…Decry High Cost Of Living, Insecurity
LAGOS – The major socio-political organisations in the country, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) and Middle Belt Forum (MBF) have said the ultimate solution to the problems plaguing the country is restructuring.
They condemned the difficult situation in the country, stressing that the high cost of living and insecurity are overwhelming.
Dr. Alex Ogbonna, National Publicity Secretary of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, said, “We issued a communique to the Federal Government that there is no better time to restructure the country than now.
Their policies are not helping matters. There is hunger in the land; there are all kinds of criminalities, kidnapping, etcetera.
“We don’t want to wait until the final collapse before we speak. The porosity of the borders is worrisome.
They are leaving the borders open for every Tom, Dick and Harry to enter. When you restructure there would be an economic boom.
People will have authority over the revenue they generate and it will encourage them to work harder; employment will be generated and poverty will be reduced.
“Part of the problem that we have in the country today is because of unemployment and the policies and programmes of the government. Some of these if they are decentralised will be easy to manage.
“We have actually looked at these issues critically and we have been collaborating with Afenifere, PANDEF, MBF to advise the government on the right path to go.
On what the government should do in the interim to address the problems in the country, he said, “There is no way this country can come out from the current quagmire without restructuring, even if it is going to take one month to achieve.
As long as the government is carrying along these bourgeois policies on itself the problem will continue.”
On the speculation that the government is paying deaf ears to all the suggestions, Ogbonna said, “Whether the government likes it or not, nothing else can help Nigeria out of this doldrums.
We will keep saying it and in future, they will realise that it is the only option. There is no other way for Nigeria to move on except restructuring. One interesting thing is that the All Progressives Congress (APC) at one point set up a committee headed by Nasir El-Rufai and they recommended restructuring. In 2014, they recommended restructuring.
Tinubu was one of the major advocates of restructuring when he was out of government.”
“When you talk about restructuring, it involves the security architecture of the country.
For example, Nigeria is the only federal system where we have only one level of policing.
In other federal systems, you have at least four levels of security networks.
For example, the federal will have, the state will have, the community will have, and the university within a local government area will have.
If they think that one central security network will coordinate the affairs at all these levels, it is like doing the same thing all the time and expecting a different result.
“If you restructure the country, the states, for example, will be equipped with sufficient arms to curtail some of the issues.
For example, if somebody is from Enugu State and you send him to Sokoto or Zamfara State where he does not understand the topography nor the culture of the people, how can he be proficient in taking care of the security of that area? He doesn’t understand the culture nor the language of the people,” he added.
Dr. Ken Robison, National Publicity Secretary of PANDEF, on his part said, “One of the issues we talked about in the communique released by SouthSouth and Middle Belt Forum is about the hunger in the land and the hardship.
Therefore, the advice is that the Federal Government should recognise the fact that there has been mismanagement of the resources, at this time.
“It is surprising that even with the removal of the fuel subsidy and the rise in dollar exchange rate, money that has been given to states has increased from what we see in the monthly federation account figures.
One wonders why the state and the Federal Government have not used the extra money to impact the lives of Nigerians.
“One of the excuses is that the fuel subsidies through which some Nigerians were making money, figures were inflated; money in terms of fuel subsidy was going to private pockets.
Now that the fuel subsidy has been removed, the supposed money that was going into private individuals should reflect in the way Nigerians live.
Some of the money that the state and federal governments are getting should be used to alleviate the hunger in the land, even if it means buying food and distributing it to the vulnerable in the land, workers in the civil service, and low-income earners.
“The Federal Government should do it immediately. The truth is that a hungry man is an angry man. When people are hungry, they no longer use their brains. The pains in their empty stomach direct their actions. It is a dangerous situation.
The Federal Government should consider it an emergency, and immediately take action to ensure that there is succour for the ordinary Nigerians facing hardship.”
On his part, Dr. Isuwa Dogo, the National Publicity Secretary of MBF, said, “It’s a systemic problem; the system has to be rejigged.
By rejigging it, that is why I said that there should be state police. The police should be profiled. The police and all the other security agencies should be adequately remunerated.
“The money that a senator gets in one year is enough to pay a whole brigade for one year.
These officers would be sacrificing their lives, one senator can be moving with about ten policemen.
How do you think that those policemen that they don’t even know their origin of the area where they are posted to as officers? State police is the solution and restructuring the country is what is required to fix the problems in the country,” he added.
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