Win-Win Deal; If-I-were-the-President-Challenge

By Olusegun R. Babalola

“… he despised him. For he was youth … David said to the Philistine; “You approach me with sword, and spear, and shield … entire assembly will know that the Lord does not save by sword, nor by spear … David prevailed against the Philistine with a sling and a stone … He took his sword … ”

• 1 Samuel 17; 42-51

Whilst the nation-wide #EndBadGovernance/#ZangaZanga protest was fundamentally directed at policy change, the recalcitrant response by government demands a regime change, championed especially by the youths, in the next 2027 presidential election. Towards this end, I am putting on the table a challenge; If-I-were-the-President-Challenge called the Win-Win Deal (WWD). WWD is composed of 3 Afro-democratic reforms; economic/security reforms, polycentric/moral reforms, and constitutional reforms towards the excellence of endangered Nigerian Dream and African renaissance.

Whilst Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated the New Deal (1933-38) to pull US out of the Great Depression, his fifth cousin, Theodore Roosevelt earlier came up with a 1902 “A Square Deal for Everyman.” These successful Deals, modified in practice, not only served as themes for regime change, but were beckons of pragmatic hope against hopelessness. This WWD is also directed towards the same ends, at this moment of national crisis. We cannot live without hope, even when hopelessness pretends to be hopeful.

I

Need for Regime Change – Whilst the protests could have been avoided with reversal of the anti-people neo-liberal policies, as advised by several patriots, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT) who had vowed during the presidential campaign that “Whether you protest or not, I will remove pms subsidy,” appealed to civil society (indigenous, religious, union and activist) leaders to help thwart the protests.

Whilst, the Nigerian youths (North and South) unprecedentedly protested against hunger and economic hopelessness caused by neo-liberal economic policies, the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, stated “We are not interested in regime change. Let us own this government. Those who want to protest can protest, but we would be there eating …”. He reminded us of billions spent on SUVs for federal law makers, presidential yacht and aircraft, VP mansion, padded budgets … etc., and also ironically hinted us that policy change demanded for is only possible through regime change.

And during the protests, after extra-judicial killings of several protesters by security operatives, PBAT’s August 4^th national broadcast retained his neo-liberal policies, but rather affirmed his loyalty to his racist neo-liberal handlers and arrogantly called for dialogue with the protesters. PBAT affirmed the increase in revenue allocation to States and Local Governments (LGs) and in infrastructure for the rich admits poverty and hunger of the majority. Gen Z could now affirm that his “renewed hope” is nothing but “renewed hopelessness and cluelessness.” Who would dialogue with hopeless neo-liberal policies that has never worked anywhere, but have spurned hardship, in-equality and protests?

Which Regime Must Replace the Present Regime? The character of the present regime is well captured by Farooq A. Kperogi when he stated during the protest that “Tinubu’s loyalty should be to Nigeria, not the racist economic hitmen at the IMF and the World Bank.” It cannot be over-stated that neo-liberal policies eroded our fundamental social contract between governed and government, such as subsidies, evident world over. As Obasi Igwe stated “All countries on earth subsidize the basic arteries of human and national existence: food, health, education, and energy, otherwise there is no other purpose in government.” If such social contracts are evident in the West, why is Tinubu removing them? Does he want us all to japa?

Simply put, the neo-liberal regime loyal to IMF and the World Bank must be replaced by a pro-Nigerian welfarist regime that is interested in “production maximization” (Justice J. Faloye) and restoration of a social contract. Fortunately, regime change may not have to be a change of existing government, but a complete turn-around of the government. Could PBAT then be another Saul that would become Paul? Unfortunately, that rarely happens in history.

Background to Win-Win Deal – The de-colonial WWD is conceived to confront coloniality which accommodates the neo-liberal policies and its weapon, over-centralization of power, towards Afro-democratic de-centralization or “domestication of the Leviathan” (Nico Steytler), productivity and good governance.

Tocqueville shed lights on this Nigerian Leviathan with respect to over-centralization of power, apathy, and it’s twin evils of anarchy and despotism. He noted “A constitution republican in its head and ultramonarchical in all its other parts has always struck me as an emphemeral monstrosity” and that “centralization of governments” leads to “the growth of immense tutelary powers which willingly assume the burden of providing for the comfort and well-being of their citizens.” In this new despotism, the “society in which all are equal, independent, an impotent, one agency alone, the state, is specially prepared to accept and to supervise the surrender of freedom.” But whilst “representation of people in every centralized country” diminishes “the evil which extreme centralization may produce” it doesn’t get rid of it.

The consequence is “general apathy” as a result of individualism. Democratic men “will abandon their freedom to these mighty authorities in exchange for a “soft” despotism, one which “provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry,” and, ultimately, “spare[s] them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living.” Individuals can intervene in “more important affairs” but “suppressed in the smaller and more private ones.” Yet the former is less important than the latter. And it is dangerous to “enslave men in the minor details of life,” to which “they are led to surrender the exercise of their will.” And “thus gradually falling below the level of humanity.” “It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people.”

Liberty is thus surrendered to the time-honored despot and more likely to a new type of despot, unknown in history where the terms “despotism” and “tyranny” do not quite fit. Yet, the problems are more complex. Apathy, as Tocqueville taught, leads to two evils; anarchy and despotism.  Anarchy attacks despotism as despotism attacks anarchy, in diabolic cycles. And yet, after “having exhausted all the different modes of election, without finding one to suit their purpose, they are still amazed, and still bent on seeking further; as if the evil they remark did not originate in the constitution of the country far more than in that of the electoral body,” but over-centralization of power.

