Yoruba group calls on Southern governors to back up their resolutions with legislation

The Yoruba Leadership and Peace Initiative (TYLPI) has urged the governors of the 17 southern states to take their recent initiative further by forwarding to their various Houses of Assembly, bills on the relevant resolutions contained in the communique they issued after their Asaba meeting.

One of such resolutions is the call for the ban on open grazing of cattle in the southern therm states.

The group made the call in a communique issued at the end of its three-day strategic management retreat in Abuja.

It expressed its belief in the continued corporate existence of Nigeria “but under a restructured, equitable, just and fair political arrangement.”

In apparent response to those who have asked what restructuring meant, TYLPI, in the communique defined it as “the replacement of the current pseudo-Federal system of governance under the 1999 Constitution (as amended) with a new system based on the 1963 Republican Constitution, modified to reflect the present day reality, such that the federating units will control their natural resources while contributing agreed percentages to the centre. This restructuring will entail the re-enactment of a new constitution agreed to by the people of Nigeria.”

TYLPI also listed the elements of restructuring to include a return to the Westminster parliamentary system of government and the devolution of power to the states and local governments.

Others are the realignment of the nation’s geographical boundaries to enable people with cultural affinity and historical linkages to be co-located in the same state and the expansion of each of the current geo-political zones to seven states making a total of 42 states in the country.

The group bemoaned the spiraling insecurity in the land, crass nepotism in governance and the near collapse of the economy and urged the government to begin to think out of the box in other to find solutions to them.