Restructure mindset, not nation

The word restructuring has become the latest buzz word in the political scenery with political and non-political leaders pushing forward their ideas of the word. The perspective, which everyone seems to be in love with is the latest trend presenting nation-restructuring, as abhorrence to many state leaders. Nigeria’s challenges are beyond restructuring which is challenged economically and politically.

This issue of restructuring is like the parables of the elephant and a group of blind men who stumbled on the elephant, touched it individually from different angles and expressed how they felt it. Obviously,  they were all wrong until one clear-eyed man came by the way and give them the complete picture. This kind of  situation has been occuring in our country for many years there have been amorphous submissions making it difficult to collectively arrive at sensible solution. Yet the issue has refused to go away.

We need to restructure our mindset, not our nation, because restructuring of the nation cannot resolve the myriad of problems plaguing our country. In our country, we spend time on symptoms rather than their causes. If the needful is not done, the same social crises which have been bedeviling the country would persist in a restructured country and there have  associated with impurity, bad governance and injustice. Nothing is wrong with Nigeria rather a lot is wrong with Nigerians.

Agitations for restructuring being canvassed by many are simply misplaced priorities. Nigerians need to get their priorities right through a restructuring process that would  involved the mindset and mentality, instead of geographical-political restructuring.

Such a mindset restructuring will enable people learn to emphasise many things that binds Nigeria together, rather than those that separate them, because we have more things that hold us together than those that separate us as a people. So, why don’t we emphasize those ones rather than the ones that seek to tear us apart?

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Country problems could be resolved through dialogue and negotiations not through secession, and even if we need restructuring, it is the restructuring of our mindset and mentality especially the leaders who occupy office related to governance in Nigeria. Not only the people are marginalised, but the whole country,  because of bad governance and corruption.

Since 1960, various attempts of restructuring the country have not been fully successful because what we only need is good attitude towards one another in building a strong united nation. Bad attitudes bedeviling our country like corruption, ethnic sentiment, religious and other forms of social peril are affecting us.

Nigeria should remain indivisible and adopt the principles of compromise, consensus and true federalism as a whole. Dismemberment of Nigeria is not good enough, harmony and cohesion in Nigeria is what we should surrogate for dismemberment. Inequity, injustice and unfairness are not good; we should surrogate them with equity, fairness, good government and lack of impunity.

So, what we have to do is to eradicate the crisis facing Nigeria, especially corruption, because we are all corrupted in this nation and hoping this can be eradicated. If this is done, we have already restructured the nation.

Okanlwon Uthman Ayoola,

Offa Kwara State.