*By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, during the presentation of his budget proposals for 2024 to Nigeria’s National Assembly, the first full year of appropriations under his presidency, identified human asset development, poverty reduction and fighting insecurity as his priorities. In the first week of February this year, his official spokesperson, Bayo Onanuga, appeared to have forgotten his boss’ commitment when he acknowledged that 133 million Nigerians were multi-dimensionally poor, but claimed that this had nothing to do with the Federal Government. According to Onanuga, the states and local governments were responsible for that.
On the same day, some 450 kilometres away, Vice-President Kashim Shettima provided a full rebuttal of Onanuga’s escape into sovereign abdication. The occasion was the launch of the stakeholder consultation by the South-East Development Commission (SEDC) to unveil its regional development plan called the South-East Vision 2050 (SEV2050). At the event, Shettima went beyond merely reaffirming the Federal Government’s leadership and responsibility to eliminate poverty. He also underscored that this had to be “inclusive, sustainable, and anchored on peace and productivity.”
The event in Enugu was the coming-out promenade of the SEDC. The Commission is one of the seven regional development commissions now in existence under President Tinubu’s Ministry of Regional Development. There is one for each of the country’s six geopolitical zones in addition to the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), the oldest and richest of the development commissions.
SEV2050 was clearly a pitch for political support and constituency building by the SEDC, which achieved the significant feat of lining up the public support of the governors of all five states in the southeast. By contrast, when its counterpart in the north-west organized a similar event at the beginning of the year, none of the seven governors of the zone attended, and invitees were guests of the Senate North-West Caucus.
As its primary mission, the SEDC Act of 2024 charges the Commission with responsibility to “receive and manage funds from allocations of the Federation Account for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of roads, houses and other infrastructural damages suffered by the region as a result of the Civil War….” The SEDC is the only regional development commission with an explicit mission of post-war reconstruction, and one question the consultation put before the Commission was reconstruction from which war?
Anambra State Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, addressed this question in his remarks, arguing that the region was in recovery from not one war but “two major wars”. One was the Nigeria-Biafra war, which was supposed to have officially ended on 15 January 1970. The second was what he called “an internal war of self-destruction that has been on since 2021.” Some people may argue that his dating of this second conflict from 2021 is either artificial or unrealistically recent. It was notable that Governor Soludo failed to say who the parties were in this second war. Pointedly, however, he noted that “after the (first) civil war, there was a promise of rehabilitation and reconstruction; and…. this is yet to happen.” What he left unsaid was that the failure to fulfill that promise made what he described as the second war all but inevitable. Whether that was deliberate or inadvertent is immaterial.
Even as it sought to project an ambition over the next quarter-century, the SEV2050 consultation could not escape the enduring backdrop of reconstruction that frames its search for a mission. The mistake will be to focus on brick and mortar and forget to prioritise a reconstruction of minds, memories, and mentalities.
Vice-President Shettima acknowledged as much with some deftness in his opening remarks when he paid tribute to “a region defined not only by memory, but by motion.” Like Governor Soludo, what he left unsaid was even more eloquent. It was impossible to miss the fact that he felt unable to affirm that this motion led to movement or progress.
How to transform motion into movement, and ultimately to regional progress, more than half a century after the end of the conflict whose memory continues to define independent Nigeria is what the SEDC seeks.
On show were early signs of constructive competition among the states of the Southeast. It begs to be harnessed. But even as the states competed to advertise their states in Enugu, the event equally advertised the daunting challenges that confront the Commission.
Three were evident. One is a crisis of mismatched expectations. In Enugu, Governor Soludo illustrated this burden. Having advised the Commission to be realistic in its ambitions, he nevertheless asked it to lead the delivery of a “Marshall Plan” for the south-east, a reference to the US-led plan for Europe’s reconstruction after World War II. According to the governor, this Marshall Plan should include a regional security framework and “super inter-state infrastructure” such as regional railways and regional highways.
The problem, however, is that an SEDC that purports to lead on the former is likely to antagonize the state governors, and a Commission that claims to lead on the latter will also be on a fool’s errand. At a controversial encounter with the Senate Committee on the SEDC this past week, it emerged that the Commission received only 16 billion Naira over its first 16 months of existence, and in fact, none in its first nine months. It has so far received no capital funds.
Two, is the problem of evolving a viable business model for the SEDC. In establishing the regional development commissions, President Tinubu did not clearly articulate a mission or strategy for them. They were instead expected to find their path through the foliage of Nigeria’s bureaucratic and political Byzantiums. In the absence of this clarity of mission, the commissions labour under a mismatch between expectation and reality.
Within the various regions, ordinary citizens crave instant attention from the commissions. Ranged against them, political elites from the regions see a new patronage vehicle to be milked in the model of the NDDC.
For long, the NDDC has defined the business model of the regional development commissions. Under this model, these commissions operate largely as front offices for extortion, which holds the fate of citizens of the concerned region(s) hostage in carve-ups by political insiders who share development funds as private loot.
By 2022, according to one report on the NDDC, “12,000 out of 13,377 projects were abandoned after paying trillions of Naira for them.” They have been largely ineffectual as development agents. Replicating this will be the kiss of death for the SEDC. To fail to do so will attract blackmail from politicians under the ruse of oversight.
Three, therefore, SEDC will face a push-back from the usual species of greedy political grubbiness. The event in Enugu had in attendance the Vice-President, the Governors of all the south-east States, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who was represented by the Majority Leader, Professor Julius Ihonvbere.
But it was impossible not to notice the absence of the Chairman of the SEDC Committee in the Senate and former Governor of Abia State, Orji Uzor Kalu; his counterpart in the House of Representatives, Chris Nkwonta; and the man who refers to himself as “Number Six Citizen”, Deputy Speaker, Benjamin Kalu. Senator Orji Kalu reportedly sent one of his daughters to represent him. She holds no relevant public office. Anyone who thinks the near-collective absence of the National Assembly caucus of the region was a coincidence misunderstands how the place works.
The SEV2050 event in Enugu was arguably as successful as its planners could have hoped, and it appears the SEDC will not be short of goodwill or ideas as it sets out on its mission. Quite clearly, it will also not lack adversaries. Post-war reconstruction is an existential undertaking. The SEDC has neither the resources nor the latitude for the errors that have defined the NDDC. If the Commission can be confined to its mission and secure protection against baleful political extortion from predictable sources, it may lay durable foundations under its current leadership for a business model suited to its unique and historic mission.
*A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu.This is a slightly revised version of an article first published February 8-10 2025*
