Nigeria Won't Progress Unless She is Restructured - Atiku gives Tips on how to Restructure the Country

 Nigeria's former Vice President Abubakar Atiku has called for the restructuring of the country's system of governance.

If this isn't done, the country will not develop he said.

“Our beloved country has been in the throes of severe and debilitating social and economic problems. Virtually all the development indices have not been favourable: massive and pervasive poverty, double-digit inflation, unemployment, dwindling foreign exchange receipts, poor GDP growth rates, high infant and maternal mortality, high levels of illiteracy, and millions of school-age children out of school.


“My take is that we will likely continue to grapple with such problems unless we get the structures of our federalism and governance right. Our current system, which is characterized by a focus on sharing rather than production, is clearly not conducive to development. For Nigeria to develop – or even make any appreciable progress – we must re-structure Nigeria’s political, administrative and political architecture.

He said this in a speech he delivered at the public presentation of the Daily Stream newspaper, at the Banquet Hall, Nigeria Airforce Conference Centre, Kado, Abuja on Thursday.

According to him,

We should, first, dispassionately and painstakingly re-visit our 36-state structure vis-a-vis the idea of overly dominant federal government.

Second, we should devolve power from the centre to the federating units: many of the items in the Exclusive List should be devolved to the states or any other agreed federating units.





“Third, that devolution of powers must include an end to federal intrusion in local government administration. The so-called States/Local Governments joint account has virtually absolved state governments of responsibilities to fund local governments while they virtually confiscate the funds allocated by the federal government to the local government. To have the federal government create local governments and directly fund them makes nonsense of the word ‘local’.

“Fourth, we must sit down, discuss, and agree on the nature of our fiscal federalism – how to share our resources. I am on record as having advocated for the control of rents by the federating units from which they are derived while the federal government retains its powers to levy taxes. That will make us all productive again and our federating units to engage in healthy rivalries and competition, which will only result in more progress.

“There is no doubt in my mind that that the structure of our federation and governance constitute an impediment to our economic development, political stability and social harmony. Changing them would help to place our country on a path to phenomenal and unhindered development.