A pro-restructuring organisation, the Core Federalists (CF) founded by the late Comrade Yinka Odumakin and a few others, has re-emphasised the urgent need for restructuring of Nigeria, calling on all the presidential candidates running for office in the 2023 presidential election to make it a fundamental objective of their campaigns.
The group made this call in a release titled: “Restructuring of Nigeria; A Call For Urgent Action,” and signed by Ambassador Humphrey Orjiako, Chief Handel Okoli and Comrade Mark Adebayo, saying the call became imperative as it had with serious concern noticed that the issue of restructuring Nigeria had not gotten the kind of attention it deserves in the conversations now that “the 2023 general elections knock on our doors.”
CF, while making the call after its meeting in Lagos, posited that no issue more important and urgent than restructuring in present-day Nigeria due to the fact that almost all the challenges the country was battling with namely: insecurity, underdevelopment, economic backwardness, massive corruption and inter-ethnic distrust, among others were not unconnected with the warped structure of the country that, according to it, was not only unsustainable but also unworkable.
The group asserted that shifting campaign to issue having to do with restructuring by candidates to the top seat was to assure Nigerians that the next president would restructure the country in a way beneficial to all the six geo-political zones in the land, just as it expressed the belief that restructuring the country would go a long way to ensure equity, justice, peace and the elusive development in Nigeria.
“As the 2023 general elections knock on our doors, the Core Federalists as an organisation has noticed with serious concern that the issue of restructuring Nigeria has not gotten the kind of attention it deserves in the conversations around the elections.
“We, in the CF, believe that there is no issue more important and urgent than restructuring in present-day Nigeria due to the fact that almost all the challenges the country is battling with – insecurity, underdevelopment, economic backwardness, massive corruption and inter-ethnic distrust, religious violence and allied crises – are not unconnected with the warped structure of the country that is not only unsustainable but also unworkable,” the group said.
“Obviously it has not worked for us judging by Nigeria’s recent and not-so-recent history,” it added.
Speaking further, the group reminded Nigerians that the country’s golden era was the period it ran a system of True Federalism from 1958 to 1966 before the military putsch truncated the First Republic and the federal structure that sustained it up to that point.
According to it, Nigeria functioned far better under real Federalism than it had under a unitary system that had drawn it backwards by several decades and rendered it incapable of competing with the same league of nations like Singapore, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil and others.
“Restructuring Nigeria to make it function optimally as a country of multiplicity of language, culture and religion is an urgent imperative.
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“We believe strongly that development and peace will continue to elude Nigeria if the federating units – geopolitical zones, states and local government areas – are considered mere appendages to the so-called Federal Government to which the former must kowtow for monthly handouts without the capacity to determine the direction they want their communities to proceed and the development templates they wish to apply as relevant to their environments.
“There is no gainsaying the fact that this type of system discourages productivity and kills creativity and consequently stifles development.
“It is even worse than the federating units are denied the authority and plans of how they can effectively defend themselves against internal aggressors that terrorise their communities. Nigeria is today at war with itself, yet the federating units are denied the authority to protect themselves by a Federal Government that has woefully failed to secure the territorial integrity of the country,” CF stated.
“The current Unitary structure of Nigeria has over time demonstrated its lack of capacity to guarantee manifest justice, peace and overall development.
“It is a system customised to generate distrust, strife, stifled development and peace. It is the reason why Nigeria has remained egregiously backward on all indices of socioeconomic development and does not know peace nationwide.
“One reality that we cannot run away from is that, considering the current state of the country’s insecurity, even the seat of government at the centre is threatened by terrorists and that Nigeria is a rapidly failing country that must be urgently rescued. The recent easy access and attack on the Kuje prison protected by the military, the Police and other security agencies points exactly to that reality.
“We guarantee that True Federalism in a restructured Nigeria birthed from a true people’s Constitution with a national consensus built across the board nationwide, will make securing the country much more effective than the current subterfuge.
“In this respect, we consider it imperative that the report of the 2014 National Confab and 2018 All Progressives Congress Committee Report on restructuring headed by the Kaduna State Governor, His Excellency Nasir El-Rufai, be revisited with an open mind by the incoming government because there is no need re-inventing the wheel on this all-important issue,” the group added.
CF, therefore, demanded that each of the presidential candidates running for office in the 2023 presidential election makes public their restructuring plans for Nigeria, saying this was informed by the incontrovertible fact that there was no manifesto or leadership capacity, no matter how good on paper and in practice, that could deliver the required results in a unitary system that currently subsists in Nigeria.
“A perfect policy thrust will be frustrated by a faulty, badly engineered structure that Nigeria currently operates,” it warned.
“More than promises, we demand assurances from the presidential candidates that whoever wins will make restructuring Nigeria a distinct priority.
“We call on all Nigerians to see restructuring as the irreducible minimum agenda that we require to save the country and should make it a point of critical action to support and vote for a presidential candidate who is unequivocally committed to restructuring Nigeria. That is our saving grace that must be embraced by all,” it posited.
Meanwhile, the Core Federalists (CF) said has based on the concern to have the country restructured rejected and condemned the renewed efforts to pass what it termed “the notorious and totally unacceptable Water Resources Bill that seeks to further weaken the states’ control over their land spaces as expressly guaranteed in the Land Use Act.”
The group described the move as a crude attempt to take away from the states the little powers they had over their lands and a deceptive way of re-introducing the rejected Ruga policy of the President Muhammadu Buhari- led government, adding that the bill if passed into law was meant to seize ancestral lands from their owners and redistribute same to those who had no connection whatsoever to those lands, including those whose nationality was questionable.
“This is certain to exacerbate the insecurity in the country and provoke intractable inter-ethnic tension and war. The Water Resources Bill must be dropped finally and never considered for deliberation by the National Assembly.
“We call on all state Assemblies to throw out this iniquitous Bill if, by any way, it gets to their legislative Houses. This is a Bill that will further shatter the country’s peace and remove any semblance of unity that remains in Nigeria. Drop it now!” CF argued.
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