By Adadareporters
Chief Ray Nnaji, a lawyer and former national auditor of the Peoples Democratic Party, Monday, took a swipe on state governors for not championing the restructuring of Nigeria because of their selfish ends.
Nnaji spoke in Enugu during a programme monitored by our correspondent.
According to him, the only way Nigeria could be rescued from its present quagmire is the devolution of powers to regions or states, and regretted that “Most people who are supposed to be at the forefront have refused to do so”.
While agreeing that the federal government should be in charge of the police and the army ‘because state governors have not given us any hope that if those things are shifted to them, they would not abuse their powers’, Nnaji said Nigeria would remain backwards until it got restructured.
In his words, “Most governors don’t have the political will to discuss restructuring because they benefit from the system. What they are interested in is their own selfish ends. It would have been the governors that would champion restructuring. You can’t even do it without reviewing the constitution where you must get the two-third majority of states to get it done.”
He lamented that Nigeria in the First Republic was better than it is presently because, then, more autonomy was granted the regions. He said, “That time, regions were given autonomy, and there were successes. The groundnut pyramid was helping the North. Palm oil was high in the East. The West had cocoa. The economy of the country was very strong. It became something else when we started practising federalism. That saw the vesting of all powers on the centre. It was the military that operated it, and the civilian governments adopted it.
“Certain people are afraid of certain regions. They are afraid that some regions will be more successful than others if the country is restructured. If that is the case, is there any problem if everybody is comfortable? If we did not experience a situation where this country was in a very fine condition, by now we would be thinking that probably this is how this country is created to be. What is happening now is inexplicable. It is beyond words. The need for restructuring has become too obvious. For us to still remain as a country, there is need for more powers to be shifted to states.
“If you give them more powers, people will start to look inwards. Currently, everything is concentrated on the centre. And we are not benefitting anything, only to go to Abuja and share money every month. The money they share currently is now bigger than what it used to be. If we had a restructured system, I don’t think the president could, during his inaugural speech, remove fuel subsidy, knowing it would affect everything in the country; to the extent that many pensioners have died, whereas some people are living in affluence. And we say we are fighting corruption. All these things need to be looked into. There were constitutional conferences, and all recommended that powers be distributed to states to make states stronger than the federal.
“The ruling party has not been helping matters. If we have a different party controlling the legislative House, it would have been better, though there would still be crisis because the president can withhold assenting to bills after passage. Though the constitution gave lawmakers the power to veto, but the implementation could become problematic.”