Beneath the surface, one finds out that the diabolic cycles of anarchy and despotism preserve coloniality. The real issue therefore is not over-centralization but coloniality. As Toyin Falola taught, “When one subjects the end product of colonization and coloniality to a thorough examination, one quickly sees that it has been effectively deployed to drive three significant things in the lives of the marginalized community who are at the bottom end. These are realized as the coloniality of being, coloniality of power, and coloniality of knowledge.”

Over-centralization through which neo-liberal policies are enforced is the lever of coloniality of power which according to Egla Martínez Salazar, “takes authority, appropriates land, and exploits labor.” As Falola stated, “political, economic, social, epistemic, and ontological relics systematically institutionalized by the European colonialists in their heydays were left unquestioned and, by necessary implications, untouched or modified.”  Walter D Mignolo calls this “the colonial matrix of power.” As Angus Deaton recently stated, “Without an analysis of power, it is hard to understand inequality or much else in modern capitalism.”

For example, OPEC’s June 2024 Oil Market Report predicts Dangote Refinery would pressure European oil industry. Doesn’t that explain why our 4 refineries are not working and why obstacles are thrown at Dangote Refinery, as well as the proposed Dangote Steel, both of which are de-colonial?

The primal purpose of coloniality of knowledge is the epistemicide of our indigenous knowledge system, which according to Anibal Quijano, “appropriates meaning,” demeans primordial and persuasive values necessary for the cultivation of morality and enlightened self-interest towards self reliant productivity. The constitutional exclusion of the primordial polities in most African constitutions is an epistemicide of primordial values. They are called “traditional,” and thus “old” and “obsolete,” and emphasis is placed on “traditional rulers,” rather than “primordial polities” for further subjugation of the people through the ruler, via individualism.

The consequence is, as Peter Ekeh taught, “the existence of two publics instead of one public, as in the West;” where the colonized moral/primordial polities are subjugated by the modern, and amoral colonial institutions ruled over by guards who exploit tribal sentiments for prebendal power. Yet, as Steytler noted “the formal state” in Africa acts “in its own interest or for an exclusive group” whilst the primordial and “informal governance institutions” maintain “social institutions and processes working for people’s daily survival.” This “fatal dualism” (Louis J. Munoz), according to Ekeh, is the genesis of “Many of Africa’s political problems,” and economic problems as well.

Both coloniality of power and knowledge as William Mpofu taught transmogrify colonial subjects to “victims of the coloniality of being” – the lived experiences of colonized peoples – banished in “a condition of inferiorisation, peripheralization, and dehumanization,” and that disconcerting, unbecoming and unchecked general apathy and individualism. One example of coloniality of being, spurned by apathy/individualism which saps moral character, enlightened self-interest and political-economic initiatives, is that disease of sole dependence on revenue allocation of crude oil proceeds, from an over-centralized power, what Paul Odili called “sharing economy” in his attack on PBAT’s neo-liberalism. Sharing economy has in turn made possible that the easiest access to wealth is prebendal state capture and not production economy.

Regardless of tribalism (another symptom of apathy), this wasn’t the case during the decentralized First Republic, when Regions competed, produced and contributed to the Union until the military Decree 34 in 1967. Unfortunately, whilst this “sharing economy” creates heartless Leviathan which had created more LGs and States for some ethnicities than others, this apathy remains both the motivation and the bane of present concern for restructuring, often centered more on States creation by tribalists and prebendalists fighting for colonial allocations based on the notion of ethnic balancing.

Yet, same apathy leads to diabolic cycles of anarchy and despotism, robbed of their humanity and citizenship. On one hand is anarchy like the violent tribal competitions for power, cultural relativism between ethnicities, protests and coups, civil war, secessionism and general insecurity … etc., and on the other is despotism like draconic colonial policies such as neo-liberalism, “monoethnic hegemonies,” prebendalism, extra-judicial killings by security operatives … etc. Anarchy begets despotism as despotism begets anarchy in a continuous cycle.

As anarchist pan-tribalists weaponize primordial sentiments with new exclusive, fictitious, irredentist, and thus, fascist ideologies in competition for prebendal power, and thereby separating people with same civilizations and deep historical links into fiercely competing tribes, completely strange to their ancestors, despotic prebendalists enrich themselves and impoverish those outside power. Over-centralization of power, thus leads to a cyclic history of organized chaos between anarchy and despotism which create absolute access to combined economic control; production and exportation of raw materials and maintenance of a colonial market for imported finished products. Our state of being has been altered without our awareness, towards our own destruction.

Over-centralization as a tool of coloniality of power, knowledge and being, in this way, secures an international division of labour between the Euro-Americans and Africans, by means of which we export only raw material and import finished products, and are pre-occupied with sharing economy rather than a productive economy. Quijano explained this as racial hierarchy of superior Europeans and inferior Africans, sustained by what Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni calls “Euro-American epistemological fundamentalism that denies the existence of knowledge from non-Western parts of the world.”

This is the root of the on-going neo-liberal policies, such as the removal of subsidies and the on-going nationalization of hunger and hopelessness.

