England. The famous Boston tea party occurred because England was taxing tea imported from elsewhere to prevent the colonies from importing tea other than from England. England itself did not produce tea but imported it from India and other places. That means that English merchants imported tea from India and resold it in the colonies at a higher price. Why not allow the colonies to import tea from the same source hence sell it at a lower price? But the traders in England banded together to get the House of Commons to pass a law preventing American traders from doing what they themselves did, so as to retain their higher profits. Their cousins in the colonies resented their behavior and threw their tea into the Boston harbor.

The thirteen states were having major trade and other disputes and sent their delegates to meet in Philadelphia in 1787, to hash out how to deal with those issues. The delegates were not sent to go draw up a new constitution for America, but simply to go resolve some identified issues and prevent others from occurring. Instead of limiting themselves to solving those issues, the delegates, called Congress, locked themselves up in a chamber, and did not let any one know what they were doing and in secrecy wrote a spanking new constitution for the colonies. They resolved to go sell it to the people.

After writing it, they went home, each charged with the obligation of marketing it to his state. It was agreed that if two thirds of the states accepted it and their state legislatures passed laws ratifying it, that it passes. In the meantime, those who supported federation, folks like Madison, Hamilton and Jay (the first chief justice) went to work writing newspaper articles, trying to convince the people that the new document is good for them. Their writings in various newspapers were eventually collated and published as the Federalist Papers. This book provided a rationale for why America chose federation over other forms of government.

Eventually, the constitution was ratified by the required number of states and became law. A new Congress met at New York and elected George Washington, the military leader during the revolutionary war, as its president. Old George formed his government at New York and later moved to Philadelphia.

Congress voted to build a brand new capital in the middle of the country and Virginia and Maryland volunteered lands, today’s Washington, District of Columbia. When President Washington began out, he had his wife work as his secretary and that was the extent of the Federal bureaucracy. Today, over two million folks, the military excluded, work for Uncle Sam.

In the Federalist Papers, the writers offered reasons why they chose the federal structure of government. As already noted, the confederal structure tends to be very weak, since it lacked a national governmental structure to look after the interests of all the constituting parts. If enemies decided to attack a confederal nation, they could easily defeat it. Any one can defeat weak Switzerland, even the Nigerian army could, but as already pointed out, Europeans agreed not to attack it, to keep it neutral so that it can act as a seat for their conferences to settle their issues.

America was weak in a confederal structure. Furthermore, America was too large a geographical area to have a unitary government. So something in-between had to be designed and that was a federation, a situation where the national government is given substantial powers to be powerful but not so powerful as to intimidate the states. Thus the United States 1787 constitution balanced the powers of the center and the periphery. The center was given powers to defend the country, engage in foreign affairs and coordinate the commerce of the states (hence provision was made for secretary of war, secretary of foreign affairs, called secretary of state, and secretary of treasury…the other departments were created as the situation warranted, in the future).

Even then the initial United States government eschewed a strong central government and tried to remain weak. There was, for example, no standing army. It was believed that if the nation was attacked that a people’s militia could be quickly put together to fight the attacker.

There were two parties during the Washington administration, the federalists who wanted a strong national government and the anti federalists who wanted a weak center and strong states. Hamilton was a federalist and Jefferson was an anti federalist. The cleavage between advocates of a strong center and weak states and vice versa continues to this very day. Those asking for strong states, state rights, tend to want to be left alone so that they can have slaves and abuse black folks, their favorite abuse objects.

The war of 1812 taught America how weak its national government was. British forces simply marched into Washington DC and burned it down, including the White House, then called the President’s Mansion. (When the house was repaired and painted white, to cover the darkness from the burns, it was affectionately called by its new color, white house. In fact, that new name symbolizes that the house belongs to white Americans only and that whites rule America. That horrible name therefore ought to be changed to “Black House” to symbolize black rule of America. Kidding aside, the name is an insult to non white Americans, so one prefers that the house return to its original name, the President’s House).

After the war of 1812, it dawned on the state rightists that they had to provide for a strong center and a strong army to prevent other countries from defeating America so easily. Thus, gradually the center began to grow in power. Even then, it was only in the 20th century that the central government became powerful. Washington DC remained a village until the 1930s. Even today, the town is not a world class city, as national capitals are supposed to be. The city remains a sleepy small southern town with nothing to do in it.

