TVC E. Deputy Senate president, Ike Ekweremadu, feels the best way to resolve all the challenges the country is facing is to
undergo restructuring.
Buhari and Osinbajo maintain that restructuring as needed by Nigerians is not the solution to the country’s problems With this, Ekweremadu may have discredited the stand of the Muhammadu Buhari administration which believes that restructuring is a no-go area.
In what shocked many of his supporters days ago, Osinbajo had declared that restructuring is not the solution to the crises facing the country but that what the Nigeria needs is good governance. Osinbajo’s comment came at the same time President Muhammadu Buhari declared that the country’s unity is untouchable. Buhari and Osinbajo had faced wide condemnation over their stand on true federalism and restructuring since then.
The pan Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, and its rival Aferifere Renewal Group (ARG) differed with the stance of Osinbajo, that the call for the restructuring of Nigeria would not make any difference. Punch reports that, while speaking at the second annual conference of the Young Parliamentary Forum (YPF) in Abuja, Ekweremadu maintained that the country must stop its current practice of feeding states and instead adopt true federalism. “I disagree with those who say that Nigeria does not necessarily need restructuring, but good governance that will eliminate corruption. “The truth is that it is difficult to tame corruption where the federating units virtually run on free federal allocations that some people see as national cake, not their own sweat.
“Conversely, the people will be more vigilant and ready to hold their leaders accountable when the federating units begin to live largely on internally generated revenues and their sweat. “However, restructuring should be on incremental basis to ease the country into a more prosperous future,” he said as he urged the youth to play active roles in political affairs. “We need to reinvigorate the youth arm of our political parties as in the days of the first republic and pre-independence era when vibrant youth movements and arms of the political parties thrived and served as platforms for political apprenticeship for aspiring political leaders.
“Unfortunately, there is little we can do about meaningful youth economic inclusion and employment until we restructure our behemoth federalism. “I still hold the view that this feeding bottle federalism, this act of robbing Peter to pay Paul, which we have gradually enthroned as state policy since the fall of the First Republic, remains cause of our economic quandary,” he added.
What do you think?
