Constitution Review: Sen. Musa throws weight behind true federalism

Sen. Sani Musa, (APC-Niger) Chairman Senate Committee on Finance says he remains a strong supporter of federalism a system of government.

Musa said on Monday this during deliberations at the just-concluded Retreat of the Senate Committee on Review of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which held in Kano.

According to him, federalism in the real sense, should be about true nationalism and patriotism.

He said: “I am an ardent supporter of what is called federalism. But federalism for me is just a tag.

“When we come to talk about leadership we have had successive governments in this country from the colonial right to the Sardauna to even the presidential where we produced Shagari and the rest.

“One thing that we have missed and has been brought into our polity is the demarcation of the ideals that brought about that thought of true nationalism and patriotism.

“I do not believe whatever we do to our constitution will get it right. I will give you a simple example,” he said.

According to him, Nigeria has been demarcated into zones by connecting subnational states and forming them from their regional locations and calling them zones.

“Today, if I stand and talk here, I am talking as a senator representing Niger east and from central Nigeria. We have been demarcated and my thoughts and ideals, are going that way.

“Look at the panelists; we have only four of the zones being represented: Northwest, Southeast, Southwest and Northeast.

“If we are going to talk about the amendment of our constitution and talk about state police, local government autonomy, true federalism and devolution of powers, there are some basic fundamentals that we supposed to take as ideals,” he said.

Musa said he strongly opposed the creation of state police, arguing that state police would be politically abused.

“I am no longer in support of what we want to do in creating state police. I just took a sample of the community state policing that we said we have introduced. And it is not working, look at the infrastructure, look at the demography of the people that work; it’s not balanced. It will only create a problem for this country.

“There will be political abuse, there will be corruption, ethnic, religious or zonal bias and disparities and furthermore in coordination there will be challenges between the states and the federal,” he said.

Musa, however, said he was is in support of local government autonomy because of its importance in grassroots development.

He said it was unfortunate that the third tier of government was practically not in existent.

“It is just recently I heard a governor who is against the judgement, saying there is nothing like the third tier of government.

“But, I could remember ISEC was conducting election for local governments.

“We are not creating a commission that will be conducting election for the third tier of government, let’s make a directorate out of INEC to conduct elections there,” he said.