On this day in 1999, amidst pomp and pageantry, General Olusegun Obasanjo took the oath of office as president of the Federal Republic, bringing to an end some 16 years of brutal and bloody military dictatorship, and signposting another era of civil democratic government in what has commonly been accepted as the Fourth Republic.
It is important for the health of our country that the Fourth Republic has meaning, and shows its possibilities beyond the crown year; that the seed of democracy is nurtured to grow into an oak tree, and that the people are allowed, sooner rather than later, to leverage, in accordance with the constitution, on social and economic conditions for which citizens can live a good life, or to borrow the hackneyed phrase of our politicians, enjoy democracy dividends.
More crucially, the Nigeria Police Force has, in the lifetime of the Fourth Republic, been an ever-ready weapon in the hands of desperate politicians to rig elections, pervert justice and undermine democracy.
Nigeria is a Federal Republic, and the constituent parts of every other federation, globally, own whatever revenue generated from their resources and only pay an agreed percentage tax to the central government.
Even in other governmental systems as the unitary constitutional monarchy of the United Kingdom, the confederation of Canada, and the federal constitutional monarchy of the United Arab Emirates, the constituent units of the state own revenues generated from their resources and only cede an agreed percentage part to the central government.
