Failure to restructure Nigeria will cause chaos, says Ohanaeze president

President General of the apex Igbo organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Nnia Nwodo, yesterday cautioned that Nigeria may be heading for serious chaos if the clamour for the restructuring of the country was not given urgent attention.

The Ohanaeze helmsman, who spoke in Abuja on yesterday in a live political programme on the Africa Independent Television (AIT) said: “Unless we restructure this country, we will slide into an uncontrollable crisis.”

Nwodo said the country has all the potentials of a world power given its budding population and huge natural resources, but stood to lose out if the right administrative structure was not put in place.

In his words: “Nigeria is a world power, but if it continues to be wrongly administered, it will continue to be a laughing stock to other countries of the world.”
 
He restated his earlier stance that Ndigbo remained the most marginalised people in the country in spite of their commitment to the country.He lamented that the country’s body polity was insensitive to the plight of Ndigbo despite their overwhelming contributions to the socio-political and economic development of the country.

Nwodo expressed regrets that the Nigerian system as currently constituted kills genuine endeavor and discourages productivity.On the how to go about the restructuring, the Ohanaeze boss suggested a revisit of the 2014 National Conference recommendations, which had Nigerians from all sectors and headed by a former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN).

He said the enormous resources deployed to the conference should not be wasted just because some people or groups do not like the administration that convened that conference.On the advantages of restructuring, Nwodo examined the declining importance of oil as a major source of revenue.

He cited the examples of the Netherlands and California both of which built their strong economies out of agriculture and human capital development.Nwodo maintained that restructuring was the surest way to attain socio-political and economic growth of the country.