It was the former President Obasanjo who first cautioned Nigerians about the ambiguities of the word restructuring and its negative implications to Nigerians debate on the way forward. He asserted that he asked six people what they think restructuring mean and the six came with six different answers.
However, in his recent interview granted to Sahara Reporters, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, a respected elder and a die-hard Awoist brushed aside Chief Obasanjo’s reservations. He thinks he knows the way out by suggesting restructuring to mean a return to the 1960 and 1963 constitution when Nigeria consisted of three regions that is; Northern Nigeria, Eastern Nigeria and Western Nigeria, each one of the regions largely populated and headed by the dominant tribes thus: Hausa Fulani in the North, the Igbos in the East and the Yorubas in the West. Chief Adebanjo belongs to one of the dominant tribes and evidently does not know the pains of domination and oppression of the minority. Since he belongs to the yester years, no wonder he is bubbling with nostalgia of return to the good old days.
In his effort to promote his restructuring agenda, he decided to heap an unwarranted blame on President Buhari whom he castigates and brand as a President of Northern Nigeria and Katsina State and further goes on to allege that the President is concentrating and extending patronage to that side of the country. For this, the elder argues, the president must restructure the country or else the country will disintegrate. By this pronouncement the elder sounds as if he holds the trump card of Nigerians national existence.
Apart from lack of decorum in his attack on President Buhari which no one would expect from a respected elder speaking to another elder, and the leader of 160 million Nigerians, for that matter, Chief Adebanjo has forgotten or chosen to ignore the fact that President Buhari was democratically elected by the majority of Nigerian voters. He should therefore put aside his jaundiced posture and look at national issues dispassionately so that Nigerians can benefit from his wisdom. He should appreciate that even though President Buhari scored more votes in the North during the 2015 elections, a situation which entitles him to show preference to the areas who expressed support for him as is the case in a democratic system of government, he tried to spread out his appointments and projects distribution to reflect the true Nigerian federalism. Thus, even Katsina, his home state which Chief Adebanjo sarcastically referred to him as president of, was not accorded any preferential treatment. Indeed, Katsina State ended up with a Minister of State for Aviation in the person of Senator Hadi Sirika. Furthermore, if chief Adebanjo has followed trend of events in Katsina State in the recent past, he would have observed that politicians in Katsina State, including APC members, are bitterly complaining of neglect in dispensing patronage by the President.
In any case, President Buhari’s current mandate is to last four years out of which he has served a little over two years. Therefore, nobody can stampede him to abandon the mandate except by constitutional process. On this score, Chief Adebanjo’s ranting that President Buhari must restructure is unrealistic and uncalled for especially coming from an experienced politician and one who is familiar with the workings of government.
Moreover, President Buhari did not seek the mandate from Nigerians to restructure along anybody’s perception. He cannot therefore be held responsible for any wrong doings.
It is an irony of history that Chief Adebanjo in an apparent effort to hurt the sensitivities of this administration is allaying himself with Nnamdi Kanu, the banned IPOB leader whom he claimed to himself as “Kanu’s Man”. He has forgotten that in 1967 when Lt. Colonel Ojukwu declared Republic of Biafra, Chief Adebanjo was one of those who advised Chief Awolowo to issue declaration of support for Biafra which Awolowo did by proclaiming that “if the East opts out, the west will follow suit”. This pronouncement acted as a catalyst and a morale booster to Ojukwu in his secession bid. Needless to say, Chief Awolowo never redeem that pledge, instead, he accepted appointment as Vice Chairman and Minister of Finance under Gowon’s military government. If Nnamdi Kanu is not old enough to know that episode, many Igbos are well aware of what some of them termed as a classical betrayal.
Besides, Chief Adebanjo choose to ignore recent demonstrations held by the Yorubas at US embassy in Abuja and White House in Washington by their diaspora denouncing US President Trump apparent flirtation with Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB whom the Yoruba consider to be against their race which he has threaten to destroy including his public pronouncement that he will kill Obasanjo. With this in mind, one wonders, whose interest is Chief Adebanjo promoting in romancing with Kanu.
Turning to Chief Adebanjo’s main argument of his restructuring agenda in which he advocates a return to 1960 and 1963 constitution, he failed to tell the current generation of Nigerians why we are where we are today so that we can appreciate the sequence of events which led to the predicament we are in as perceived by Chief Adebanjo. But we know from history that on the evening that the Eastern Consultative Assembly gave mandate to Ojukwu to proclaim secession, Colonel Gowon announced a decree dividing Nigeria into twelve states “in order to remove the fear of domination”. As each of the three regions have their own minorities who are in one way or other subjected to oppressive domination, this singular action gained the government of General Gowon who himself belong to minority tribe, an unprecedented popularity especially among the minorities of the country who came out enmasse to volunteer to fight the civil war which to them is a war to liberate their people, just as the American slaves supported Abraham Lincoln during the America civil war.
After the war, the cry against domination waned, but was replaced by incessant demand for the creation of more states, this time, the advocates argue, to bring the government nearer to the people in order to benefit from the dividends of development which are quite evident with the creation of more states. If Nigerians do not see the benefits of states creation, they would not be clamoring for more states even after we moved from three regions structure to thirty six states and still counting. By accepting state creation as a remedy for injustice, Nigerians can be said to have opted the notion of divided we stand yet our oneness always is non negotiable.
Who will revert this trend other than reactionaries.
From all indications the concepts of restructuring in ambiguous, untenable and is not part of the election mandate of this administration. To demand for restructuring during this administration tenure is unrealistic and even mischievous. It is a ploy used by the combined forces of both domestic and foreign adversaries of this government in order to divert the attention of the government to slow down or even abandon its anti-corruption crusade. Government should remain steadfast in its fight against the evil of corruption.
Mamuda wrote this piece from Malali, Kaduna.
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