II

Thus, the major contradiction as Kolawole Ogundowole defined it is between “forces of imperialism, neo-colonialism and subjugation:” and the “forces of self-reliancism and national recovery.” Towards this end, 3 reforms are proposed; economic/security reforms, moral/polycentric reforms and constitutional reforms. Along this line, the decolonial regime, pushed by the youth is David as coloniality is Goliath. The economic/security reforms form the sling, and the moral/polycentric reforms, the stone. Constitutional reforms is the triumphal David after Goliath is prevailed against.

Economic and security reforms (ESR). This entails massive infrastructural reconstructions to transform every LGs into productive hubs that would pay taxes into the states, which would also remit taxes into the federal government as opposed to sole dependence on revenue allocation. This is a fundamental economic revolution or turn-around that is impossible without a comprehensive security reform. The fact that coloniality of economy is the central troupe of coloniality itself, de-coloniality demands a central and pivotal attention to the subject matter of economy.

I would here fundamentally adopt the political economic plan suggested severally by Justice J. Faloye, the publicity secretary of Afenifere, a pan-Nigerian/African Social Welfarists group. Let’s call these economic and security reforms, Faloye Plan.

Central to economic reforms is what Faloye calls “production maximization” in Decolonial Economic Restructuring Before Political Restructuring.  Faloye critiqued that PBAT’s neo-liberal economic policies directed at cost minimization through “the floating of the Naira”, “removal of subsidies, extremely high-interest rates to curb inflation and attract foreign exchange,” cannot “address fundamentals of real economic growth.” He noted that whether it is welfarist “economic optimization equation,” pushed by Obafemi Awolowo, or “neo-liberal economic cost minimization” pushed by PBAT, both must be balanced “with production maximization” which Awolowo did and PBAT didn’t or is yet to understand. To achieve this, Faloye posited “Three vital economy movers” (job and wealth creation), especially for the youths, aside from mechanized farming.

The first is the railway grid which “can provide more income and returns on investment than crude oil”, possibly, “$100 billion yearly” by “connecting dozens of towns and population centers” and economic nodes towards “rapid industrialization takeoff and scientific and technological revolution” for our survival in the 21^st Century. In addition to two major colonial North-South railways (with several branches, and only one, Warri-Itakpe, being an industrial railway) used to evacuate raw materials and bring in finished products, Faloye proposes a grid system with three decolonial East-West railways – Lagos-Calabar, Ilorin-Yola (passing through the Middle-Belt) and Sokoto-Maiduguri, thereby creating several junctions/nodes and courtyards (encircled by railways) in 3-4 years to grow the economy, amongst other things by adding value to our own raw materials.

“The government would then sell 51% of the new infrastructure to private enterprise, restructure and empower States and private sector to continue the railway expansions and boom in courtyards created by railway grid. This would spur huge growth for decades, like that witnessed up 1870 financial crash in USA.” According to Faloye, “Every industrialized nation stimulated its heavy manufacturing with railways” stimulating “various multiplier effects” in other industries (heavy and light) such as “iron and steel,” and hence, machine tools, petro-chemicals, electrical-electronics, electricity, agriculture, services industry … etc.

We cannot activate our domestic capacity for machine tools through local construction of railways and still have un-productive 4 refineries and the Ajaokuta Steel Mill. Interestingly, Aliko Dangote too, has shown interests in 5,000-ton steel production in Nigeria to serve the West African market once his massive $20 billion refinery was fully operational. Such would be handy for our railway grid. Unfortunately, Dangote cancelled the plans following government accusations of monopolistic intentions. If I were the president, I would support not only Dangote but all decolonial Dangotes.

The second economic mover is renewable solar energy, being a source of income, especially in the North, has the multiplier effects of reversing “deforestation and desert encroachment”, encouraging mechanized agriculture, and create vast employments. Along this same line, Usman Yusuf also stated in June 2024 “The North is richer than the South because we have agriculture, solid minerals, and the sun for solar energy” However, he noted “While some small-scale solar projects have been implemented, much more needs to be done to harness this clean and renewable energy source.”

The third mover is real-estate developments for a very large middle class “by creating a mortgage or housing subsidies program like Awolowo built Bodija Ibadan” and other parts of the then Western Region. Aside from economic empowerment of the people with home ownership which would bolster a large middle class to anchor a richly informed democracy, other multiplier effects are job creation within the construction industries. Real estate is to fill up the grid system, the railway nodes and courtyards, and as we shall see based on local traditions towards the evolution of the Nigeria architecture and urbanism, and thus consciousness.

Railways, solar energy and real-estate development provide higher “return on investment,” “the greatest income and employment multipliers in the economy.” Unlike, agriculture which “accounts for 38 percent of our employment and 24 percent of our national income,” three “economy movers” can “stimulate economic growth, industrialization and employment.” It appears that we need several Dangotes at this moment. I beg. Our decolonial presidency would assist them all on these well tested movers in developed economies. Having achieved these 3 we could then massively leverage on profitable mechanized farming by private sector and cooperatives, with our local capacity for machine tools.

Faloye also noted  that the success of railways in stimulating “various multiplier effects in towns and stops” depends on (a) “effective check on security threats” such as farmers/herders crisis, Boko Haram, ISWAP, bandits, Kidnappers, petro-piracy in the Gulf of Guinea …  etc., and (b) direct industrial involvement of the military in the mega-infrastructural reconstructions to spur domestic production capacities, technology transfer from partners, especially in technologies and innovations.

