Like a sleeping giant, the campaign for restructuring Nigeria last week aroused from its temporary nap courtesy of the Pan Yoruba Cultural group Afenifere. Rising from a meeting at the Isanya Ogbo Ijebu residence of its leader Ayo Adebakjo, the group called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to commence in earnest, the process of restructuring the country, pursuant to a return from the present Presidential system of government to the Westminster parliamentary system. According to Mogaji Gboyega Adejumo the Publicity Secretary of Afenifere, the group’s call on Tinubu was informed by two premises.
First is his association with the restructuring advocacy in the past, especially during his tenure as governor of Lagos State, and in respect of which his tenure as President, offers the opportunity to actualise the dispensation. Second is their claim that his ascendancy to the office of the Presidency owes a lot to his advocacy for restructuring the Nigerian federation. To accentuate Tinubu’s association with the restructuring agenda, he reportedly took the Obasanjo’s administration to court as many as 31 times to press the case for restructuring of the country. Against the backdrop of the foregoing therefore, calling Tinubu one of the country’s foremost advocates of restructuring, is not out of place.
Incidentally, the Afenifere position is coming against the backdrop of a pronouncement by President Bola Tinubu during his recent trip to Ondo State that that his government intends to establish a strong base for the country, to serve as the foundation for national restructuring. Just as well, in response to Tinubu’s take on the issue, the President of the Arewa Consultative Forum Shettima Yerima also called on President Tinubu and the National Assembly, to launch the protocol for the needful processes pursuant to the restructuring of the country. Specifically, Yerima was quoted to have put the situation most graphically that the “centre can no longer hold” and it is time to restructure.
Placing these recent interventions on restructuring in perspective, they qualify as the latest significant rounds in an ongoing conversation on the highly sensitive issue, and provide a throwback to earlier submissions. As can be easily recalled the advocacy for restructuring the country has remained a matter that does not suffer from significant opposition to it. Rather the question has been on the direction and areas of the country’s life to restructure. In this respect stands as one of the reference cases, the 2017 committee on the restructuring by the All Progressives Congress (APC), which was chaired by former governor of Kaduna State Nasir el Rufai, and which had as its main recommendations the devolution of powers and responsibility from the federal tier to the states and local governments in several designated areas.
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In the light of the several recommendations in respect of restructuring the country, the challenge remains which way to go. And that is where the need for discretion has to enjoy a pride of place. This consideration enjoys merit as the matter of restructuring is not a single event or a project for a season, but a continuous process of changes in various areas of the country’s life, in which case attention needs to be directed at the circumstances which led the country to the present state of growing concern over the failings of governance.
For instance, the argument which runs along the return of the country to the Parliamentary system needs to clarify the pains and gains it has for the various constituent ethnic groups that make up the Nigerian federation. There is the need to consider and compare the circumstances under which the protocols for the hurried aggregation and integration of these then much marginalised and mostly ignorant constituent ethnic communities, were railroaded into the Nigerian nation by the exploitative colonial administration, with the present day when they are much more politically aware and mobilised as well as more autonomy-minded. Hence if the parliamentary system worked in those days, what guarantee does it offer to serve the country better in the present day with time changing everything? Just as well, is the need to consider if the present Presidential system has been adequately implemented a provided for by the Constitution, and what challenges as well as failures are impediments in it.
In the light of the foregoing therefore, stands the need to interface the underlying interests of several lobbies in restructuring, with the Renewed Hope agenda of President Bola Tinubu, in a seamless manner as both dispensations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. From the contention of the Afenifere and several other interests across the country, restructuring of the Nigerian federation should remain a valid component of the Renewed Hope agenda. This is just as the recommendations of the Nasir el Rufai committee on devolution of powers and responsibilities from the federal tier to states and local government literally constitute the breath of fresh air, which governance in the country needs to thrive in the interest of the citizenry.
Hence, while the administration of President Bola Tinubu may be focusing its enterprise on laying a solid foundation for the country, such a venture does not need to delay the continuation of the restructuring conversation pursuant to commencement of needful protocols even if it is the formal appointment of a pan Nigerian steering committee.
Whatever be the case, let the restructuring conversation and drama start.
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