CONTRARY to the interior minister’s recent claim, bad governance is not the cause of the recurring collapse of political systems. It is only a symptom of a deeper systemic malaise — an undemocratic dispensation that allows the rulers to escape political and institutional accountability for their ills and excesses. The minister’s panacea for bad governance — the creation of more provinces — is also misconceived, if not potentially disastrous for a country already riddled with multiple fault lines.

Enforcing central authority over multiple sub-national units has become increasingly difficult for authoritarian states or contested governments. Nigeria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Somalia are some of the many countries that have a large number of provinces; yet they are perennially afflicted with bad governance, fractious territories, economic meltdowns, civil wars, armed insurgencies and institutional breakdowns.

The genesis of our systemic maladies can also be traced to a combination of undemocratic and authoritarian models that have been tried for decades on various pretexts — ideology, faith, stability, security, integrity, development, etc — to elude a legitimate federal democracy. Therefore, the answer to key political questions regarding the state’s foundational objectives, system of governance, people’s rights and liberties, and the distribution of resources within the federation and among the people has never been attempted. These are basic questions that the first generation of a political leadership must respond to, by way of a social compact that secures legitimacy, recognition, order and cohesion for the newborn state. Else, these questions hover over regicide, fratricide and every revolt or revolution.

The........

© Dawn