Thus, there is universal need for an industrial/military partnership and not the type of military industrial complex (MIC) with the vested interest of the military and defense industry influencing public policy for selfish interests, which was warned against by Dwight D. Eisenhower. Long before Eisenhower coined the term MIC, American military, since the War of Independence, have checked security threats to economic development and have been very active in industrial advancements and the political-economic facilitation of political stability and industrial success.

industrial/military partnership is a necessity for any modern state interested in economic-industrial development. China too, has People’s Liberation Army (PLA). David Goodman and Gerald Segal wrote of PLA’s “various constituent units” established “a large number of enterprises” with profits “generated by commercial and economic activities,” despite the market-oriented economy. Interestingly, we also have the Defence Cooperation of Nigeria (DICON) created in 1964 by an act of parliament. Our Nigerian Army Engineers (NAE) led by Olusegun Obasanjo helped to integrate Biafra back into Nigeria (restoring the Onitsha Bridge, water supply to major towns .. etc) after the Civil War. NAE continues this tradition, with successes in several States today.

For example, Sappers Engineering Nigeria Limited (SENL), a subsidiary of NAE, completed a power infrastructural contract at Tegina-Zungeru, Niger State, in Feb 2024, which was awarded by China National Electric Engineering Company (CNEEC) due to security challenges. As Faloye suggested, I don’t see any reason the DICON/NAE can’t build our railways, anyhow – with interested foreign and domestic partner(s), industrialists, primordial polities and the youths via compulsory military service.

The military have been very important in our national evolution and the onus here is to direct that nationalistic agency towards economic development and defense of a thriving democracy rather that political intervention. As we shall also see below, a strengthened security architecture is needed to counter-balance against anarchy for the propose moral/polycentric reforms.

Fundamentally, Faloye Plan is to end “economic in-equality” among individuals and ethnic groups, regulated with a colonial mixed-economy to sustain coloniality. Such in-equality according to Munoz, in our age of democratic equality robs the political order off its legitimacy. The key to this integrated economic and security reforms is the nurturing of enlightened self-interest and productive LGs against our apathy (sharing economy) through a massive provision of mega-infrastructure all over the country to spur comprehensive industrialization and massive investment. Faloye Plan is the keystone – the sling – of the Win-Win Deal. Without non-exclusive economic reform where everyone wins, there is no deal.

It is similar to sole dependence of federal allocation, but different as massive infrastructural developments for economic reconstructions, designed for each LGs based on its characteristics, towards self-reliant production against perpetual and childish reliance on federal allocation. It is coeval to equipping children to becoming self-reliant, rather than perpetual dependence.

This is opposite to the infrastructural policies of PBAT or the creation of prebendal and developmental commissions for each region. The real-estate developments, Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway/Train and Sokoto-Badagry highway announced by PBAT on August 4 against the protest are awarded to cronies for/by neo-liberal beneficiaries of raw-material-exports and finished-products-import; the rich. This is evident in the infrastructures provided in PBAT’s neo-liberal Lagos compared to Jakande’s welfarist Lagos.

These cannot be compared to Faloye Plan with accountable and transparent industrial/military partnership that would stimulate economic growth, technology transfer, industrialization and employment; reduce foreign exchange outflows; plug corruption and wastages; create a vibrant middle class for a much richer democracy and most of all replace our “sharing economy” with enlightened self-interest and productive economy.

Moral and Polycentric Reforms (MPR). The general purpose here is the moral combat against apathy and re-activation of dormant life forces (moral virtues, enlightened self-interest and political-economic initiatives) of the local communities through integrated polycentric and moral reforms.

Polycentric reforms is about constitutional freedom of existing States to create LGs as centers for decision making to maximize opportunities created by ESR. The purpose is to decentralize and diffuse political power and create multiple centers of decision making, with “a single system of rules (be they institutionally or culturally enforced),” and “spontaneous social order” where free exit and entry are possible and rules are collectively made with incentives to comply.

Any political community strongly modified by traditions could pragmatically form new LG, with its own police, schools, electricity, water supply, primary health, sanitation, roads, especially education … etc. Or it may be that a productive-LG would be created from several revenue-allocation-LGs or that a mega-revenue-allocation-LG would fragment into productive-LGs, all culminating into “an evolutionary competition between different ideas, methods, and ways of life” that make innovations, trial and error, and initiatives possible. Therefore, polycentricity  means deleting the rigid figure of LGs in the constitution for revenue allocation. It means humanizing local governance. It means liberty.

Moral reform is constitutionalizing the primordial polities in the LGs and the collapsing of the two-publics of the amoral “formal state ” and the  moral “informal governance institutions” of primordial polities into a single one moral and formal institution with two incorporated decision-making centers; ancient constitutionalism and the democratic modern constitutionalism.

For example, we could adoption British parliamentary paradigm (and not a rigid model to accommodate more republican communities). This would entail the constitutionalizing of the primordial polities, with (a) the monarch or head (according to autochthonous principles of representation) as the LG head, aside from being the autochthonous head of his kingdom or city, who reigns but doesn’t rule, follows government’s advice in all but exceptional cases, appoints the prime minister and gives royal assent to bills and laws; (b) the primordial chiefs (who constitute the primordial polity with the monarch and particularly those anchoring the customary jurisprudence, and morals) as the legislative upper-house; and (c) democratically elected representatives (ministers) from LG’s wards, who would swear allegiance to LG head, would constitute the lower-house with sole rights to making decisions on financial bills. Such a structure would create a single rule to coordinated the two publics against coloniality, especially the coloniality of knowledge and being.

