Continuing from where I paused last Friday, efforts by some to shield President Umar Yar’Adua, who was ill, lasted till lawmakers agreed to make a new law. The law made it compulsory for any sitting president to transfer power to a vice president if he would be out of the country for an extended period. Intense political negotiations with northern lawmakers happened; this led to the adoption of the “principle of necessity”, which ensured Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan became the acting president. In the end, Yardua passed on, and Jonathan was sworn in as the substantive president.

One occurrence under Jonathan’s administration that I couldn’t fathom was how over 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State, were abducted from their school hostel and moved across our territory, and the government didn’t stop it. I regard this as criminal negligence that ought to be subjected to judicial enquiry. Whatever was said in the corridors of power that made that happen was low for that administration. But the low continued, and by 2015, the enthusiasm with which I voted for him back in 2011 had evaporated. It was a six-year journey of unmitigated disappointment that I couldn’t comprehend. I was expecting “a breath of fresh air” across the landscape. Instead, the air was choking.

My views regarding Jonathan’s administration were strong. I critiqued it on this page with intense focus and I didn’t even realise I did. It took a visit to one of my colleagues at the NTA headquarters, Abuja, who called my attention to it, for me to realise this. He said many of my pieces, week in, week out, were focused on the Jonathan administration. I paused to think about it. I discovered he was right. I saw similar disappointment among our people when I covered the election in the 2014-2015 campaign season in the North. People were fed up. I was expecting the PDP to use its magic wands in the 2015 election. It couldn’t. Many party officials whom I interviewed during the campaigns, and who said they usually took care of PDP interests at voting units, had defected to the APC. Some of them told me during the campaign, “We’ll see how they’ll win.” PDP lost.

The arrival of President Muhammadu Buhari was one that everyone expected to bring change. I expected change. I had always had a good impression of the former military leader, whom I expected above all to deal with corruption. Illness troubled him at one stage. So, I thought a certain steam was thereafter lost in the energy he could have brought into his eight years in office. Sometimes, one wondered if the no-nonsense Buhari that we all knew was aware of the happenings in his administration. Take the looted funds by top officials in his administration as an example. Above all, insecurity persisted. The bitter experience has left Nigerians more bitter across ethnic and religious lines than ever, with victims blaming tribes and other religions for the situation. Even while Buhari was in power, I sat among northerners who shook their heads in wonder. They couldn’t believe killings and abductions were happening on such a scale and that non-state actors maltreated their communities when one of their own was president. They listed how many of their own people were in important positions, yet the North was suffering from insecurity. I was too numb, too disappointed by what was happening, to critique Buhari. I also knew the security structure he met would never handle the insecurity situation until there was a more federalised arrangement.

Not once did I critique Buhari in my column. I was like, if the leader I placed so much confidence in couldn’t deliver on several scores, who else could I expect to do it? The shock was too much for me to bear. It’s still there as I write this. Now, President Bola Tinubu has been in the saddle for two years. He has introduced some measures that I consider landmarks. The effect of some measures is very deep, including the students’ loan and monthly stipends. This would help students who would have otherwise struggled to take care of themselves in school. When I think about it, I say that at least young people in schools will be able to feed and take care of their basic needs. It was a huge measure. There are reforms I expect the President would still attend to, especially power, as well as federalising the security architecture. I imagine he wants to do those in his second term for obvious reasons.

Now, I come back to what the return of democracy in 1999 has brought to this nation. Perhaps the greatest change was the freedom to choose who leads, however imperfect the process may be. It can be improved upon. There’s freedom to express one’s views. Some of my interventions since democracy returned would have made me end up where I didn’t anticipate if I did them under the goons of the 1990s, who were shooting whoever expressed anti-soldier sentiments. There are efforts to decentralise what soldiers centralised. Lagos State played a leading role under the then-Governor Bola Tinubu from 1999 to 2007. The then FG tried to intimidate him. But he refused to back down on what he felt states should be able to do. Take the issuance of vehicle plate numbers, for example. Soldiers centralised it when this was something the states could do under the concurrent list. It took several court cases, but the Federal Government lost to Lagos.

Lagos State is still leading the charge to take back some powers that the military had arrogated to the centre. Under the military, a state challenging the FG in court wouldn’t have happened. Furthermore, the return of democracy opened up space for previously muzzled ethnic nationalities to speak up on issues such as resource control, the creation of more states, etc.

It was under civilian dispensation that militancy among ethnic minorities in the Niger Delta reached its peak until amnesty was declared. That was one tension resolved under a democratic government. However, top on the list of what the civilian administration has failed to do is effectively tackling insecurity across the nation. Insurgency began in 2009 in the North-East. It has since splintered into banditry, kidnapping, and non-state actors taxing people in their communities.

At the root of this is how local government councils and states are not configured to take control of security at their levels. LGAs are disempowered by state governors who still largely determine who is in charge, as well as corner LGA’s financial resources. It appears to me that the best of democratic gains is possible only when the governance space is democratised. I mean a decentralised, federalised governance with financial autonomy, like what was obtained in the pre-1966 era but which soldiers later obliterated. So, I think the foremost challenge to have been tackled when democracy returned in 1999 was to take powers and resources back to the sub-national units. To me, the inability to do this is the greatest failure of the past 25 years and counting. Had we been able to do this, development would have been more rapid than it is.

People would have focused more on the energised local governments. There would be less focus on the centre. This phenomenon itself is inherently a threat to political stability since any adventurous boy in khaki would only need to focus on seizing power at the centre. With more power centres, even politicians would have more spaces at the LGA level, rather than a situation where everyone focuses on the centre for opportunities.

With power and resources returned to the sub-nationals, burdens regarding economic prosperity would be shared in a balanced manner between the centre and sub-national units. For now, the burden is on the centre; otherwise, problems of electricity supply, inadequate security, unemployment, etc., would have been better resolved. Taking care of these challenges will reduce tension and restiveness, ensuring that the attraction for change of government through undemocratic means is minimised. I believe that, among other things, a major threat to democracy in Nigeria is the internal weakness in governance, including the concentration of power and resources at the centre. There is a need to create a more decentralised space of a federalised nature and, by so doing, provide more centres for effective service delivery. This is crucial for democratic practice and governance to be further deepened.