Why Nigeria needs restructuring

By Atinshola Oludare

SIR: The need to restructure Nigeria has never been so important like it has been in the past six years of the APC administration.

When I first formed the independent volunteer movement for the former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar prior to the last election, my aim was solely to promote a candidate who I share a similar ideology with and to get millions of Nigerians all over the country to also support that ideology and that is the ideology of restructuring.

The security situation alone is enough reason to demand for restructuring. Power to make certain decisions must now lie in the hands of the governors especially on issues of security. As Governor Wike of Rivers State will always say, “I am just a chief logistics officer”.

With the numerous challenges facing Nigeria and with the level of debt we have gone into, the need for states to become more independent and generate funds internally while paying a certain commission to the centre has never been so important. The monthly sharing of the cake from the federation account has to stop as it has made most governors very lazy and short of ideas on how to solve their economic problems. Every level of government must begin to look inwards in order to solve their own problems as the centre is over whelmed. Nigeria can no longer survive with this system of government; we must restructure so that the future generations of Nigerians can actually have a country to call theirs.

The present structure of Nigeria gave room for leaders like Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho in the south, Boko Haram and bandits in the north and killer herdsmen who have continued to attack virtually every part of this country. In all of these, governors remain helpless in solving these issues as they lack the constitutional power to address security issues within their domain.

A restructured Nigeria where every region has its own laws as peculiar to them is one of the key ways needed to help us grow in diversity. The arrest of Nnamdi Kanu is likely not to be end of the Biafra agitations as people in the zone already feel aggrieved and marginalized and same in the West. Only restructuring can save Nigeria.

• Atinshola Oludare, dareatinshola@gmail.com