Whilst the LG head and the upper-house combine to form the ancient constitution, the bedrock of political stability, political-economic initiatives and morality, the whole arrangement would be driven by the liberal democratic modern constitutionalism of the lower-house.  As Tocqueville warned, the task is not one of reconstructing the earlier aristocratic society, but of making liberty proceed out of the democratic state of society and of working out “that species of greatness and happiness” appropriate to “equality of conditions.”

The consequence of the coupling of the ancient constitutional concern for classical/moral virtue, extracted via customary jurisprudence and the modern constitutional concern for natural rights, economy and security. would be the intricate Janus Effects. In this case, we could identify 8 Effects, major political expedients necessary for domesticating the colonial Leviathan towards a legitimate and successful democracy and the Nigerian Dream.

First is the injection of the constitutional polity with more persuasive, responsive and age-old primordial ethics and institutions to nourish character, subject to natural (human) rights and the “repugnancy clause” of customary jurisprudence, our sole residue for a decolonial beginning, which is ironically a colonial heritage and which also establishes rule of law against cultural relativism. In this way the “city” or local authorities become schools of moral virtues and liberal education. Ancient constitutionalism would in Thomas Pangle’s words “shore up or repair the pillars of democratic health” with classical and moral virtues leading to the modern variants of enlightened self-interests – patriotism or public spiritedness – the causality and lifeblood of polycentricity itself. According to Marvin Zetterbaum, the principle of self-interest rightly understood – “the heart of Tocqueville’s resolution of the problem of democracy,” is but a product of the local self-government; “the locus of the transformation of self-interest into patriotism” … “transform essentially selfish individuals into citizens whose first consideration is the public good.” The Janus Effects is thus, in opposition to coloniality of power, knowledge and being.

Secondly, polycentricity and the polycentric coupling of the “two publics” would lead to what Sheldon Gellar (who applied Tocquevillian analytics to Senegal) observed on how American citizens “participate directly in the management of public affairs to solve their problems” and not just in being paid to elect neo-colonial politicians. Character traits such as “initiative and optimism” as stated by Carol M Rose is nourished by institutions “not only for political life but for commerce as well.” For Tocqueville, the science of association, which includes local government and as the basis of liberty, is the mother of science in a democracy. By empowering free and self-governing local institutions and associations that can flourish autonomously from the central state, we would have created a bulwark – a political expedient – against the tyranny of over-centralization, and hence, coloniality.

Thirdly, the political expedients of local self-government would spread to others such as the indirect elections, separation of church and state, a free press, an independent judiciary, and the encouragement of free associations, via polycentricity, all against the “emphemeral monstrosity” of the Leviathan, and in our case, the colonial Leviathan. To these expedients, as we shall see, I would add city-building directed at cultivating virtues.

Fourthly, “Local authorities can also nourish character through the shared purpose (civic form), the constitution (political form), and the modified physical environment (the architectural and urban form) as found in the American 1787 Northwest Ordinance.” In the US, this is based epistemologically on the Western civilization. Ours too, would be based on local own necessities, civilizations and traditions, leading to what Tocqueville called “Urbanity of manners” through and for the cultivation of moral virtue and via Janus Effect the cultivation of the enlightened self-interest. These three forms, civic form, political form and urban form, modified by our local traditions would provide means for the continuity of our rich traditions, and through that preserve our age-old primordial ethos.

Fifth, three forms, civic form, political form and urban form, by means of which character is nourished would also be the foundation for Nigerian Dream and African renaissance. The further modification of laws, existing cities and development of new ones based on the ESR (provided by the federal government), same national principles, and our hundreds of disparate good-old ethos of our traditions and civilizations would lead to what Zbiniew Dmochowski called the “elementary means towards the formation of national consciousness and self-assertion” in his pivotal works devoted to the evolution of the Nigerian /urbanism. And this makes possible love for one’s tradition and love for its continuity in architecturemodernity and makes the case for unity in diversity towards the creation of a strong and national civil society against the Leviathan.

Sixth, as evident in the US and the West, Janus Effects would lead to two ideological parties within a multi-party system, all within the same de-colonial regime; as “long as the ancient constitutionalism is preserved.” One political party would be pro-primordial and another would be more concerned with modernity; innovative conservatives and progressives, both checking and balancing themselves, as long as civilization is spiritually healthy.

Seventh, de-colonializatiom of local authorities through polycentricity is to further lead to what Steytler called “transforming the political system into one expressing constitutionalism and, where needed, federalism.” And in that way transforming our “illiberal democracies or semi-democracies,” without citizenship (Falola) to legitimate democracies with patriotism, all towards political stability and prosperity. Constitution, according to Steytler, can then be “a social compact of competing social forces that have the interest and capacity to ensure compliance,” and become “the grand bargain of selfgoverning associations of a polycentric society, covenanting among themselves” on “how to domesticate the Leviathan” as “the citizens or interest groups are” likely “to come forward ‘to pay the price of civil disobedience’ in challenging the constitutionality of governmental action  and finding a receptive and independent judiciary.”

And finally, “This bottom-up polycentric and Afro-democratic reforms are one way to negotiate both the Afro-democracy proposed by Olusegun Obasanjo as well as the bottom-up reforms proposed by “a friend of Nigeria, Lord Atkins Adusei, in Obasanjo’s 2014 biography, My Watch (vol. 3). And this volition, as it were, is the basis of Nigerian African leadership” of the African renaissance.

