TVC E. Atiku Abubabar has insisted that restructuring Nigeria is the only solution to the problem confronting the nation.
The former vice president has said at the launching of a book titled “We are all Biafran” a month ago that Nigeria risked being a failed state due to its structure although this was countered by the current vice president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo who suggested two weeks ago that diversification of the economy would end the country’s problem. Osinbajo had said that even if the country us restructured, the same problems would still linger if economic solution is not put in place.
It was reported that the former vice president however insists that he believed in restructuring as that was the key to solving Nigeria’s problems. Atiku said this in a paper he presented at the Late Gen.Usman Katsina Memorial Conference at the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua Memorial Hall, Murtala Square, Kaduna, on Saturday, July 30.
“As a country we have struggled to live up to this ideal. We have obviously not done enough to realise national integration, and the survival of our democracy is still a work in progress. “The cost to us has been enormous. We even fought a civil war to forcibly keep the country together. “Since the various amalgamations that created the entity that we now call Nigeria, different segments of Nigeria’s population have, at different times and sometimes at the same time, expressed feelings of marginalisation, of being short-changed, dominated, oppressed, threatened, or even targeted for elimination.”
He said different groups were aggrieved by what they perceived as a form of neglect from the government and this has affected the country’s unity. He said he was a believer in the existence of one Nigeria and urged the different components to look at restructuring as a solution. He noted that many Nigerians from outside the North hold the view that the main beneficiary of the status quo has been the north which was not true.
“The north and Nigeria have not been served well by the status quo and there is need for change. “Who among us who went to primary and secondary school in the 1960s had much to do with the federal government? Did the northern regional government wait to collect monthly revenue allocations from Lagos before paying salaries to its civil servants and teachers or fixing its bridges and roads?” He urged Nigerians irrespective of their tribe or religion to consider restructuring the country as a solution to be embraced.
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