From: Madu Ezenoha, Enugu
Former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar on Wednesday stated that Nigeria can be restructured within six months if the political leaders have the political will to embark on it.
He said restructuring can be done starting with the transfer of all the items in the concurrent list to the states, a decision he said will not require constitutional amendment.
Atiku stressed that restructuring Nigeria to bring it back to the original dream of the founding fathers, to ensure equity, fairness and rapid economic development was a choice the country must make urgently.
The former Vice President spoke at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, UNN, in a lecture series of the University’s Senior Staff Club on “Restructuring”, an event chaired by President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo; and attended by former governor of Akwa Ibom state, Victor Atta; former governor of old Enugu state, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo; and spokesperson of Afenifere, Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Yinka Odumakin among others.
He insisted that Nigeria is drunk with easy money from oil but needs to change that mindset from being a sharing nation to a productive nation.
Atiku said he has been a proponent of restructuring right from when he was a member of late former military president, General Sani Abacha’s constitutional conference of 1994/1995, but regretted that the 1999 Constitution signed into law by former military persistent, General Abdulsalam Abubakar, which was supposed to be the outcome of that exercise, was entirely different from what they agreed upon.
He said that the constitutional conference produced something similar to the 1963 republican constitution which laid emphasis on true federalism, diversification and greater power to the federating units in areas of agriculture, education among others, which the federal government has no business with.
He said that oil which has become a distraction to the nation’s leaders, as it encourages rent system, will soon be phased out by many developed countries, thereby making development of agriculture and diversification in general imperative.
Atiku disclosed that when they came into government in 1999, he suggested to his principal then, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the need to privatize Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), he rejected the idea and made himself Minister of Petroleum.
“To me, restructuring means making changes to our current federal structure so it comes closer to what our founding leaders established, in response to the very issues and challenges that led them to opt for a less centralized system. It means devolving more powers to the federating units with the accompanying resources. It means greater control by the federating units of the resources in their areas.
“It would mean, by implication, the reduction of the powers and roles of the federal government so that it would
concentrate only on those matters best handled by the centre such as defence, foreign policy, monetary and fiscal
policies, immigration, customs and excise, aviation as well as setting and enforcing national standards on such matters as education, health and safety.
“Some of what my ideas of restructuring involve requires constitutional amendment; some do not. Take education and roads for instance. The federal government can immediately start the process of transferring federal roads to the state governments along with the resources it expends on them.
“In the future if the federal government identifies the need for a new road that would serve the national interest, it can support the affected states to construct such roads, and thereafter leave the maintenance to the states, which can collect tolls from road users for the purpose. The federal government does not need a constitutional amendment to start that process.
“The same goes for education and health care. We must reverse the epidemic of federal take-over of state and voluntary organizations’ schools and hospitals which began in the 1970s, and also transfer those established by the federal government to the states. We do not need a constitutional amendment to transfer federal universities and colleges as well as hospitals to the states where they are located,” he stated.
Atiku cautioned those seeking the break up of the country in the erroneous belief that their new country will be turned to paradise, saying life is not as simple as that.
He said that those who are endowed with petroleum or other resources need not see restructuring as their gain while those who feel less endowed should not see it as their loss, stressing that Japan, South Korea and other countries do not rely on, and do not have material resources but their brain, education and technology.
“What is in our brain is more than what is in the ground because while resources in the land is exhaustible, the brain remains inexhaustible,” he stressed.
Chairman of the occasion, Nnia Nwodo and Afenifere spokesperson, Odumakin commended the former Vice President for his courage in taking up the gauntlet of restructuring, saying that with the voices of Atiku and that of the former military president, Gen Ibrahim Babangida, the agitation for restructuring has become national instead of a perceived southern agitation.
