Buhari can’t evade restructuring

That the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), could refer to those agitating for restructuring as being naïve and dangerous shows that he is out of touch with reality and that he is not fit to be President of the country.

Nigeria, as presently made up, is blessed with massive human and natural resources to the extent that throwing a stone in an open place in the country, you are most likely to hit a world-renown doctor, a world-class lawyer or engineer. Unfortunately, the country is being ruled by someone who cannot differentiate between the call for restructuring and secession.

Buhari has frequently insulted the collective intelligence of the Nigerian people by comparing restructuring with secession. However, the signal that the fear of Buhari has sent to us is that he is still being ruled by his crude military dictatorship tendencies that there is the possibility of an overthrow because of his failure to meet the yearnings of the people. So, in his mind, every call for good governance is equal to an overthrow of his regime which is far from the truth.

Rather than confront the woes facing the nation headlong, Buhari is interested in gagging free-speech which is clear in his suspension of the activities of Twitter all because the microblogging site had become a tool to call the attention of the world to the devilish activities of his regime and also his attempt to amend the Nigerian Press Council Act and the National Broadcasting Act which will make him to have total control over the press. These bills are like the Public Officers Protection Against False Accusation Decree (Decree No. 4, 1984).

The President has only seen the smaller picture and not the larger picture by always shouting that he is committed to making the judiciary and local government functional, yet, he is against the call for restructuring which his party campaigned with during the 2015 general election. This is bad for the country’s polity as it has shown the President as an inconsistent ruler that only pays lip service to the issues of governance.

It is interesting to note that the President had, during his visit to Lagos to inaugurate the railway terminal some two weeks ago, said that state governors should play their part in tackling insecurity. As usual, he was trying to shift the goalpost because there is no way governors can tackle insecurity when the constitution does not grant them power over the police force in their respective states. The President needs to give room for restructuring of the country which will allow each region/state to develop at their own pace. Through this, each state will have control over their resources and it will at the end boost local production of food items which will help fight extreme poverty.

The President and his ministers and innumerable aides that live in a bubble must come to the realisation that state police is an important component of federalism since sovereignty is divided between the central authority and federating state authorities. In fact, the beauty of the establishment of state police is that it is in line with the principle of federalism on which Nigeria fashions its constitution.