NASS critical to Nigeria’s turnaround for better ―Prof Akinyemi

A professor of linguistics and African languages, University of Florida, Professor Akintunde Akinyemi has identified legislators, especially members of the National Assembly, as critical if the nation were to turnaround for the better.

Akinyemi especially noted that the lawmakers could end the “feeding bottle mechanism” whereby states relied on monthly federal allocation by mandating the executive to implement fiscal federalism, real devolution of powers and resource control.

Akinyemi made these calls at the opening of the National Conference of Yoruba Studies Association of Nigeria (YSAN) held at the Department of Linguistics and African Languages, University of Ibadan, with the theme, “Warfare, Ethnicity and Polity in Yorubaland, Nigeria and Africa”.

He noted that calls for restructuring of Nigeria were due to the failure of the nation’s leaders, overtime, to address high rate of unemployment, poverty, inequalities, and corruption.

Specifically, he urged Yoruba leaders to alongside calls for restructuring see to the need to forge a united front on issues affecting the South West geopolitical zone and the entire Yoruba race.

“I am not saying we should not restructure Nigeria, but we also need to think on how to progress as a nation. It is until we stop sharing money in Abuja that Nigeria will get it right, and it is the lawmakers that can make this happen.”

“The lawmakers and our leaders are misusing their powers. For example in my own university, my VC does not have official car, he does not have personal driver, he drives himself, even the one before him does not even have a car, he drives himself with motorcycle to the office. This is the problem. Our leaders are too selfish and we academia have to do the work,” he said.

Akinyemi also called on academics to write about historical wars around the world to educate individuals and groups calling for secession and threatening war, on the consequences of their calls.

In his speech, Professor Olawale Albert of the Institute of Peace and Strategic Studies, University of Ibadan, said even a revolution would not beneficial, noting that the nation did not have an ideology.

“Revolution is not beneficial in this country because Nigeria was not created based on ideology. All the political parties in Nigeria don’t have ideology that is why you see people moving from one party to another. Even if you ask the elders, they don’t have ideology; is the younger ones that will have the ideology?

“When Jerry Rawling staged the revolution in Ghana, one factor that bound them was hunger. If you ask him now he will tell you that no one can do it now,” Albert said.