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Between agitations for secession and restructuring

By Tony Ademiluyi
14 June 2021   |   1:54 am
Secession is an ill wind that blows nobody any good and it will only throw up an avalanche of challenges that may consume the fragmented new nations. An Oduduwa nation isn’t the solution to the challenges in the south west as the Yorubas ...

Sir: Secession is an ill wind that blows nobody any good and it will only throw up an avalanche of challenges that may consume the fragmented new nations. An Oduduwa nation isn’t the solution to the challenges in the south west as the Yorubas are not as homogenous as people believe. There is still the ugly trend of discrimination based on the part of Yoruba land that you come from.

What Nigeria needs is restructuring and not secession which will cost more bloodshed. We should have learnt our lessons from the avoidable Civil War where millions of lives were lost which the late Biafran Warlord, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu later described in an interview as a ‘‘monumental waste.’’

True federalism should be practised as there should be devolution of powers and fewer items on the exclusive list. Why should states be running cap in hand to Abuja at the end of the month to beg for Federal Government allocation like babies beg their mothers for breast milk?  Why can’t there be resource control similar to what obtained in the Lyttleton Constitution of 1954 which enabled the late Sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo develop the Western Region through his free primary education programme, the building of Cocoa House, scholarships for undergraduate studies in the UK, the building of the Liberty Stadium, the first television station in Africa etc?

Lagos shouldn’t be the only part of the country where there is a major seaport. Other major seaports should be built in places like Ondo, Rivers, Delta, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, which will greatly diffuse development to these places and decongest Lagos which is the smallest but the most inhabited state in the nation.

Some secessionist apologists have argued that Nigeria is an artificial creation by the British and that it is high time we went our separate ways. However, it is possible for us to understand our peculiarities and live in harmony with our differences rather than take up arms against one another in needless strife.

Secession guarantees nothing and it is not Uhuru when it happens as the victory is most times pyrrhic. South Sudan is still embroiled in crisis years after it broke away from Sudan. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka that broke away from India are third world nations and near failed states as majority of their citizens live below the poverty line. None of the 15 countries that emerged from the disintegrated Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a First World Nation as the vast majority of their citizens’ grapple with getting the basics on a daily basis not knowing what life has in store for them.

Concerned Nigerians should continue to dialogue on ways in which restructuring can become a reality and mount pressure on the government at the centre to make it happen.
• Tony Ademiluyi, the co founder of The Vent Republic, wrote from Lagos.

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