06/09/2025
NIGERIA UPDATE: Moving forward together
Remarks by Malam Nasir El-Rufai at an interactive session held in Owerri on 5th September 2025
PROTOCOLS
1. Let me start by expressing my gratitude to the Catholic Archdiocese of Owerri for inviting me to be one of the Okwado (supporter) of the Odenigbo 2025. Ahead of that event, my brother Right Honourable Nnaemeka Maduagwu, my colleague in the service of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, over 20 years ago, decided to host me and all of you here. Nnaemeka requested me to speak to you about any burning national issue of my choice. I have chosen to make a few remarks about true federalism. I hope this will help spark debate and introspection that will assist us all in our search for peace, progress, and prosperity for all Nigerians.
2. I believe firmly in the prospects of this country if we direct our minds to pragmatic solutions and put our hands to the heavy lifting needed for a new path forward. Across our diversity, we can move forward together, united in a common endeavour for development and prosperity. In that quest for peace, progress and development, we need elite consensus. Such a consensus ought to be constructed around the equal citizenship, rule of law, public safety and a programme of national development that invests in growing our economy and uplifting our people, an effective architecture of security, a deliberate focus on merit and a commitment to practising and maximising the potentials of federalism.
3. In my view, one of the most pressing items for elite consensus is how our governments emerge in a democratic process. We need to agree on how to build trust in the electoral process and promote citizen participation. Our country has since 1999 conducted national elections as at when due. Given our stormy history, 25 years of unbroken rule by elected governments indicates that our country is on a pathway to democratic stability. But voter turnout at presidential elections has been declining since 2007. Less than 30% of registered voters bothered to vote in 2023, down from over 60% in 2003! Also, the integrity of every presidential election result from 1999 to date has been challenged in the courts, except in 2015 when President Goodluck Jonathan personally and commendably chose not to.
4. Low voter turnout should worry every democrat because apathy by citizens who feel alienated from the political process could lead to unwelcome fragility. We should engage our citizens to find out why so many consistently forfeit their constitutional right to vote. We should try to ascertain what could encourage them to resume exercising that fundamental democratic right. This, in my view, should also include measures to assure them that the election process is free from threats of violence or coercion, while ensuring that the results would accurately reflect the preferences expressed by voters at the ballot box.
5. Can we not agree to say farewell to electoral malfeasance and any appearance of it by adopting electronic voting and real-time transmission of results to collation points without interference? I do not see any compelling argument or unbridgeable barrier to adopting electronic voting and transmission of results for the 2027 elections. Based on our experience in preparing for and conducting local government elections in Kaduna State in 2018, I believe there is adequate time today, for INEC to acquire and deploy the hard an soft infrastructure needed to deliver this for the entire country at a much lower lifecycle cost than the current, unreliable system that has repeatedly been subject to human manipulation.
6. We can adopt electronic voting machines that are designed and configured to do at least five functions:
a. integrate the simultaneous identification and verification of the voter,
b. provide a paper trail of votes cast at every polling unit,
c. shut down the system at the predetermined deadline,
d. Provide a printout of the polling unit result for each party agent, presiding officer, the media and the security agencies, and
e. seamlessly transmit the polling unit results on conclusion of voting, whichever is earlier.
7. It is a question of how eager we are to make our elections fully transparent and the level of ambition we wish to apply towards strengthening democratic stability. As alluded to earlier, when I was a state governor, we adopted electronic voting for the 2018 and 2021 local government elections in Kaduna State. In both elections, the ruling party lost some local government councils, and we lived with it. The weaknesses in the electronic voting machine process we deployed in Kaduna can be identified and eliminated, and the design robustly strengthened for a national rollout within months, if the political will exists to do so.
8. Political culture in Nigeria tends to be primarily about contriving an arithmetic for power, for those who have it and for those seeking it. That arithmetic tends to have little to do with actual policy and coherent governance. It is no surprise that political drama and manoeuvrings take more bandwidth than the substantive discourse on governance in our country. There is an urgent need for our current and prospective office holders to focus not just on an arithmetic of power, but on a national programme that addresses and solves societal problems.
9. To attain sustainable progress, our country deserves from our politicians a programme of service, a governance framework that is pragmatic about the policies to be rolled out after winning the elections, and the choices to be made to solve urgent national and subnational problems. We cannot play the politics of nostalgia when the times call for policies to prepare our people and empower them to meet the challenges of tomorrow. This concentration on the arithmetic of power has made it difficult for governance to be a consistent priority of elected governments since 1999.