And just as trying “different modes of election,” well-meaning African scholars have spent considerable amount of their resources on national orientation towards ethical revolution against political vices in vain. Same goes for programs of several administrations such as the soulless “Change Begins With Me Campaign”. For the same purpose, PBAT reverted to 1959 national anthem of the First Republic. All these are in vain, until persuasive moral institutions are constitutionalized and allowed to shore up and strengthen institutions. The apathetic mass would never understand morality in an over-centralized state, where natural human initiatives are dumped for individualism and sole dependence on a Leviathan.

Nevertheless, just as despotism saps the emergence of a polycentric order with over-centralization, an order with multiple centers of decision making without “the existence of a single system of rules” would lead to anarchy and is not polycentric. Thus, the evolution of spontaneous LGs as centers for decision making, must be based on (a) general-overarching “rule of law” anchored by a strong federal government with “many legitimate rules enforcers,” (b) adaptation of useful pre-colonial political traditions through direct involvement in rules/incentives design, and (c) a strong security architecture, as earlier stated.

The MPR is de-colonial cornerstone – the stone – of the Win-Win Deal.

III

Constitutional Reforms (CR). Both ESR (top-down reform) and MPR (bottom-up reform), are to run concurrently for about 3-4 years to make way for Afro-democratic Constitutional Reforms (CR), which is to establish the middle ground of federating-units in relations to the top (the Union) and down (the LGs) towards the most profitable political-economic architecture. The concern here is a well-balanced system where polycentric LGs produce, federating units manages, and Union regulates. This is a major attack against coloniality of power, served by over-centralization of power.

I would, for example, suggest the adoption of the Swiss paradigm of collegiate-executives modified by resolutions in 2005 National Political Reform Conference, CONFAB 2014 and other useful sources. With 7 Regions and 7 gubernatorial-zones in each Region, we would have 7 collegiate-executives in the Union and the Regions. Whilst each executive (president or governor) serves for a year in rotation, polycentric decisions are arrived at collectively, conclusively assisted by the odd number. Furthermore, the ministries would be shared among the collegiate-executives by the related legislature based on merit, and over-bloated numbers of prebendal ministers would become history. Regions and gubernatorial zones would be forced to choose between national embarrassment or meritocratic representation.

Each Region would have its own constitution, just as during the First Republic, with a two-tier federation government evident in the American fiscal federal system, and power devolution, but with bicameral legislatures in both. For the Regions ministries shall not be located in a single capital but shared among the 7 gubernatorial-zones, starting with existing State’s infrastructures.

Rather than the 1970s de-ethnicization of the moral “primordial” public for the sake of an artificial nation building in federating-units’ formation (Kolawole Ogundowole, Hippolyt S. A. Pul and Steytler), the names of the Regions and LGs, and their capitals shall be based on renaissance or modern continuities of pre-colonial and autochthonous traditions, glories and ethos, as agreed by the people. The issue is not to run from traditions but embrace them against coloniality of knowledge and being. The key to this, again is customary jurisprudence that is commonly shared by communities in the LGs and the LGs in the Region.

The suggested 7 Regions are 4 homogeneous Regions of North-West (NW), North-East (NE), South-West (SW), South-East (SE); and 3 heterogeneous Regions of South-South (SS), Western-Middle-Belt (WMB) and Eastern-Middle-Belt (EMB). The polycentric LGs at the regional peripheries would have the spontaneous, and thus polycentric liberty, to choose and re-choose the Region they want to belong to. Borders would not be drawn by some pan-tribal prebendalists or fascists, and Pan-tribal tyranny of majority over the minorities and monoethnic hegemonies in federating-units, as it happened in the First Republic would become history.

The most important Regions are the heterogeneous Regions, where moderation and wisdom is most needed along 3 lines. First special attention must be paid to homogeneous and polycentric LGs and gubernatorial-zones to reverse the epistemicide of autochthonous ethos and wisdom. Secondly, the 7 gubernatorial zones, the capital and the name of the Regions would be collectively agreed to by the LGs. Third is the principle of autochthony and historical relations. For example, WMB and EMB shall be autochthonously created and distinct from the Afro-Islamic traditions of the NW and NE, as the SS shall be autochthonously created and distinct from the identical African traditions of the SW and SE. The strength and political stability and well-being of the heterogeneous Regions, as a result of the diversity, would be secret vitality of the whole Union.

Homogeneous regions like NW, NE, SW and SE could re-activate the productive, self-reliant, past glories and ethical values of Sokoto/Fodiawa, Karnem-Borno, Ule-Ufe/Oduduwa and Igbo-Ukwu respectively. SE, for example could adopt Biafra, if they so choose. For example, Ule-Ufe could be the capital of SW since Ule-Ufe is generally accepted as the origin of all the descendants of Oduduwa as well as Obatala.

The Union is to have a upper-house, made up of 1 representative of the primordial polities from each of the 7 gubernatorial zones from all the 7 Regions and a democratic lower-house based on demographics. This should also be repeated in the Regions, with 2 representatives of the primordial polities from the 7 gubernatorial zones. The members of the upper-houses of LGs and Regions would only receive sitting allowances as agreed by their LG lower-houses. Also, the members of the upper-house of the Union would only receive sitting allowances as agreed by their regional lower-houses. If we had the representatives of moral/primordial polities in our current Senate, an amoral Senate president wouldn’t say that people could protest whilst they eat. They dare not, because they bear the brunt and are easily accessible in the grassroots.

