Brussels - Nigeria's federal system is so deeply flawed and its politics so corrupt as to risk destabilizing Africa's most populous country and largest oil producer, according to an International Crisis Group report.
The study, entitled Nigeria's Faltering Federal Experiment, warned that unless the nation's leaders address "the underlying issues of resource control, equal rights, power sharing and accountability, Nigeria will face an internal crisis of increasing proportions."
The "failure of political leadership at every level," the report said, has contributed to rising violence in the oil-rich Niger Delta, inter-communal conflict in Plateau State and the emergence of numerous ethnic militias and separatist movements wrongly dismissed by the government as common banditry.
Continues Below ↓
Rife with corruption - nearly 400-billion petro-dollars have been embezzled in 45 years, according to a federal anti-corruption commission - Nigeria is preparing for the first electoral transfer of civilian presidential power, scheduled for April 2007, since independence in 1960.
Also at stake in next year's election, and no less critical in a country more familiar with military dictatorship than democratic rule, will be Nigeria's 36 governorships.
The report is especially critical of Nigeria's federal system, which has sparked dangerous rivalries between the central government and states over natural resources, encouraged sharp struggles between interest groups bent on siphoning off the state's wealth, and allowed for the growth of inter-ethnic violence.
The resource problem is most critical in the oil rich - but, paradoxically, desperately poor - Niger Delta, which has made Nigeria the sixth largest oil exporter in the world.
The failure to distribute oil revenue more equitably, the report suggests, has pushed a local ethnic-rights movement toward greater violence.
"Since January 2006, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and other armed groups have waged an increasingly violent campaign against the federal government and foreign oil companies ... shifting from high-profile kidnappings of foreign oil workers to more deadly activities, including car bombings," the study said.
The region's separatist movements are demanding a larger share of the Niger Delta's oil wealth for the local population, dominated by the 14-million strong Ijaw, the country fourth largest ethnic group.
MEND's declared aim is to cripple Nigeria's oil production, down 25 percent this year, according the ICG, which noted that oil output accounts for fully 95 percent of the government's cash resources.
Under Nigeria's constitution, adopted in 1999, the central government is the sole proprietor of the country's natural wealth and has the power to redistribute income as its sees fit.
The proliferation of states - 12 in 1960, 36 since 1996 - "has been accompanied by cuts in the revenue allocated by the central government," resulting in "smaller, weaker federal units, some of which were economically unviable," the study said.
The ICG also lashed out at Nigeria's system of allocating political appointments, government jobs and benefits not according not to where people reside but where their parents or grandparents were born.
"The result is widespread discrimination against non-indigenes in the 36 states and sharp inter-communal conflict," the report said. Clashes between natives and "settlers" in Plateau State since 2001, for example, have left thousands dead and many more displaced.
The reports recommends that the entire system be abolished and replaced with a more common residence requirement.
More fundamentally, the ICG said, the country "should create a more democratic constitutional reform process that would allow Nigerians ... to engage in free and wide-ranging debate over structuring the country's power-sharing arrangements."
The International Crisis Group, based in Brussels, is an independent, non-profit think tank headed by prominent former ministers and diplomats from around the world. - Sapa-AFP
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
