Introduction
Covid-19 is an infectious viral disease that broke out in Wuhan, China, in November 2019. The index case in Nigeria was announced on 17 February 2020, when an Italian national who travelled to Lagos tested positive. The country has recorded about 133,552 confirmed cases, with 107,551 recoveries and 1613 deaths, as of 2 February 2021 (NCDC 2021). The Covid-19 containment experience throughout 2020 has led to heated debates at national and local levels regarding political restructuring, fiscal federalism and resource control, as the lack of synergy and harmonised virus containment policies between the federal and state governments became more glaring (Campbell and McCaslin 2020; Dixit, Ogundeji, and Onwujekwe 2020; Iwuoha and Aniche 2020; Onyekwena and Ekeruche 2020). For example, while enforcing lockdown and physical distancing policies, many state governments infringed on exclusively federal matters by closing land borders and airports and imposing partial banking services. The situation was worsened by the fact that there are no extant laws or judicial precedence on matters of lockdown, physical distancing, quarantine, self-isolation or wearing of face masks related to pandemics.
The worsening contradictions of federal–state power and fiscal relations amid the Covid-19 crisis have had negative effects on the fight against the pandemic. For example, the federal government always bypasses both state and local governments in its appropriation of Covid-19 contingency funds as well as the selective distribution of stimulus packages and palliatives to people across the states (Human Rights Watch 2020; World Bank 2020). The paradoxes, conflicts and flaws in Nigerian federalism (Igwe 2002; Adamolekun 2005; Iwuoha 2018) critically undermine the federal and state governments’ response actions, policies and strategies for the containment of Covid-19. Against this background, this briefing examines how the conflicting federal–state power and fiscal relations are shaping the implementation of containment policies and strategies in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic in the country. The analysis is based on observation and content analysis of secondary data.
The study makes two significant contributions to knowledge. It argues that the conflicting relations and disconnects between the federal and state governments’ power and fiscal relations underlie the lack of formulation and implementation of harmonised pandemic containment policies and strategies between the two levels of government. This is a key impediment in the fight against Covid-19. Again, the study apprehends that on the one hand, the state governments generally overreach their constitutional confines by encroaching on federal responsibilities in their enforcement of Covid-19 containment policies, while, on the other hand, the federal government overbears the states and local governments by appropriating collectively owned financial resources for its exclusive use in implementing both policy and actionable frameworks in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
Political economy of Nigeria’s federal structure: the debates
This study utilises the functional process theory, as expounded by Elazar (1962), Vile (1965), Watts (1966) and Friedrich (1968), to explain the conflictual nature of federal–state relations in Nigeria and how they undermine the fight against Covid-19. The central thesis of this theory is that federalism is a dynamic process with a set of interrelationships through which a federal government and the component governments collaborate and cooperate to jointly find common solutions to their unique and diverse problems, and by so doing gradually achieve unity in diversity towards becoming progressively integrated (Friedrich 1968; Sturm 2000). However, the theory argues, fallouts and conflicts arise in the course of formulating, implementing and enforcing joint decisions towards solving common problems among the federal government and the component units (Friedrich 1968).
The functional process theory holds that in spite of constitutionally guaranteed division of the spheres of functions between the federal government and constituent governments, the different levels of government in federalism are no longer significantly independent of each other. This is because the emphasis has gradually shifted from independence to the partnership and interdependence relations in the performance of functions or responsibilities allocated to each of these levels of government. This complex interrelationship leads to undue usurpation of functional powers among the federating components; consequently, conflicts become essentially inevitable.
Federalism from this theoretical point of view is, therefore, the product of a complex process of vertical and horizontal intergovernmental administrative and fiscal relations between the central government and component governments, which is not devoid of inherent conflicts emanating from shared interactions, decision-making, implementation, adjudication and enforcement processes (Sturm 2000; Burgess 2006).
This explanatory tool helps us to appreciate the current Nigerian situation, where there is a lack of effective federal–state collaborations and harmonised pandemic containment policies and strategies. This is portrayed in the series of contradictory and countervailing policies that the federal and state governments implemented as virus containment measures. Generally, state governments are administratively and fiscally dependent on the federal government to effectively contain the spread of the virus in their domains. Despite understanding this reality, the federal government has failed to provide the necessary and appropriate platforms for collaborative partnerships towards making and implementing harmonised and coordinated pandemic containment policies. This is illustrated in some cases of flagrant breach of constitutional provisions of powers and fiscal responsibilities by both levels of government.
