Featured, Politics
By Anayo Ezugwu
PASTOR Enoch Adeboye, General Overseer, Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, has joined Nigerians clamouring for the restructuring of the country. He warned that the country is in danger of breakup if the federal government fails to restructure.
Speaking at the 60th Independence Day Celebration Symposium organised by RCCG and the Nehemiah Leadership Institute, on the topic, “Where will Nigeria be in 2060,” Adeboye said there was an urgent need to restructure Nigeria. He said he was not sure whether there would be Nigeria in the year 2060 if the government fails to restructure now.
The cleric, who had always been reluctant to criticise the president, said the Buhari administration should carry out the restructuring of the country as soon as possible to avoid a breakup of the nation.
“I’m sure you all know that I’m not a politician and I do not belong to any political party. I have never been governor neither do I ever hope to be. As a matter of fact, each time I travel and have opportunities of visiting heads of states, I always come out thanking God that I’m a pastor because when you consider all the protocols and securities details, I always come to the conclusion that it is easier to see Jesus Christ than to see some of our heads of states.
“Before I became a pastor, I was an applied mathematician and mathematicians practically live their lives by solving problems. When we begin to talk about Nigeria beyond 2060, what a mathematician will ask is, are we sure that there will be Nigeria in the year 2060? In other words, you are talking about something you are not 100 percent sure that will be there. Before we can begin to discuss Nigeria of 2060, we need to address the problems that we have right now.
“If these problems are not solved, then this will just be an academic exercise, not that I don’t enjoy the exercise but I think on one of the occasions when I was on a long flight from London to Singapore, a journey of about 13 hours after you have eaten, slept and you wake up to discover that you still have some seven hours to go, definitely you have time to fool around a little bit.
“Then I was thinking about Nigeria and I have this thought within myself, which I think I should share with you. By the time I finish, you might consider it a joke from a mathematician. I just felt that, why can’t we have a system of government that represents Nigeria and unique to us. For example, we started off with the British system of government, somewhere along the line we moved over to the American system of government. I was just wondering, can’t we just have a combination of both and see whether it will help us solve our problems. In mathematics, if you want to solve a problem and you try what we call real analysis and it doesn’t work, then you move on to complex analysis to see if that will help you.
“If that fails you move on to another analysis. I believe probably that we need to look at Nigeria’s in a very different manner because some people think all our problems will be over if Nigeria breakup. I think that is trying to solve the problem of Nigeria as if it is a simple problem. The problems of Nigeria will require a few simultaneous equations.
“So I was thinking why can’t we have a system of government that will create a kind of what I will call the United States of Nigeria. Let me explain, we all know that we must restructure. Is either we restructure or we break up. You don’t need to be a prophet to know about that. That is certain to come, restructure, or breakup.
“Now we don’t want to break up. God forbid. In the restructuring, why don’t we have like I said a Nigerian kind of democracy? At the federal level for example, why don’t we have a president and prime minister? If we have a president and a prime minister and share responsibility between these two so that one doesn’t become an appendage of the other. For example, if the president controls the army and the prime minister controls the police; if the president controls resources like oil, mining and the prime minister controls finance, inland revenues, taxes, and Customs, among others. We just divide the responsibility between the two.
“You then come to the state level, at the state level you have the governor and the premier. And again you distribute responsibilities between these people in such a manner that one cannot really go alone without the other. Maybe, this is just a mathematical suggestion. Maybe we might begin to tackle the problem.
“And if we are going to adopt this model, I think we need urgently to restore what we used to call the house of chiefs. I have a feeling that one of our major problems is that we have pushed the traditional rulers to the background and I believe that is a great wrong particularly for a country like Nigeria. I find it very ridiculous when we ask a traditional ruler to inform the chairman of his local government before he travels. Go to any town in Nigeria, everybody in the town knows who is the paramount ruler and they respect him, while many of them don’t even know the name of the chairman of their local government.
“The traditional rulers are the actual landlords. They enjoy the respect of their people. Their people will listen to them much more than they will listen to politicians. Just as they have the House of Lords in Britain, why can’t we have the House of Chiefs? We might expand it to include some religious leaders like Bishops, Chief Imams, etc. These are people who can shape the opinion of the people. Let’s think about it, maybe it can help us get Nigeria going, and then without any doubt, we must restructure and do it as soon as possible. A United States of Nigeria is likely to survive much more than our present structure,” he said.
– Oct. 6, 2020 @ 15:59 GMT |
Tags: Nigeria may breakup before 2060 if … – Pastor Adeboye
