Derivation Formula

Derivation Formula: The Awolowo Initiative

ONE day, they say, begins a story, and so it is with the issue of derivation principle as a formula for revenue allocation. Also, it seems Nigerians can realise how much they owe to the founding fathers of the Republic such as Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Alhaji Aminu Kano, Chief Joseph Tarka and Harold Dappa-Biriye.

These men, carried out such great acts of socio-political engineering, for good or for bad, for Nigeria that this generation and many more to come will still have to live under their influence, adding little or nothing to what they did or failed to do.

That is why it always proves highly rewarding each time one of the few surviving elder statesmen or pre-Independence activists granted a reporter a chance for a conversation. When Chief Dappa-Biriye accepted to a chat with The Post Express on his 80th birthday, the exercise ejected an echoing revelation on how exactly derivation formula which seems to be a dreaded capsule, came into existence in Nigerias political economy.

Several years before 1953, Nigeria ate from one plate in the sense that it operated a national economy. The produce from the regions then was exported, and the income came back into a common pool. What was not used up was saved in Britain as foreign reserve. As at 1953, Nigerias foreign reserves had reached the 100 million pounds mark.

At the advent of the MacPherson constitution which gave each of the regions self-accounting government, one of the three political gladiators then, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, dipped into the foreign saving/reserve and whistled to himself. As far as he was concerned, cocoa was the countrys major export commodity and a hot cake in the international market.

He squinted at the 100 million pounds, sniffed around the huge amount, and the whiff smelt almost of cocoa. Sure, cocoa must have fetched the country most of that money. Awolowo, according to the survivors of pre-Independence politics, told everybody to hold-on. Before going ahead as regional governments or powers, what was saved as one Nigeria must be shared to the three regions. No problem, the others chorused.

As it must be shared according to how it was earned, Awo pursued. We do not know if our political economists of that time used pocket calculators,or whether they consulted the times-table at the back of exercise books to solve complicated arithmetical problems, but at the end, the £100 million was shared thus:

Western Region (cocoa), £53m;

Northern Region (Cotton, etc) £23 million;

Eastern Region (Palm produce) £16 million (lets forget the fractions).

Everybody went home, whether smiling or not, but they went home in peace all the same. By the benefit of elder Dappa-Biriye?s hindsight, we can also show how each regional leader applied (not looted) his own share, each accruing to the character trait of his people. Awolowo immediately embarked on the building of such structures as the Cocoa House in Ibadan and the Western Nigeria House in Lagos. The rest he invested in providing abundant life to the Westerners. Afterall, his party, the Action Group, had abundant life as its motto. Ahmadu Bello had a vast region to look after. He used his £23 million to reach down the ladder to touch the lives of both the Sarikins and the talakawas. He realised the need to rise fast and meet up with the south in his bid to build his Hausa/Fulani hegemony.

For what Zik did with his meagre £16 million, it is better to hear it directly from the father of the Ijaw nation. You know Igbo people are traders, whether you like it or not. Igbos hate to eat their capital. So, Zik saved his £16 million until it became £22 million! Yes, Zik nursed his share of the money until it became just £1 million short of his immediate superiors. Had all of them been allowed to continue the race until date, Zik and his region would be competing for the country with the highest foreign reserve, probably with the strongest local currency. But that is not the issue, after all, arguments abound to show that money invested is better than money saved, but both are better than money consumed. Money, however, is meant to be spent, as Dappa-Biriye echoed Awo.

When the army struck in 1966, a unitary system of government emerged, which unified the nations revenue, and money was spent from the Federal capital. Between then and now derivation formula has danced Congo music, just as the kings of the economy has changed; from cocoa to groundnut, and now crude oil. Who knows what it will be tomorrow and from whose backyard. At a point, derivation became zero, later 1.5 per cent, 3 per cent, and today, something that looks like 13 per cent.

People of the Niger Delta from where oil is derived cannot understand why this Awo formula cannot be adopted as the only way the countrys wealth should be shared. What Awo, Zik and Ahmadu Bello did in the 50s and 60s remain the best thing for Nigeria today but when it comes to revenue allocation, it becomes something else.

According to Dappa-Biriye, derivation as a revenue formula has continued to be neglected because the Ijaw people or the Niger Delta zone from where crude oil is derived, remain a minority in the places where the issue is discussed and decided. In Nigerias scheme of things, democratic truth is that which is upheld by the majority. Had crude oil been found as a mainstay of the national economy from the bigger tribes the Awolowos could have risen from the dead to revive the 1953 agreement, and derivation would have since taken its place of pride among other revenue sharing options.

The truth is that those who have ruled Nigeria over the years have drawn and re-drawn the map of Eastern Nigeria in their bid to play the oil politics. To them, any spot that bled oil should not be called core-east or Igbo. Had oil been located in great quantity in a place like Owerri, the Imo state capital it would have been answering Rumuowerri, belonging to either Rivers or Bayelsa state.
If this is the time to redress injustice, then let us redress all injustices because injustice half-righted is on itself another form of injustice.

If Imo or Abia state seems at war with Rivers or Bayelsa over boundaries or oil wells, the fault is not in them but in their slave masters. All they need do is look up a little and they will see their common enemy chuckling over the stolen apple. Before implementing a healthy and justifiable derivative formula, a well-meaning federal government must revisit the boundaries and call a spade a spade. A situation where a mans large compound is shared into two, each belonging to a different states, depending on which part of the compound had oil, is a mere laughing stock.

If not redressed before applying derivation as a principle, our prediction as journalists covering the Niger Delta is that from Calabar to Uyo, Port Harcourt to Yenagoa, Asaba to Warri, boundary wars will take such proportion as the Croats and the Serbs in Yugoslavia. The cash acquired from the new oil windfall will go to arms merchants and coffin markers. Gravediggers may become scarce to find in the region. It may mean nothing to the oppressors and slave masters at the short run, but later, much later, the inferno will consume all, both those who designed it and those who it was designed to destroy.

The architects of Nigerias Independence and the nations founding fathers are few now. Lets listen to the few we still have left. Dappa-Biriye has said it all; a properly implemented derivation formula, based on justice, fairness and equity, will not only solve almost of all the conflicts in the polity, it will also set the new Nigeria on a strong and virile footing for many more years to come.

This is our chance, lets take it or regret it forever!

The author is a journalist based in Port Harcourt