A civil society organisation, the Advocates for Freedom and Democracy, has said Nigeria won’t regain its sanity until the restructuring of the country.
This was the resolution of speakers and members of the group at a virtual forum over the weekend. The event was themed, ‘Conversations On National Questions Series (1): Resetting Nigeria To Sanity’.
At the forum co-organised by the Christian Social Movement of Nigeria, one of the speakers, Pastor Bosun Emmanuel, said the forum was not for rebellion against the Nigerian state but to proffer workable solutions to restore sanity in the country.
He said, “We are not gathered here for rebellion, we are not also gathered here for anarchy; we are Christians and we are having a conversation about what is best for our country.”
Emmanuel stressed that Nigeria is sitting on the edges and “to restructure Nigeria is the most sensible step that must be taken under the circumstance that we are in”.
The cleric proposed that the country should be restructured using the 1963 Constitution as template for a new Nigeria because the 1999 Constitution has failed the test of integrity.
“The status quo – the way we are going now is going to cause more destruction, more deaths. If we want to restructure Nigeria to sanity, we are looking at these two options – either we restructure or we are forced to take the path of the Constitutional Force Majeur and all that it implies,” he submitted.
Also speaking at the forum, Dr Akin Fapounda, who is the Secretary of the Eminent Elders Forum, harped on the need for negotiations to avert war in the land.
“In human affairs, you can do negotiations, you can go to war but at the end of the war, you must still come back to negotiations to finalise. Our position is: can we do negotiations to agree on issues before we go to war if we have to?” he asked.
Continuing, Fapounda said, “The bottom-line is: Nigeria is no longer valid; one member of Nigeria is now with guns against others. The fabric of Nigeria can no longer hold, we have to rebuild Nigeria.”
The academic added that the present Nigerian Constitution has made the country go into bankruptcy by concentrating powers at the centre at the detriment of the parts.
“How does a new Nigeria look like? We want each region to be autonomous –we want a very small centre– every region should be able to do what it wants to do,” he stated.
-Punch (ng)