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Ethnic Affiliation And Resource Challenges In Nigeria
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Each
of these four is related to the whole gamut of the political economy of
federalism. Any lapse in one or more of these factors can mar any
federal system especially a fragile federation with a dependent
capitalist polity like Nigeria.
The debate on Nigeria’s fiscal
federalism and relations hinges on the fundamental question of who gets
what of the national cake, when and how. This is fundamental given that
Nigeria as a monolithic economy gets over 80% of its revenue from crude
oil, by virtue of the constitutional provision, this revenue must be
disbursed to the three tiers of government. It also explains why the
formula for revenue allocation has continued to be at the heart of
public debate and why public office holders are hardly held accountable
for the misuse of revenues derived from the national oil wealth. It is
obvious that the nature and conditions of the financial relations in any
federal system of government is crucial to the survival of such a
system. A major source of inter-governmental disputes under a federal
system centres on the problems of securing adequate financial resources
on the part of the lower levels of government to discharge essential
political and constitutional responsibilities (Olaloku, 1979:109). In
all federations, there are always constitutional wrangling or how
resources should be shared among the constituent units since there are
always poor and relatively rich units for instance, in Nigeria, the poor
units/regions/states often prefer a re-distributive system of federal
resource while the richer or more endowed States are in favour of more
financial autonomy and revenue allocation based on the relative
contribution of each constituent units to the federal purse. In Nigeria
revenue allocation largely implies the allocation of oil revenue,
therefore, oil is central to the politics of inter-governmental fiscal
relations thus, the contending forces over power and access to oil,
extraction and accumulation of resources constitute the major conceptual
issues that must be objectively confronted in seeking to understand the
political economy of federalism in Nigeria and revenue allocation.
One
striking feature of the recommendations of various Revenue Allocation
Commissions with respect to the revenue allocation formula adopted from
the 1970s is a phenomenon tagged the “concentration process†in
Nigeria’s fiscal federalism (Mbanefoh and Egwakihide 1998:22). This
refers to situation whereby there is a gradual reduction of State
Government Accounts and this is further exacerbated with the
establishment of Special Account by the Federal Government (Mbanefoh,
Egwakihide 1998). This is because it was used to favour a few selected
states/Local Councils more often than not, it provoked inter-state
hostility and rivalry, thereby undermining the stability and corporate
existence of the country. Suberu (1995:4), observed that the subsequent
periodic modifications of the various allocative criteria have achieved
three things. First, they have effectively legitimized the criteria of
demography and equality as the prominent principles of horizontal
revenue sharing in Nigeria. Second, the periodic changes in the
horizontal revenue sharing system have largely compounded the schemes
intensely political and divisive nature. For instance, in 1990, the
Babangida Administration re-introduced, and then assigned a weight of
ten percent to the discredited principles of land mass. Ethno-regional
opposition to this apparent bias to the North (which with only about
half of the nation’s population), encompasses some three quarters of the
national territory led some southern members of the National
Constitutional Conference to propose the inclusion of the countervailing
‘political’ principle of ‘population density’ in the horizontal revenue
sharing scheme. The primary effect of such regional political
manoeuvres is to deprive the nation of the development of a coherent
revenue sharing scheme that balances ‘efficiency’ and ‘equity’
principles of allocation in a politically healthy and economically
productive manner. Third, and finally, Nigeria’s horizontal revenue
sharing policies and reforms give insufficient recognition to such
largely non-political principles of allocation as the social development
factor and internal revenue generation.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This research work titled ethic affiliation and resource challenges in Nigeria with particular reference to Igbo Etiti Local Government Area of Enugu State. The researcher examined the effect of ethnic affiliation on the development of Nigerian economy. Four research questions and hypotheses were formulated in this project work. The research instrument used in this study includes oral interview and questionnaire. The population of the study was 209,248 while the samples size of 399 was determine ... Continue reading---
