Nigeria’s failure to develop lingua franca behind separatists’ agitations —Don

A political scientist, Dr Gbade Ojo, has advanced the need for the nation to develop a lingua franca, noting that all policies

aimed at integrating the polity failed because it focused only on the elite and middle class.

Ojo, who noted that the inadequacy of policies aimed at national integration, like the National Youth Service Corps scheme, said

separatists’ agitations continued because Nigerians failed to see themselves as one and did not speak a common language.

For Nigerians’ resilience over the years, he said the nation would have recorded the breakaway of different ethnic groups.

According to Ojo, the national football team was the only unifying factor that the nation boasted of.

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Speaking further, Ojo said the menace of killings by some Fulani herdsmen was not unconnected with the discontinuance of the

nomadic policy and lack of commitment to adult education.

He also called for restructuring of the nation’s political structure to a two-tier federal system of the federal and state

government, whereby states determined the number of local government areas deemed appropriate, managed mineral resources in its domain and only paid royalties to the Federal Government.

Ojo further prayed that the National Assembly and the Federal Government examined national conference recommendations right from the sani Abacha era, which he noted provided solutions to some of the challenges in the polity.