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‘Restructuring the real solution to Nigeria’s challenges,’ Bode George tells Buhari

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A former Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), South-West, Chief Bode George, said on Thursday restructuring is the only solution to Nigeria’s challenges.

The PDP chieftain stated this in a letter addressed to President Muhammadu Buhari.

He was reacting to a recent statement credited to the President on the increasing agitation for restructuring of the country.

Buhari, who spoke at a forum in Kaduna, described individuals pushing for Nigeria’s restructuring as a group of people with little knowledge of the provision of the country’s constitution.

But in the letter, George said would be unfair for anyone to pretend that the present Nigerian structure is smooth and without flaws.

The PDP chieftain insisted that history would be kind to President Buhari if he grants the clamour for restructuring of the country.

The letter read: “It will be wrong and even cynical for anyone to pretend that the present Nigerian structure is smooth and without flaws. On the contrary, the very skewed structures are provoking everywhere the glaring indices of terror and widening chaos.

READ ALSO: Ongoing constitution review a waste of time —Bode George

“From Sokoto to Calabar, from Jigawa to Delta, from Borno to Rivers- the Nigerian state is sinking deeper into loose banditry and general uncertainties.

“Virtually everyone is vulnerable. There are no safe havens anymore. The present policing architecture is obviously unsuitable to modern threats and challenges. Policing can no longer be centralised. This is one of the cardinal points why the restructuring of the Nigerian state is important.

“Power has to be loosened at the centre for the survival of this very fragile union. The states must be constitutionally empowered to determine their growth and development. We cannot all be held down by an overarching unitary system that stunts merit and halts individual progress and initiatives.

“Nigeria can only survive when the states can prosecute their individual vision, explore their God-given resources at their own pace without the intrusion of the central organ.

“The states are suffocated, stifled, hindered and cluttered by inimical constitutional constraints that are savaging to developmental enlightenment. We are a nation of nations whose innate diversities should be cultivated as our collective advantages.

“Where we have disparate visions, where we have contradicting values, we can steer towards a unifying compromise without anyone being elbowed out. We can reconcile on the peace table without recourse to sectional triumphalism which invariably fans the embers of violence.

“A nation can only be sustained on the platform of equity and fairness and not when some sections of our society feel fettered and squeezed out of the national equation.”

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