Involvement of tiers of government in formulating Covid-19 containment policies
For a federation that claims to be three-tiered, one may ask: whither the local governments in all of the Covid-19 pandemic responses? The 774 local governments in the federation were rendered so invisible in the fight against the pandemic that they were not even utilised in the collection of social register information and distribution of palliatives and relief materials at the grass roots, as these assignments were contracted to consultants. This is because of the overcentralised structure of management of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country, as reflected in the lopsided composition of the key agencies involved – the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and the Presidential Task Force (PTF) – which excluded the other tiers of government in the planning of virus containment measures (Nzeadibe and Ejike-Alieji 2020). Instead, the federal government bypassed both the state and local governments in the collection of social register information and distribution of relief materials, while the state government bypassed the local governments in the distribution of the relief materials they provided. The federal government contracted consultants in the distribution of palliatives at the grass roots instead of making use of the local government authorities. The consequences were numerous complaints about the palliatives not trickling down and allegations of imbalance in the distribution of relief materials to the people at the grass roots (Iwuoha et al. 2021).
Importantly, the inherent contradictory and conflictual federal–state relations have had negative effects on the fight against Covid-19. Many states infringed on exclusively federal matters (such as banking, aviation, bridges, mining, oil exploration and international borders) by closing their land borders and airports and by imposing partial banking services. The federal government imposed a lockdown on some states without their consent. According to Iwuoha and Aniche (2020), the states recorded over 70% implementation success across the board in the areas of mitigation responses that are not essentially capital intensive. These included lockdowns, movement/border restrictions, enactment of rules and deployment of security forces to enforce rules. However, the most critical areas that are capital intensive, including economic and health care responses, were almost entirely neglected and rarely implemented by over 80% of the states. Of the 36 states in Nigeria, only 16 states (44.4%) provided cash or food handouts to state residents, and only four states (11.1%) provided relief to small businesses. Although all of the states created makeshift isolation centres, only 18 states (50%) had in any way equipped their intensive care unit (ICU) facilities and acquired additional ventilators. This corroborates the testimony of the Cross River State Commissioner for Health that states lacked an adequate financial base and support from the federal government to implement Covid-19 public health measures (Premium Times 2020, 1).
Following the limited and unbalanced distribution of state resources, the poor state of health care infrastructures and facilities, lack of testing laboratories, lack of adequate health care personnel, poor treatment of infected people, and poor feeding and abandonment of infected patients in isolation centres have been widely reported across the states (The Cable 2020). On 5 May 2020, a group of Covid-19 patients at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Gombe state, and Kwadon Isolation Centre in Yamaltu, Deba, went on a rampage, damaging medical facilities, and later blocked a major highway in the state in a protest over poor treatment, causing gridlock for the motorists for at least 30 minutes, after which some of them fled the isolation centre (The Cable 2020). In Niger state, Covid-19 patients complained of poor treatment and poor feeding, and openly threatened to run away (Sahara Reporters 2020b). These scenarios are instructive, corroborating the state governments’ claim that the federal government has not been financially supportive of them in the fight against Covid-19.
Political economy of intergovernmental relations and the Covid-19 containment policies
Intergovernmental fiscal relations in the Nigerian Federation are characterised by the dependence of federal, state and local governments on the sharing of oil revenues. This dependence on federal allocations derived from oil revenues predominantly shapes intergovernmental fiscal relations. These conflictual intergovernmental fiscal relations usually deepen during oil slump periods. The oil price slumped to an all-time low at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic as various countries began to shut down their economies due to the enforcement of lockdown and social distancing policies. There was shrinkage of the international commodity demands and a consequential steep fall in the price of Nigeria’s Brent crude, from the 2020 budget projection of US$57 per barrel to US$26 a barrel (2.8 trillion naira – a US$6.05 billion deficit) on April 2020 (The Center for Policy Impact in Global Health 2020). Hence, the Nigerian economy faced serious challenges: gross domestic product (GDP) growth declined by 6.1% in the second quarter of 2020, and oil and gas revenues declined by 80%, from N5.47 trillion to N1.12 trillion, in the first quarter of 2020 (Akabueze 2020). The federal government could not make funds available to the states to support their virus containment measures. About 26 states have yet to meet the target Covid-19 testing rate. Hence, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the country is underestimated (UNDP 2020), especially in the fragile northeastern states, owing to limited testing capacity and a shortage of medical equipment and logistical necessities such as test kits, ventilators, personal protective equipment, oxygen, isolation centres, intensive care units and electricity supply. This problem is linked to the geometric increase in the number of newly infected cases.
