What will it take to get proportional representation in Nigeria?

As I listened in on the discussions of a committee of Harvard Law School students planning for an African Law conference in April 2010, I was surprised to hear that apparently there are some who are of the view that law plays little or no role in development. I volunteered that it would be interesting to have a debate about that. But I kept thinking about the role of law to ‘develop’ a society, community or country or even the role of law in influencing and changing culture – such as the way Mary Slessor’s work in Nigeria made it illegal to murder twins. The way we now practically worship twins and multiple births, and pray ‘ibeji’ and ‘ibeta’ for brides, no one would guess that less than one hundred years ago we rejected this as a blessing.

Nigeria does badly in many indices: our democracy and press under the Freedom House list; our corruption under Transparency International, the ease of doing business by the World Bank, our ability to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, our literacy rates, our infant mortality, our maternal mortality, on and on ad infinitum.

When asked what holds us back many people say corruption, however, and not in any way to trivialize corruption, politics in the United States is highly corrupt (it is just effectively isolated from the provision of basic services and development policies) and there are other parts of the world such as South Africa and Italy, where there is corruption, but things still work and they are not lagging behind on almost every development index.

There are other things that hold us back, including our laws. What the laws say, what they are about (National Assembly do we really need: HB. 182 A Bill for an Act to Establish the National Institute of Nigerian Philosophers and to Make Provisions for Determining the Standard of Knowledge and Skill to Be Attained by Persons Seeking to Become Professional Philosophers and for Other Connected Purposes?) and whether the laws are practical and enforceable and if there is the will to ever enforce them.

As we prepare for the 2011 elections and discuss the changes to our Constitution and the Electoral Act one thing that keeps coming up is having a system of proportional representation – for women, the physically challenged and other unrepresented minorities. Think of a better more realistic version of ‘federal character’ where we would make sure that our legislature actually reflects the ‘Nigerian character’ – which is almost 50% women. Today, women make up only 7.0% of the House of Representatives (hardly representative) and 8.3% in the Senate, making us 116^th out of 136 on yet another index. (http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm).

To put this in perspective we are only a few points above Somalia in terms of women representation in parliament and below, the Congo and Sao Tome & Principe. Two out of the first three countries in the world with the highest female representation are African: Rwanda has overtaken Sweden as number one with 56.3% and 34.6% in its lower and upper house respectively and South Africa is third highest in the world with 44.5% and 29.6% respectively.

Apparently, part of the Uwais Report on electoral reform, which to my knowledge has never been made public in its entirety, recommends that we adopt the proportional representation system which is designed to ensure that the legislative body reflects the voting strength of the electorate. However, the recommendation is not to amend the constitution but to amend the Electoral Act to force parties to reserve 30% of their seats for women (and 2% for those with physical disabilities), without prejudice to the right to also compete for representation outside this reserved seats- so that arguably, women could have more than 30% representation. This is the election law quota option.

There are two other avenues to using law to improve female representation. One is with constitutional quotas – where the constitution expressly reserves seats for women in the national law making body, as is the case in Burkina Faso, Uganda and Rwanda. After the genocide in Rwanda, women’s participation in the drafting of the new constitution resulted in a provision which reserves 24 out of 80 in the lower house and 6 out of 20 in the Senate. This means 30% of the seats is firmly held for women and they can vie for more.

The other is through political parties which is the system used in South Africa, where after years of apartheid, the ANC reserves 50% of its candidate lists for women and now they are ahead of us on this and many development curves, even though we arguably have more experience as a democracy give or take a few coups. In the political parties quota system, the political parties adopt internal laws which reserve a certain percentage of positions for female candidates – and with the ANC being the most popular party, this has resulted in increased women representation across the country.

It is widely acknowledged amongst development specialists that the inclusion of women, who usually make up half or more of the population, in decision making and their involvement in public and private enterprise improves the development indices of a country. This is the major thesis behind the push to educate females, provide financial independence through micro financing and provide platforms for greater participation.

The practice of proportional representation is not without its drawbacks. In Pakistan, where local government reform mandates 33% representation of women, most of the women elected, when interviewed, confessed to being mere proxies for husbands, male relatives, heads of clans or even landlords and forced to vote based on instructions from these people. And there are rich countries like the United States with only 10% female representation or some, like Nepal, with high female participation who continue to struggle with development.

Proponents of proportional representation are not saying that increased women representation will lead to immediate improvement in our physical, mental and cultural development. It took Sweden thirty years of practicing proportional representation to get where they are – but today Sweden has one of the best standards of living in the world according to the Human Development Report and some of the reasons are their high levels of education, democracy, income and public health.