It was only in 1913 that Congress passed a law requiring Americans to pay income taxes hence producing the money to run a central government. In the 1930s, FDR’s New Deal policies enlarged the scope of the central government and made it the colossus it is today.

Washington DC is a company town with mainly one industry in it, the Federal Government. Other than that major employer it is really not a world class city. New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, Los Angles etc are the main cities of America, not the nation’s ponky-donky capital.

The Federation of the United States eventually became a model for other countries to imitate, such as Canada, Australia etc. For our present purposes, federation is now a reality in forms of government.

When the colonial rulers of Nigeria decided in 1914 to unify the original two separated protectorates, Southern and Northern, into one country, they looked at the North American model. They chose federation for emergent Nigeria. Initially, they had two regions, north and south, but eventually divided the south into east and west. Thus, for the longest time (in Nigeria, a decade is a long time, whereas in countries with long histories a decade is a second in their history) Nigeria had three regions in its federation.

The post independence government, the most incompetent and idiotic government known to man…they make you wonder if the black man can really govern himself, for if he could he would have restructured Nigeria and made each tribe a state and formed a federation of ethnic based states, the only solution that would work for Nigeria, well, the first republic managed to carve out the Mid-West region from Western Nigeria. One senses mischief in that behavior, perhaps, it was done to punish the Yoruba’s by reducing the size of Western region?

Nigeria had four regions when the civil war started. Gowon divided the country into twelve regions in 1967. Subsequently, the Mutala/Obasanjo government divided the country into 19 states.

Thereafter, the fun started. Every town wanted to become a state even if it produces nothing to fund it. The idea was to form a state to give some local ego the opportunity to masquerade around as a governor and go to Abuja and participate in stealing the Delta’s oil revenue. So without consideration of economic viability, thirty six states were created and some are still asking for more states.

Nigerian states are not states in the American sense, but counties, not even counties, for they cannot even fund themselves, as American counties are able to do. These idiotic states look to the center to steal Ijaw money and give it to them, so that they can pretend to govern themselves.

Nigeria today has thirty six states. These are not states. What they are no one knows for sure, a cabal for mismanaging Nigeria, may be. On paper, the states are supposed to function like American states.

The 1999 constitution carefully delineates the powers of the center and the states. As in America, the center has the power over war, defense, foreign affairs, international trade etc. States are given residual powers, that is, any power not specifically given to the center belongs to the states.

What state powers are, no one quite knows. This is so because we do not have true federalism in Nigeria. We actually have a pseudo unitary form of government in Nigeria. The states are glorified French prefectures, who fancy themselves to have elected their governors when, like the French prefect, they are practically appointed by the central government’s ruling party, the peoples democratic party, PDP.

Nigeria is practically a one party state, with the leaders of that party at the center deciding what happens every where in Nigeria.

No matter. Let us proceed with this sham federalism. The states are divided into local government areas, sort of like American counties. For Christ’s sake, why not call them counties, or better still, districts, as they call them in Canada? We all know that their function is local government and we do not need to call them by their function, a function they do not even perform.

The local government areas are composed of towns and villages. There you have the structure of Nigeria.

The governments at the state levels replicate the governmental structures at the national level. There is a state legislature that supposedly makes laws, a state governor that supposedly executes the laws and a state judiciary that supposedly adjudicates the laws.

At the local government area level, there is a council that supposedly makes the laws, there is a chair person that supposedly executes the laws and there is a court that supposedly adjudicates the laws.

At the town and city level, there is a town council and mayor that perform legislative and executive functions.

Simply stated, Nigeria copied the American political system and understanding of America helps one understand Nigeria, on paper, any way.

So let us see how state and local government works in America. In these lectures, I deliberately inject Britain and America into them, to give them a comparative flavor, and, more importantly, to enable Nigerians understand how other people do what they are trying to do. Nigerians are trying to have state and local governments. They do not know how to make these governments work. So talking about how those who know how to do it well might help them do it well.

America runs responsive state and local governments and one hopes that Nigerians copy from them. Therefore, I will spend some time talking about the American state, county and city structure of government.

In the United States, we have fifty states. Each state has a state legislature that passes laws. Most legislatures are bicameral except for a few like Nebraska that has unicameral legislature, that is, has only one house of legislature.

Generally, there are about fifty members of the lower house and about forty members of the upper house. That is, 50 members of the House of Representatives and 40 members of the Senate.

