Stephen Aya l Monday, October 05, 2020
LAGOS, Nigeria – As the nation was celebrating its 60th year of nationhood, Nigerians with good enough reason were also questioning the reason behind the nation’s failure to reach the perceived height expected of it in the dreams of its founding fathers.
It was therefore not a big surprise to hear the man many call Daddy GO in the person of Pastor Enoch Adeboye, general overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), who told Nigerians point blank “the country may break up if it is not restructured.”
Adeboye, was speaking during a symposium organize to commemorate Nigeria’s 60th independence anniversary with the theme, ‘Where will Nigeria be in 2060’, on Saturday. It is a well known thing that people like Baba Adeboye hardly comment on national issues unless it has become very certain for them to say a word.
His call for Nigeria not to stick to one system but should continue to attempt different forms of government until it finds one that works sound like fresh air is finally coming.
“Why can’t we have a system of government that is 100 percent Nigerian, unique to us? For example, we started on with the British system of government, somewhere along the line, we moved over to the American system of government,” the cleric said.
“Can’t we have a combination of both and see whether it could help us solve our problems because in mathematics if you want to solve a problem, you try what we call real analysis, then if it doesn’t work, then you move on to complex analysis and see whether that will help you.
“If that fails, you move on to vector analysis and so on. I believe that we might want to look at the problems of Nigeria in a slightly different manner. Some people feel that all our problems will be over if Nigeria should break up.
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“Why can’t we have a system of government that will create what I will call the United States of Nigeria? Let me explain. We all know that we must restructure. It is either, we restructure or we break, you don’t have to be a prophet to know that one. That is certain, restructure or we break up!
“Now, we don’t want to break up, God forbid. In restructuring, why don’t we have a Nigerian kind of democracy? At the federal level, why don’t we have a president and a prime minister?”
While this idea is a good one considering the fact that we will have a unique system and distinctive to Nigeria along. This process may be too cumbersome according to some journalist spoken too, who opined that there will be constant changes in political and governmental pattern and structure, which may take a long time to achieve and time is what the nation seems not to have.
Commenting further on Adeboye’s suggestion Barrister Tunji Hammeed said in implementing this idea, a lot will depend on the temperament of Nigerians given the present nationalistic call along tribal lines.
He added that “This nation as it is now is too divided for pastor Adebayo’s wise words to be implemented. We are divided along tribal lines, regional lines, religious and even educational lines. There is no need to beat about the bush, what we must do is to first of all decide if we want to stay together or not. It is only after we have decided that we can then look for a political system that we think will accommodate all of us.
Also commenting on the suggestions, Barrister Fred Nzeako said that this suggestion is something that is constitutional and as such will be achieved via changing the constitution; however the problem of this country is far bigger.
According to him, “we have to look at everything if we want to restructure well. The constitution is a fault line yes, but we have other pressing need that also must be address fast if this country is to move forward to the level we expect.”
“We cannot continue to move like this without direction. Let us address things like our status as a nation, inequality, tribalism then the constitution. Because no matter the type of political structure we are practicing if some of these things are not well sorted out we will still fall back to the same hole we find ourselves today” Nzeako added
Nigerians from different parts of the country have all called for a restructuring of the nation. They, however differ on the form and context of the restructuring. One thing that is clear is that there is a reason to do now.