Nigeria has nothing to lose if we legally adopt proportional representation in any one of the three available options. The same way we now see value in multiple births is the same way we will see the value in increased participation of women in governance.

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Can we decentralize Power generation?

I read with glee that last week between 5000 -10,000 people in Lagos marched to the Lagos State Secretariat to peacefully protest the crippling lack of power in Nigeria. Just a few months ago, angry youth in Zaria had protested about electricity as well. Hopefully the manufacturing sector and private businesses will join in the clamour for something to be done about the disgraceful lack of power in the blind giant of Africa.

I read with gloom that another $4.6 billion as been allegedly spent on power generation this year – this in addition to the controversial $16B which we are told is really $3.6 billion, spent by the Obasanjo administration on the same power sector.

And yet, by all indications it is doubtful if we will get as much as 4000 megawatts by the end of 2009.

As I pointed out in a previous article – ‘PHCN get rid of your freeloaders’; apart from the all pervading selfish interests of a few Nigerians, the problem lies with the Electric Power Sector Reform Act 2005 (the ‘EPSR Act’), the 1999 Constitution and the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).

States have a right under the Section 14 of the Concurrent List of the 1999 Constitution to generate electricity for areas not covered by the national grid but Section 63(1) of the EPSR Act deliberately restricts this right by requiring State power projects to be licensed by NERC.

Why? Why is it so important for the Federal Government to maintain control over State production of electricity? Why did the Obasanjo administration scuttle the efforts of Lagos State to independently power the State? Could it be because if States take control of power generation it will become glaring to Nigerians that the lack of power that we suffer from is not for lack of solutions but for lack of will?

We know that the Federal Government does not have a monopoly over the process of power generation, so why do the executives act like it does? The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Bonny Utility Company funded with only $5million dollars in 2001 by Shell, Total, Eni and NNPC has managed to provide its customers with power 95% of the time. According to the article: “clients get power free of charge, up to a certain limit…and now has over 8000 paying customers. The revenue from paying customers covers half of the company’s costs and has created previously impossible public service and commercial opportunities, including a doubling of operations at a hospital”. Since 2005, a similar arrangement is supposedly benefiting the forty thousand people who live in Onelga, in Delta State and more and more of these independent power projects are being executed – badly when government is involved and successfully when managed privately.

The crux: decentralize power generation in Nigeria. As the National Assembly gears up to finally tackle the issue of constitutional reform, at the top of their list should be to give States more constitutional powers. The Federal Government has had close to fifty years to get power (and many other things) right and has failed.

Instead of the ridiculous collaborative arrangement where the Federal Government, States and Local Governments are to contribute billions of dollars from their Excess Crude allocations revenue accounts to the rehabilitation of existing power plants and new power projects under the National Integrated Power Programme (NIPP), why don’t the States get a chance to manage power generation instead of the constant excuses we get from the FG, its Ministry of Power, PHCN and most recently, NERC? Are the States and Local Governments also going to be involved in awarding the contracts and appointing the people who are going to be responsible for executing the projects?

One of the reasons for federalism is to aid development, yet our Constitution has helped to cripple the States so that they are ineffective. From all indications, one of the main issues for consideration for the constitutional review is the creation of more states. Arguably at least one reason why the clamour for more States is so loud is because people are frustrated with the lack of development and think that if every hamlet was a capital and every chief a governor, development will magically appear. What we need is States with more powers – ironically since we model ourselves on the American presidential system, why are we not considering the United States Constitution, which gives the States a lot more power and independence than our States have?

Competition within the States and most critically, at least for now, within the power sector is absolutely vital for the development of Nigeria and Pastor Sam Adeyemi, the organizer of the protests in Lagos sums it up nicely: "We call on the Federal Government to break the monopoly of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria and allow private investors and state governments to generate and distribute electricity. The strategy that worked for telecommunications should be made to work for power supply."

If we amend the Constitution to allow States to generate electricity, we can also simultaneously privatize PHCN and reduce the bureaucracies of having NERC and a Federal Ministry of Power. The difference under this scenario is that Nigerians will not be held to ransom if the usual privatisation process results in the NITEL or petroleum refinery scenarios.

Like anything there are disadvantages to providing the States with more power but the benefits outweigh the risks and at this point in our history, shouldn’t we be ready to try something different? I can predict the naysayers who will talk about uneven development but this is just an excuse for mediocrity – our development is uneven, both within and outside the country. If competition between the States and within the power sector will result in more electricity for consumers, most Nigerians will support this – after all, the majority of us are not benefiting from the inefficiencies of our power sector.

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