The procedure for making laws in state legislatures is the same as at Congress. Bills are introduced by any member, and the speaker/president of the House/Senate sends them to the appropriate committee. The committee discussed them and holds public hearings. The bills are voted on and if passed by simple majority are returned to the whole house for another discussion and voting on. Bills go through the two houses concurrently. If they pass, a conference committee is called to reconcile differences between the two houses and the final product is voted on again by both houses. If they pass, the Bill is sent to the governor to sign it or veto it. If he signs it, it becomes law, if he vetoes it, it dies, unless over ridden by two thirds vote…which is near impossible to obtain since the two parties, republicans and democrats, tend to be more or less equal in the legislature, and since each member tends to vote party line, it is difficult to obtain two third vote on any issue.

Parliamentary procedure at state legislatures is the same as at the national legislature. We covered those in our lecture on the legislative process and do not need to rehash them here.

State legislators are elected to serve two years and can be re-elected. Some states are now instituting term limits, to throw out the bums, the professional politicians who, apparently, cannot earn a living from doing something else but have the tax papers support their idle life styles. (One ought to be a professional in doing some thing and then go into politics part time; politicians should not be paid by the public, they should merely serve the public, and earn their daily bread from their own professions; okay, may be we should pay them some sort of stipends, but that should not be more than the minimum wage in the state.)

Each state has a governor who is elected for four years. Many states have term limits for their governors. He can only serve two terms. He is the chief executive officer of the state. He uses the bureaucracy to implement the laws and policies made by the legislature. Like at the center, though, he is not only a legislator he is, in fact, the chief legislator for most Bills that become law tend to originate from the governor’s office. Individual legislators seldom see their Bills become law, unless supported by the governor, after all the governor could veto them.

The governors in American states do not touch money. The state treasurer does. In some states, the treasurer is elected and in others he is a bureaucrat. Either way, the idea is that legislators/governors approve funds for their bureaucrats but do not disburse them. The governor is then in a position to evaluate how the money is spent. Any one who misspends a penny has his “ass in jail”. This practice ought to be copied by Nigeria. At present, Nigerian governors go to Abuja and take their sates share of the federal revenue sharing and take that money, at least, a substantial part of it, and board the next flight to Europe or North America and deposit them in their personal accounts. If we prevent governors from touching money, may be we would prevent them from being the thieves that they currently are? This would also strengthen governors’ over sight functions and give them the ability to monitor how bureaucrats are spending the monies allotted to their departments.

Each state has a judiciary. This is usually composed of the three tier system: state Supreme Court, state Appeals Court and county Superior court(s) (and in cities, city magistrate courts, to deal with fines and such minor issues). Governors recommend judges and the legislature approves them. As at the federal level, there is a judiciary committee in the Senate and this examines the qualifications of proposed judges and after public hearing votes to recommend them to the full house or not. If approved by the full house, such persons become judges. In some states, judges are elected (this is a very bad idea, an idiotic idea, really, judges ought to be meritocrats, aristocrats, really who have their positions based on qualification. As I pointed out yesterday, the German system of selecting judges, via written examinations and having them working for the ministry of justice seem the best way to go).

The state judiciary tends to be well ordered. In fact, were it not for the judges obsession with sending young black males, whom they fear more than they fear their God, to jail, America would be said to have a good society. But for some reasons, when a white man sees a black man he essentially pees in his pants. He is so afraid of blacks that obviously he feels inferior to them. The only way he knows how to deal with his fear of the black man is to arrest black men’s male children and put them in jail. If you are black and fourteen to twenty four years old, the chances that white policemen will arrest and molest you, is high. These policemen usually act in packs, never individually when dealing with blacks, four or more of them would tackle one fourteen year old black boy, cowards, we are talking, here, well these folks reason for existing is to jail black kids.

Each state has a state bureaucracy pretty much as at the federal level: department of education, transportation, social services (usually the largest department, composed of divisions of mental health, alcohol and drugs, elderly, the mentally retarded, child and family services and health). State bureaucrats are so carefully monitored that one instance of stealing and they are in jail. Overall, these machines for carrying out the people will tend to do what they were hired to do.

At the local level is the county system. Again, here the governing apparatus is as at the federal level. There is a county council, usually made up of about nine persons and a county executive implementing the decisions of the council. As at the sate and national levels, the county council is the legislative body and the executive the executive officer. In reality, the executive is also the chief legislator.

