Restructuring: What’s to be done, How and by Who (I)

Restructuring is the word on everybody’s lips nowadays. There is virtually no forum no matter how innocuous in Nigeria today that does not include or makes it the main subject of discussion.

To some it is the magic wand that will resolve all of our existential challenges as a people and country in a flash. Yet to others it is the silver bullet to slay the demons that had stood against the progress this country promised at Independence but had somehow eluded it all these years.

Looking at the state of Nigeria today, it is hard to fault the argument for restructuring. In many ways we have retrogressed from where and what the British colonialists left us. At the micro level to those of us born and raised variously in the forties, fifties sixties and early seventies, all we need to do is to visit our former primary or secondary schools to determine whether this assertion is real or not. Even though life then was not as sophisticated as now, it was qualitative. Everything from politics, social life and interaction, education, security and so on was decent and full of meaning. Others may argue that we have much better sophistication, choice and variety in those areas of our life today but are they collectively as qualitative and decent as the foregone years?

More specifically can we justifiably say that as a people we have been able to achieve the much desired transformation that our enormous human and material resources, second to none in the whole of Africa and one of the best in world, promises?

Unless we want to live in denial and pretence, the answer is an obvious no. And if we want to live in denial we cannot deny the abstract abysmal statistics in human indices of development, in the objective reality of the low quality of life and human worth in our daily lives, and in the ever widening and threatening fault lines that define our interrelationships as a people.

Collectively all these existential indices of our lives, for lack of diligent and realistic attention over the years have taken us to the point where we cannot continue without something drastic giving way. For all our sakes now and for the future we must wake up to the challenges facing us as a people and make a clean, honest break of it or we get swamped. No two ways about it.

That is where the restructuring argument becomes urgently imperative.

It is an essential phase in our march as a country and we will not be the only one in history to face it. Virtually all the important countries in the world have had to face it. And depending on how they did it they either became better for it, or floundered. And in our political history from the British colonial experience right up to 1999 when we embarked on the present political journey we have been continuously restructuring in varying degrees per significance and tenor depending on the circumstances that throws up.

But everyone agrees that in our present circumstances objectively and realistically speaking, we need to restructure not in the piecemeal approach that we have mostly done in the past, but in root and branch totality with the present and the future in view.

If the need for restructuring is glaringly clear, however it is disappointing to note that most of the arguments currently raging on the issue in the public sphere have hardly provided the necessary light on how to realistically and comprehensively approach it.

Essentially in this regard, the arguments can be divided into three broad categories.

There are those who seek to present and use the argument for restructuring not as a tool for rejuvenating and repositioning Nigeria to meet its potentials as a country, but as a political weapon to continue their ancient political feuds. Those in this category are weaponizing the restructuring argument mainly to heighten base emotions and sentiments just to be seen as champions of causes they hope to either personally gain from, or to denigrate and spite other sections of the country.

The second category of arguments in the public space on the issue of restructuring is promoted by those that consider it as an academic exercise. They present restructuring as a political paradigm to be tested as an experiment in a political laboratory sponsored in the main by foreign patrons through the academia and some civil society organizations.

The persons who pursue this line of the restructuring argument may or may not know that the generous political study grant or fellowship in residence from a foundation is part of a grand design in what erudite political scientist Claude Ake of blessed memory referred to as ‘’social science as imperialism’’. Essentially this is set up to mastermind and control the political evolution of developing countries such as ours and to keep it firmly in the orbit of extra continental powers. The kernel in this is the subtle and surreptitious presentation and promotion of esoteric political values and paradigms that hardly address and reflect the real issues and needs of our political and social circumstances. Such arguments always end up hoisting political systems that creates mongrel political elite that is neither rooted nor relevant to our genuine quest for political development reflecting our needs and circumstances.

Then there are those who just parrot the restructuring argument because it is the in thing and it makes good copy to be seen or heard talking about it in the public space even if they hardly know or understand the nuances. To such category of people, regurgitating the popular, ready- made line of argument is what they normally do, presenting it with an intimidating magisterial finality that that they hope, masks their ignorance and lack of depth to the enquirer. For obvious reasons we need not bother with this category of people here.

But as an imperative of our time and in other to make the most of the restructuring that we must have to do sooner or later, we owe it a duty having sifted through the strands of arguments on the subject, to present what realistically needs to be done and how to do it.

As earlier stated, restructuring should be first of seen as a rejuvenating and repositioning exercise which should involve all Nigerians and for Nigeria. It should be an exercise whose process and goals should be to harness the talent of every Nigerian and to utilize the resources that abound in this geographical entity for the ultimate benefit of Nigerians of the present and the future. No person and no part of Nigeria should be left out of the exercise either for reasons of prejudice, spite or whatever differences in ethnicity and religion.

In doing restructuring, we must be conscious and recognise our diversity as something positive, we must take pride in our triple heritage of Islam, Christianity and traditional religions and we must project to the world that we are by divine design the bell weather country for people of Africa and African descent the world over.