Consequently, Nigeria witnessed a number of conflicting policy responses from the federal and state governments that showed a lack of coordination and harmonisation between the two levels of government. For example, consequent to the confirmation of the index case of Covid-19, the federal government selectively imposed a total lockdown in Abuja Federal Capital Territory, Lagos state and Ogun state, banning all movements and gatherings, except of those performing essential duties, for two weeks starting from 30 March 2020. This ban was later extended for another two weeks on 13 April 2020, after which another one-week extension was made on 27 April 2020, with Kano state now included in the lockdown.
Whilst Bayelsa state announced the closure of its sea and land borders, Kano state announced the indefinite closure of its air and land borders, and Cross River state closed its local and international borders. To clarify, international borders are generally within the legislative competency of the federal government. Sea (maritime) and air (aviation) are on the federal-exclusive list in the Nigerian Federation. Therefore, Rivers, Kano, Cross River and Bayelsa states, and other states that announced closure of sea, air and/or land borders, acted beyond their legislative competencies and bounds. This raised serious conflicts and concerns over encroachments by the states on federal powers and vice versa.
The federal government utilised the centrally coordinated NCDC and PTF to control, stem or interrupt the activities and policies of the states on Covid-19 against their will, in two ways: first, by centrally dictating the lockdown phases and imposition of curfews by proclamations of the PTF; and, second, by strictly channelling all Covid-19 funds into the NCDC and PTF, to the exclusion of the states. One example of serious conflict occurred when the Kogi state government blocked the federal government’s NCDC health officials from entering the state, insisting that the federal government has no constitutional powers to dictate how they manage the coronavirus pandemic in their state (Onyeji 2020).
These federal regulations also resulted in conflict between the federal government and the Rivers state government over the arrest of two pilots from the company Carveton Helicopters and 10 passengers, on 7 April 2020, for violating Rivers State Covid-19 Regulations and Executive Order (Vanguard News 2020b). The Federal Aviation Minister accused the Rivers state governor, who insisted he would not take orders from the federal government, of encroaching on aviation matters, which are exclusively within the legislative competence of the federal government. This raised serious tensions between the two levels of government at a time when there was an acute need for synergy in the fight against the pandemic.
This imbroglio dovetailed into another tension when the Rivers state government arrested and quarantined 22 Exxon-Mobil workers for entering Rivers state from Akwa Ibom state, thus breaching the executive order against crossing state borders (Vanguard News 2020b). This is another case of Rivers state government interference with items on the federal-exclusive list, because borders and oil exploration are outside the legislative competence of state governments. This is in addition to the fact that oil exploration activities are considered essential services, and that workers performing essential duties should not be restricted from inter-state movements.
Other states, such as Anambra, Bayelsa, Cross Rivers, Delta and Imo, announced the shutdown of airports and closure of borders, including federal roads and bridges. Anambra and Delta states blocked their respective ends of the River Niger Bridge and federal roads leading to their states from other states. This is another case of state governments overstepping their constitutional powers. The fact that the shutdown of the River Niger Bridge was announced by the Delta state government before the Anambra state government is a clear case of lack of harmonisation and coordination, which can lead to tension between the two states. More importantly, commuters travelling from one state to the other met sudden and impromptu announcements of border closures, and became stranded and clustered around state boundaries, thereby breaching physical distancing policy and facing high risk of being infected with Covid-19.
Although the Cross River state government announced an immediate closure of its own part of the international border between Nigerian and Cameroon, it resorted to the federal government for financial help in order to continue implementing the arbitrary border closure, which it lacked the constitutional powers to enforce. The Cross River state Commissioner for Health and Chairman of the Covid-19 Response Taskforce, Dr Betta Edu, stated:
What we need now is funding to completely shut our borders to Cameroon … . We are at a critical point, we are appealing to the federal government under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently support Cross River state financially. (Premium Times 2020, 1)
The Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) resolved to impose restrictions on inter-state movements except for essential commodities and services. But the federal government countered the resolution by insisting that the body had no power to impose such restrictions (Reuters 2020). Apart from the fact that the NGF is not recognised by the Nigerian Constitution, most inter-state roads in Nigeria are federal roads. In other words, a body not recognised by the constitution does not have the power to impose restrictions on inter-state travel on federal roads.