Each county has its superior court, which generally is part of the state judicial system. Judges are appointed by the governor, not county executive.

Beneath the county are city and town councils and mayors. (Some cities have city mangers who, in fact, manage the city’s bureaucracy and then reports to the mayor. These are usually small cities, not big cities.) The council makes laws (ordinances) and the mayor implements them, via his city bureaucracy.

Each city performs the usual local government functions, such as providing electricity, water, removing garbage, paving roads etc.

By and large, American cities are well run. However, in the past, the cities were run by machine politicians. In Chicago, for example, the mayor was as corrupt as Nigerians are. No one got any thing done unless he bribed the Irish mafia that ruled Chicago. But things are changing. The current mayor of Chicago, Daly, the son of a past corrupt mayor is said to follow the law. On the whole, American cities tend to be efficiently run.

Most cities chose to run their school districts through an independent school board (school district Board of Directors). These elected officials hire a school superintendent, usually an outstanding headmaster at a secondary school and through him run the K through 12 grades. Each school district runs its own school: hires its own teaches and does what it wants. Schools are funded through property taxes. Every house in the city is taxed, say a dollar for each thousand of its worth. Some cities supplement that with sales taxes, usually five percent on goods sold in the city.

I believe that counties should be the ones running K through 12 grade schools. I also believe that counties should provide technical education to those who cannot proceed to higher education. I believe that states should run universities. As I pointed out elsewhere, all children must go to elementary and secondary schools, at the tax payers’ expense. We have an obligation to educate our children. We know that not all children can do university work. Perhaps, only a third of secondary school graduates can do university work. So the state must have enough universities to educate 34% of secondary school graduates, those who passed at A and B levels in their secondary school leaving examinations. The rest of the graduates should go to technical schools where they learn to become mechanics, electricians, carpenters, masons etc. Only God knows how much Nigeria needs technicians. We build things and cannot repair and maintain them. I recommend the German technical school system, two years workshop training and two years apprenticeship in a relevant industry and then passing a national examination in the field to be licensed to work in it.

This is very much the American structure of local governance. The idea behind it is to give citizens access to their leaders. The average American can talk to his city councilor, mayor etc and complain about the quality of services he is receiving from the city. May be Nigerian local government leaders can learn to be accountable and tell the people what exactly they are doing for them?

LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN NIGERIA IN ACTION

Nigeria has experimented with several forms of local governments. This began with the British. They tried establishing local governments and using them to govern the people. In Northern and Western Nigeria were there were already existing administrative structures, be they feudal in nature, the British used those to rule the masses. In the east, particularly in Igbo land where political development was very rudimentary, there were no centralized administrative mechanisms, and the British had to fashion them out of nothing. They invented local governments and appointed chiefs, warrant chiefs they were called. Those idiots became the first batch of corrupt Nigerians. The various warrant chiefs grew rich by exploiting their people. In fact, their children were the first to go to Western type schools and are the rulers of Igbo land today. In Owerri, the Osujinjemanzes were a product of Lugard’s warrant chiefs and they are supposedly the most important family in the area.

The British toyed with many forms of local administration; at one point creating counties and at another districts.

Today, Nigerians have what they call local government areas, which generally fall within the boundaries of the district council areas that the British established. What we have going on is musical chairs, changing of names but doing nothing new really. We still have the same old district councilors who exist to extort bribes from the people and their head, the big bribe eater of them all. What are Nigerians but kola nut eaters, bribe eaters? These people live for their bellies and their bellies live for worms.

The current state structures in Nigeria are untenable. The states are too economically unfeasible. Consider my state, Imo state. The total area of this state would fit into an American county. I live in King County, (whose largest city is Seattle) Washington State. The county is over two million people. The area of land is probably twice the area of land of Imo state. Its economic base is probably one trillion times the economic base of Imo state. (We have Boeing, the world’s largest airplane manufacturer; Microsoft, the world’s largest manufacturer of PC programs etc.)

What does Imo state produce? Yams, Cassava, corn, Cocoyam, and assorted other crops. It probably has a tiny bit of oil. If you add up the GDP of the state it is only a few million dollars. There is, therefore, no way on earth that this state can support a government.