10. For the sake of our people, we need to have a roadmap for beating mass poverty. It is deeply embarrassing that, judging from the population estimate in 1960, there are now more poor Nigerians than there were Nigerians at independence 65 years ago. China has beaten mass poverty, while India is on a path to ending it. We too can do it, if we make it a governance priority to move our people out of poverty. We need an economic programme to achieve this important human goal, a programme that is pragmatic in ex*****on but ambitious in its goal. In this regard, what is needed is not new agencies of poverty alleviation or ‘humanitarian affairs’ with a massive bureaucracy, but innovative ways to make honest, hardworking citizens more productive and better-rewarded, while discouraging rent-seeking and other ‘get-rich-quick’ schemes in our society.
11. Key to this is asking at least six tough questions about governance policies, strategies and and sequential implementation of reforms:
a. In pursuit of growth and development, how are we going to structure our economy to create jobs and make things or services that we can sell to other countries? How would we expand the domestic market? How quickly would we end the many restraints of trade that our farmers, manufacturers and traders confront every day?
b. Where would we unleash the genius of the market within the broader economy? In which industries should the government provide pragmatic support to build national capacity, or nurture an emerging industry, and in what form and for how long?
c. In which sectors must the economy rely solely on private enterprise, with proper regulations to foster competition and protect consumers?
d. Which policies would yield the greatest outcomes for investments made in Agriculture, Healthcare, Education, Infrastructure, Energy, ICT and manufacturing?
e. What efforts would we make to properly educate every citizen? What kind of investments in infrastructure and skills would be needed?
f. What connections would be fostered between the economy and higher education, reviewing the curriculum to ensure a fit between what the economy needs and what schools produce?
12. Our elite needs to seek a consensus on the broad purposes to which democratic power would be deployed, and the lawful constraints to the exercise of such powers. I do not think that enough attention is being directed to the emergence of a binding grammar of politics, the kind of political norms that would imbue our politics with certain standards, no matter the party that is in power. Our political culture should be built on respect for the rule of law, the equality of all citizens and respect for their fundamental human rights. We need a strong and honest judiciary and well-resourced police services at federal, state and local government levels to deter crime, remove unlawful restraints of trade, and build citizen confidence that their lives and livelihoods are safe.
13. There are at least five other aspects of national life for which we need to build and implement consensus. These include:
a. Federalism
b. Citizenship
c. Prioritising Education, Health and other public goods
d. Addressing the concerns of youths, especially jobs and freedom from harassment, and
e. Security
14. Security has become a source of existential concern cross Nigeria. From Boko Haram in the North-East, to kidnapping and banditry in the North-West, Farmer-Herder and communal clashes in North-Central, and parts of South-West, pipeline vandalism and militancy in the South-South worsened by unknown gunmen attacks engaged in wanton criminality in the South-East, the lives and livelihoods of our people are not what they used to be. My views about dealing with these challenges have been repeatedly articulated in the past, including decentralizing our internal security architecture including ensuring policing at not just federal, but at state and local government levels.
15. This country was founded as a federation, but it appears that there are very few committed federalists in Nigeria. Recent experience would seem to suggest that federalism is a concept often touted by those seeking power who promptly forget about it once suitably empowered. Our experience in the First Republic, as well as the consensus of scholars have credited federalism with helping to advance inter-ethnic unity, democratic stability, and socio-economic development. The intrusion of a unitary, centralising mindset from the 1970s onwards appears to have limited these well-known attributes of federalism.
16. My personal view is that promoting federalism is in the interest of Nigeria’s progress and development. The attempt to run Nigeria as a unitary polity runs contrary to its founding constitutional structure and denies its rich diversity. The Federal Government has since the 1970s acquired more powers and resources but it does too much but too little well. More powers, resources and responsibilities should be devolved to the states, including policing. I welcome the progress made in the 2023 constitutional amendment that moved electricity and railways to the concurrent list, thereby allowing states to own, operate and regulate entities in those sectors. But we should go further and implement the recommendations made in 2018 by the APC Committee on True Federalism which I chaired.
17. In moving forward together, we should strive to be a nation of merit, putting our best forward in the mighty effort needed for economic development.
18. My hope is that Nigerians will unite in a common endeavour for national prosperity and development. We have the capacity to be better than we are. We need a collective vision along with personal merit to make our country a better place. We have amused ourselves for far too long in ruinous divisions. We do not have to wallow in that mud of stagnation.
19. Many thanks to Nnaemeka Maduagwu, Jasper Azuatalam and Uche Diala for their support.
Nasir El-Rufai
Owerri, Imo State
September 5th, 2025