Some of these contradictory policy responses from federal and state governments have triggered tensions not only between federal and some state governments, but also among state governments. The frictions have deepened the conflictual vertical (federal–state) and horizontal (state–state) intergovernmental relations in the Nigerian Federation. A good example of such a Covid-19 policy response was the deportation of almajiris 1 by Northern state governments to their states of origin, including the Kano state’s controversial deportation of 16 confirmed Covid-19 cases to Jigawa state (Maishanu 2020). The Kano state government deported 419 almajiris to Katsina, 607 almajiris to Jigawa and 155 almajiris to Kaduna, totalling 1181 almajiris. The Kaduna state government deported 40 almajiris to Kebbi state, while Benue state government deported 17 almajiris to Bauchi and 42 to Katsina, bringing their total deportations to 59 (Agbedo 2020). On 29 April 2020, Rivers state governor Nyesom Wike deported 150 vagrants, including the almajiris, to their states of origin, which included Ebonyi, Akwa Ibom and northern states as well as the Niger Republic. Osun state government raised an alarm over the large influx of almajiris, especially Zamfara state indigenes, into the state (Agbedo 2020). On 6 May 2020, the Enugu state government intercepted and turned back nine busloads of almajiris following a failed attempt to sneak them into the state, while the Abia state government intercepted buses bringing about 100 almajiris into the state (Njoku et al. 2020). The point being made is that the lack of synergy and harmonised virus containment measures between the federal and component governments as well as between the component governments themselves resulted in conflicting coronavirus containment policy responses and actions that generally undermined the management of the coronavirus.
In the absence of extant laws, most state governments relied on executive orders to enforce some of these policies. The federal government, on the other hand, tried to rely on the outdated, pre-federal and colonial Quarantine Act of 1926, despite its inadequacy. It was based on this obsolete law that federal government proclaimed the 2020 Federal Covid-19 Regulations, on 30 March 2020. This enabled the federal government to encroach on the states’ constitutional powers without any recourse to the concurrent list, to impose or enforce some security measures against Covid-19, such as selective lockdowns (including of Lagos and Ogun), curfews, banning all movements and gatherings except of those performing essential duties, and making the use of face masks compulsory across the states, without even consulting the states to harmonise these policies. The PTF were empowered to make weekly pronouncements on these matters without any input from the states.
The Covid-19 containment experience as a justification for restructuring
The Nigerian Federation is a case of a strong centre and weak states. The creation of more states has further weakened them, such that most of the states are not economically viable (Agbu 2004; Babalola 2019; Ohiomu and Oluyemi 2019). The military created the states without considering their economic viability. This is coupled with the fiscal imbalance between the levels of government in favour of the federal government (Nwabueze 1983; Akindele, Olaopa, and Obiyan 2002; Elaigwu 2008; Suberu 2008; Ibeanu and Kuna 2016). The frictions and conflicts arising from the fight against the pandemic are shaped by more fundamental structural and systemic factors of Nigerian (fiscal) federalism. In addition, the Nigerian Federation is structured to chiefly distribute and consume oil rents. Therefore, the logical outcome of a slump in the global demand for and prices of oil in oil-revenue-dependent federations like Nigeria is a significant reduction in federal allocations, to the extent that federal and state governments can no longer meet their expenditure assignments or fund their budgets without borrowing.
Most states in the federation are not economically viable and depend on the dwindling federal allocations from oil revenue. Not surprisingly, they were not able to finance the pandemic containment policies, not to mention funding palliatives and stimulus packages. Consequently, many states waited for the federal government to release funds to them to build isolation and testing centres. As result, many of them were reactive, rather than proactive. This impeded Covid-19 testing capacities across the states, thereby aiding rather than curtailing the spread of the pandemic. This is illustrated by a controversial case in Enugu state, where a suspected case died in an unkempt makeshift isolation centre while waiting three days for her test result (Vanguard News 2020a).
Conclusion
This study has examined the underlying implications of the federal–state frictions and cantankerous relations in Nigeria for the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. The frictions have impeded the fight against Covid-19 are evidenced in the formulation, implementation and enforcement of the lockdown and physical distancing policies, as well as in the lack of capacity and complementarity in the provision and distribution of palliatives and relief materials. Anchored on our analysis of the functional process theory, we assert that the challenges of containing the spread of the pandemic have exposed the structural disconnects, defects and systemic flaws of Nigerian federalism, dependent as it is on the mono-product oil and its revenues, justifying and reinforcing the agitation for political restructuring, fiscal federalism and resource control. There is a need to restructure the Nigerian Federation in the long term to ensure viable, two-tiered federalism in line with fiscal federalism, resource control and state policing.