All of Igbo land, from Port Harcourt (Ugwuocha) to Abo, from Enugu to Umuahia, is about the size of the four counties that make up the Seattle metropolitan area: king, Snohomish, Price, Thurston, that is, from Olympia to Marysville, a distance of about one hundred and twenty miles. Nowhere in Igbo land is more than a hundred miles from Owerri. Owerri to Port Harcourt is 48 miles, to Onitsha is 58 miles, to Aba is 38 miles, to Umuahia is 40 miles, to Asaba is 60 miles, to Abo is 98 miles, and to Enugu is less than 100 miles. Thus we are talking of an area of a hundred miles radius. This area is not even large enough to be a state in the American context. It is more like a county in Alaska. Alaska itself is almost twice the size of Nigeria and yet it is only a state in America.

The point is that Nigerian states are too small to be economically viable. But if you make each of the large ethnic groups a state, you have about eleven states and then you bundle the small ethnic groups together into nine states for about twenty economically viable states. Each of the ensuing states would then be able to support itself, to pay for its services. No state government should ever have to wait for the federal government to go steal money from Ijaw land and give it to it to run its services. Each state ought to be totally self sufficient.

Each state ought to be in total control of its resources. Let the ensuing Ijaw state have 100% control of its oil revenue. Let them have it and let Ijaw citizens, like every one else, pay taxes to the federal government.

Each person must pay at least 20% of his yearly income into federal taxes and 10% of his income to state taxes. We need those taxes to run our governments. And when governments begin to depend on peoples taxes people would be conscious of how their leaders spend their money and slap them into jails should they misspend their tax money. At present, the people really do not carry the burden of government. The government derives over 90% of its money from oil and shares that money among the states and local governments. This way, the people are not really paying for their governments and do not care what they do with their monies.

As long as our governments depend on oil money, there will be corruption in Nigeria. It is when we turn to taxes, individual, sales, corporate property etc as means of funding our governments that we would overcome the monster of corruption.

In the meantime, there really is not much else to say bout Nigerian state and local governments other than to say that they are corrupt and are not doing their jobs. These governments do not provide education, water, electricity, medical health, remove city garbage and pave roads, as they are supposed to do. We hear about the travails of Ngige and Chris Uba. We hear about two primitive egos squabbling for national attention. But we do not hear about them removing garbage from Onitsha. Onitsha has feces dumped on its streets and the people die before they are forty years old. That is, we do not hear about what folks do in local government but hear about their egos dances of vanity. One is not interested in colluding with infantile men and making them seem like they are important when they are not.

One is important, to the extent that one does something for other people, not because one fancies ones self an important ego. We need humble persons in the governor’s mansion, in the chairman’s house and in such other places where power resides.

CONCLUSION

Nigeria currently has a state and local government structure modeled after that of America. If one understands America’s local government structure, one understands how it is supposed to work in Nigeria. Therefore, to help us understand how it is supposed to work in Nigeria, I took the trouble to describe how it works in America.

It is not working in Nigeria. What we have in Nigeria are the same old thing, same same, same tale of black men selling each other into slavery, albeit now by not caring for their people.

Africans have a culture of not caring for their own people, for selling their people. For over a thousand years, all they ever did was sell each other into slavery. From about 900 AD they sold themselves into Arab slavery and from about 1500 AD they sold themselves into American slavery. These people have developed a culture of selling each other and not caring for each other.

See a Nigeria and be very careful with him for if you are not, he would sell you into slavery. Of course, the law now prevents him from doing so; otherwise he would do so, and obtain trinkets to adorn his body, his body that is food for worms. These people now sell each other by not caring for each other. Give them positions in governments and they use their positions to rob their people blind.

You never hear of them making self sacrifices for their people but of stealing from their people. They are a contemptible and despicable people.

Out of this detritus of mankind, we shall produce decent men and women. We shall do so by showing them what it means to be a human being. A human being is different from an animal, though his body is animal, because he cares for other people. A true human being works for social interests. To be mentally healthy, one must work for social interest, Alfred Adler, a psychologist tells us.

My function in life is to help train Africans to care for one another, to refuse to eat while other Africans starve. That is what I came to this world to do. And I am doing it, by, for example, writing these lectures and giving them to folks for free. Every body must do his part. Africans make one want to puke but one cannot deny ones own people. One must help them become truly human, folks who care for one another.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org

October 18, 2005

Next lecture, #15, October 19, The Nigerian Bureaucracy