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In an era when many critical stakeholders have chosen the path of silence, submission, or sycophancy, it is refreshing—if not redemptive—to hear the clear, courageous voice of Da Jonathan Sunday Akuns (Galadima Daffo) in Bokkos Local Government Area of Plateau State, speaking truth to power. His recent interview in The Guardian newspaper is not just a rare intervention; it is, in fact, a lifeline thrown to a nation adrift in the turbulent waters of insecurity, ethnic tension, and constitutional dilemma.
It’s time for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to embrace the path of restoring the polity to political stability, economic prosperity and social justice; he must take Da Akuns’ words not just as advisory, but as a blueprint—an urgent prescription from a patriotic father to a failing household.
The Root of the Rot: A Structural Trap
At the heart of Akuns’ thesis is the simple yet profound recognition that our national insecurity is not just about bad people doing bad things—it is about a bad structure incentivising the worst in us. What we call “insecurity” in Nigeria is too often a misdiagnosis. In reality, it is a twin-struggle for political power ascendancy and for livelihood acquisition for survival in pursuit of happiness in lifespan, which are acute and deftly intensified by the ethnic imbalance that has defined Nigeria’s governance experience.
Akuns introduces the concept of “structural stasis”—a condition in which every government, no matter how well-meaning, becomes trapped by a system designed to fail due to recursive measures; thus, policies meant to solve problems become problems themselves. This is coupled with absence of strong national consensus, persistent questions of legitimacy, and endemic cyclical policy reversals that are not random; they are symptoms of a structural system built on unworthy foundations.
Bad Governance by Design
What many call bad governance is, in Akuns’ analysis, a natural result of public officers, civil servants, and even security agents using their office or status to advance ethnic cum religious interests rather than national ones; it is accentuated by the long period of military rule and attendant imposed unitary governance under the guise of a ‘strong’ federalist government. This is not simply witnessing corruption, but watching a structure reward its true loyalists: the ethnic elites that consist of politicians, bureaucrats, monarchs, clergies and moguls.
This is why Nigeria remains a battlefield of grievances—from livestock herders grazing in people’s bedrooms at night to state-sanctioned silence when citizens cry out for help. This is why doctrines of engagement by security forces often result in helpless watching rather than active defense of citizens.
The Ethnic Power Game
Akuns draws a devastating link between ethnic power monopoly and organized violence. With just three ethnic groups—Fulani, Yoruba, and Ijaw—ever occupying Nigeria’s highest office, out of over 250 (or 389 in some studies), the rest of the country is left with two options: wait endlessly or fight desperately. Sadly, many choose the latter, fuelling the cycles of gangsterism, banditry, insurgency, and communal conflict. As Akuns observes, “what we call insecurity is often not insecurity per se; it is strategy” for political power ascendancy and its attendant scheming for survival and relevance in the arena. That strategy involves weaponizing ethnic loyalties and primordial cleavages, undermining legitimacy of government, and withholding governance consensus in order to keep governance in a state of perpetual crisis. No nation can survive this indefinitely but as an ultimate recipe for implosion.
The Call to Restructure — and return to true federalism
Akuns is not offering vague rhetoric. He calls for a return to the 1963 Republican Constitution, not as an act of nostalgia but as an act of national rescue. That constitution, emerged from a bottom-up democratic process by the consent of the people and reflects the will of ethnonational identities, offered the only true taste of global best practices of pristine federalism Nigeria has known. It lasted a paltry period of 2 years, 3 months and 2 weeks from 1st October 1963 to 14th January 1966 for it evolve to the exigent requirements of contemporary era.
The avowed democratic antecedents of PBT provide the auspicious opportunity to embark on the first amendment of the 1963 constitution; by a legislative process, lift its suspension imposed by military decree, amend it with current realities cum provenance of existing 36 littoral states vide ethnonational referenda cum boundary adjustments for a constitutional democracy that works for all in Nigeria.
Under the federalist tenets of the 1963 constitutional system, the federating units had autonomy, resource control, ethnic harmony and local security administration through self-governing constitutions.
Today’s centralised governance system emerged from an avalanche of military decrees from Decree 1 of 1966 to Decree 24 of 1999; these are military laws aimed at regiment its violence-prone members from competing for political power seized from civil authority by force and violence. It is simply a military political process to manage ‘stolen’ power and not a grundnorm for civil governance, especially for a personae with democratic accolades of PBT; it is the very opposite, and a Frankenstein structure that has outlived its usefulness and legitimacy in civil governance.
In the model of a constitutional democracy offered by Akuns, Nigeria can finally move from ethnic hostility to ethnic harmony. Let each group govern its own affairs, contribute to the centre, and maintain loyalty based on respect, not repression. That is federalism. That is freedom and liberty of the local identity of residents over their land and people.
A Final Note to PBAT
President Tinubu, this is not just another call for reform. This is a constitutional rescue mission. You are uniquely positioned, not just as a President from the southern bloc of Nigeria, but as a political beneficiary of a broken system who now has a historic opportunity to fix the system for an enduring legacy ad infinitum.
The blood on our farmlands, streets and homes; the bitterness in the hearts of members of our communities, and the banditry on our highways all trace back to one root: a structure built on inequality, sustained by impunity, and defended by elites who benefit from the chaos.
To ignore Akuns’ prescription is to embrace continued bloodshed. To adopt it is to begin the journey from state failure to national restoration; Time to act is now!
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