FCT-Abuja would remain our smart and a green collective home. Founders’ political and urban plan would be restored and improved. The relationships between civic forms, political forms and urban/architectural forms, effected by Janus Effects would be further explored with monuments, public spaces, axes, architectonic decorations and ornamentations …etc., to commemorate national heroes with devotion to the Nigerian Dream and African renaissance based on the national aggregation of regional urban and architectural traditions. The autochthons of Abuja shall be clearly grouped with the Region of their choices. FCT-Abuja would be renamed or nicknamed after quintessential Nigerian statesman who has bled for and sustained the Nigerian Dream and African renaissance, and who is not ashamed of confronting his dark sides and failures in the public. Morals in a multi-ethnic universe is best nurtured by apotheosizing the capital with the quintessential political and ethical role model. Morals don’t fall from heaven.

This structural arrangement would amongst others resolve 6 contending and divisive issues. Firstly, this structure is in opposition to a rigid number of LGs, whose financial autonomy from the States with respect to allocation from the central government, is used via judicial usurpation as an excuse for over-centralization of power to strengthen the colonial Leviathan. Secondly, rather than more States to balance ethnic interest in sharing economy, focus now is more polycentric LGs which are closer to the grassroots. If for instance, a citizen extracts crude oil or any mineral deposits in his backyard, he would pay tax to his LG/Region based on requisite fiscal and legal regulatory framework in place, and the regional federating unit would make remissions to the central government.

Thirdly, the collegiate system (federal and federating units) resolves the argument between States (which provides for marginalized ethnic groups in revenue collection) or Regions (where tyranny of majority is used against minority groups in the First Republic) in the favour of Regions as federating units, as long as there is regional freedom to create LGs and as long as the LGs have the rights to their natural and human resources. By this, regional loyalties would culminate into a national patriotism.

Fourthly, polycentric LGs, 7 gubernatorial zones in every region and 7 Regions, apart from the federal capital, would be able to promote justice and equal opportunities for all ethnic nationalities (intra/inter) to preserve their primordial ethos, traditions, civilizations, and local languages. These would sufficiently end the wasteful fascist and pan-tribal war for the control of the federal prebendal pyramid.

Fifth, this structure demands a stronger military and security architecture, all working together with the industrial sectors, indigenous polities and youth towards technological and economic advancement, and most of all to check all possible disruptions to political stability in accordance to the law. In addition to this is a compulsory military service for all youths to inculcate in them the manners of self-reliance and patriotism.

And lastly, with the shoring of the modern constitutionalism with ancient constitutionalism in LGs, Region and Union, we would be able to nurture character – cultivate classical/moral virtues and enlightened self-interest towards political stability and economic progress (as explained above). This would further affect our various institutions such as anti-corruption agencies (EFCC, ICPC, CCB, and NFIU), security, electoral, health, educational … etc., as they all restore confidence in our democratic institutions.

Unfortunately, the CR may not be appreciated until after successful ESR and MPR have injected majority with enlightened self-interest and cured of the diseases of revenue allocation, of pan-tribal will to dominate others and of prebendalism. However, it is expected that those who are already cured of these diseases would appreciate this win-win collegiate system in the federating units and the Union. Nevertheless, nothing stops us from exploring alternative paradigms to the adopted Swiss and the British parliamentary systems. I have here adopted them as means to an end, simply. One cannot rule out other alternatives, entirely. In final analysis, the end is what matters.

Complementarities – ESR or Faloye Plan is a stick and carrot approach to activate our productive capacities and address wealth creation and security against the disease of revenue allocation, ultimately creating the basis for equal opportunity for all Nigerians towards the making of a large middle class which is being wiped out by PBAT’s neo-liberal policies. In this way, ESR establishes a social contract that sparks self-interest rightly understood.

Tocqueville affirms, “private interest” is “the only immutable point in the human heart,” and “becomes the principal if not the only spring of human action” in a liberal democracy which pushes for “equality of condition” as opposed to the earlier aristocratic age. This entails according to Tocqueville that “man serves himself in serving his fellow creatures and that his private interest is to do good”  and that men “must come to see the desirability of postponing the immediate gratification of their desires in the expectation of a more certain or greater degree of satisfaction at a later time, an expectation arising from the contribution of the common welfare to their own well-being.”

As Zetterbaum explained, this “self-interest rightly understood” is “understood primarily in an economic sense—it is a concern with the most immediate, tangible, material signs of a man’s well-being” based on the democratic “requirements of equality” on which the foundation of the public or social order rests upon. Yet, “economic sense” is not good enough. Prudence demands that universal suffrage or human rights and hence, “economic sense” must be balanced with political responsibility and moral/classical virtues because “economic sense” is according to Leo Strauss is a “partial good” and thus beneath the “highest form of prudence” which “is the legislative art which is the architectonic art the art of arts, because it deals with the whole human good in the most comprehensive manner.” This “highest form of prudence” is supplied by MPR, which completes ESR’s social contract.

Yet, whilst ESR’s enlightened self-interest cannot be thoroughly activated and sustained without MPR’s polycentric Janus Effects, without the win-win incentives of enlightened self-interest provided by ESR, the win-win MPR wouldn’t be able to boost the same enlightened self-interest. ESR and MPR are like matches and gas respectively. One provides the fire and the other keeps the fire burning. What we have therefore is a case of complementarity, an important element of African civilization.

The dialectics between ESR (top-down) as a thesis and MPR (bottom-up) as the anti-thesis, in the Hegelian sense, is to lead to the synthesis of both in the CR. Both make possible the Steytler’s observation that “Constitutionalism, the practice of constitutional democracy” can only be “the product of three key factors, politics (state), the economy and society.” Constitutions according to him would then be “the grand bargain of selfgoverning associations of a polycentric society, covenanting among themselves how to domesticate the Leviathan.” The dialectics between them confirms Angus Deaton argument for a two-way relationship between the economists on one hand, and the “philosophers, historians, and sociologists” on the other hand.

However, there are other forms of complementarities or if you like Hegelian synthesis. The WWD is a historical and decolonial synthesis of the thesis of the moral and colonial Indirect-Rule (when primordial polities ruled) and the anti-thesis of the amoral post-Indirect-Rule era when colonial masters were replaced with colonial African elites. Let’s call this dialectical de-coloniality.

Also, the complementarity that exists between de-ontological and modern constitutionalism which conquers nature, and the ontological and ancient constitutionalism which imitates nature, becomes a bit more intricate. Whilst the bottom-up mechanism of the LGs is more organic and polycentric and thus more natural and human with denser dose of ancient constitutionalism with focus on the pursuit of human excellence, the top-down mechanism of the Union, which takes care of economy and security with strong institutions towards a strong government and over-arching rules, is more machine-like, artificial and monocentric with higher dose of modern constitutionalism with focus on natural rights. This de-ontological aspects of modern  constitutionalism explains why our current institutions are amoral (tribal, corrupt and prebendal. It goes to prove that without Janus Effects, liberal democracy is a tool of coloniality.

The notions of separation of powers, and checks and balances would further deepen the accommodation of complementarities. In Federalist 51 on “Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments” James Madison wrote on how government departments balance and check themselves based on “different modes of election and different principles of action” despite their “common functions and their common dependence on the society.” Madison was on one hand concerned about relations between the executive, 2 branches of legislative and judiciary, and on the other, between federating units and the Union in the “preservation of liberty.” He noted “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition … such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. … The aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights … to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.”

This “policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests” of checks and balances, separation of power and federalism which the Federalists traced to “human nature” is here extended to the complementarity between moral/primordial public and the amoral/colonial public, in both vertical devolution of powers (federalism) and horizontal devolution of powers (separation of powers). However, unlike the republican Federalist, we have not expunged our monarchies but have made them subject to constitutionality. The justification is that amoral public has become a “factious majorities” unleashing injustice, and we have here checked and balanced them with a moral public, since “Justice” as Madison noted “is the end of government. It is the end of civil society.”

The concerns for economy and security are first laid by ESR as the foundation for the creation of top-down machine or a strong central government that would not be over-centralized. This is the general mechanism of how successful and strong institutions of modern states, whether its US or China, have negotiated political stability, greater unity, organic and harmonious nation-building in modernity. It is a shame that not only US but a one-party ruled China is more polycentric than most African multi-party nations,because modernity for them is not the same as abandonment of their ancient constitutionalism. It is in this way that the ontological could shore up the de-ontological.

The problem with Nigeria, and most African states is that they are mostly de-ontological colonial machines, top-down and bottom-up, without an iota of polycentric humanity and liberty. They are mostly soulless post-colonies; the “zombie” that Fela Anikulapo sang about. The onus therefore is the creation of strong institutions, bottom-up and top-down, rather than having an over-centralized system that is ironically weak. Still.On the whole, Win-Win Deal is conceived based on justice, order and beauty.

Conclusion. The Gen Z demands nothing less than a de-colonial Deal to unplug them from the matrix of coloniality, what Walter D. Mignolo calls epistemic “disobedience” and “de-linking”;  Falola calls “decolonisation of … epistemologies”; and Aníbal Quijano calls “epistemic reconstruction.”  Kreogi observed “Many of the young people who can’t feed now and whose future is being perpetually deferred have enough education to know that the delayed gratification the government promises them from removing subsidies and from devaluing the naira has never materialized anywhere in the world.”

Yes, WWD is chiefly de-colonial. However, we should note that “epistemic de-linking” does not entail a war or a de-linking with the useful aspects of Euro-American modernity but rather the security of our own survival and pursuits of excellence as human beings whilst preserving our peaceful relations and partnership. We only need air to breath and experience again what it means to be human. As President Bill Clinton once stated, AGOA would strengthen US economy by opening up markets with “hundreds of millions of potential consumers” to American economy and help Africans develop and diversify their economies aside from bolstering democratic ideals. Isn’t such the success of novu ordo seclorum. As our elders say, “the well-being of the tree branch is the well-being of the perching bird.” Isn’t that a win-win for the branch and the bird?

Not only is this WWD, a win-win for all along ethnic, religious and gender lines; for all indigenous polities (both African and Afro-Islamic civilizations); the private and public sectors, capitalists and welfarists, young and old, … etc., but also between Nigeria and our international partners, especially, the West and Global South.  With the WWD, for example, Nigeria would successfully lead in establishing legitimate liberal/Afro-democracy as part of the larger African renaissance. Hopefully, the good news is that, with the desired regime, aware of the fundamental causes of our challenges, the WWD is possible in a single term of 4 years.

This challenge is dedicated to Generation Z and PBAT, to restore the original meaning of hope, that they may come up with complementing visions or even with better alternatives. With renewed hope, we can only hope against all hopelessness that our president may, by God’s grace, be positively influenced by this.

Unfortunately, time is not on our side. May God Bless our country.