Atiku, Tinubu, Obi Others Must Provide Blueprint On Restructuring, Say Federalists

A group, The Core Federalists (CF), has insisted that all presidential candidates in the 2023 General Election must disclose their plans on how they intend to restructure Nigeria with a clear timeline if elected president next year.

  The CF also insisted that restructuring must be made a front-burner campaign issue in the 2023 presidential race and therefore called on all presidential candidates to state their position clearly on the matter as they campaign for votes.

  The group stated these in a statement by Ambassador Humphrey Orjiako, Handel Okoli and Mr. Mark Adebayo on Monday, 26 July, 2022, stressing that restructuring Nigeria is imperative for the survival of the country beyond 2023.

The statement reads: “As the 2023 general elections knock on our doors, the Core Federalists, as an organisation, has noticed, with serious concern, that the issue of restructuring Nigeria has not gotten the kind of attention it deserves in the conversations around the elections.

“We, in the CF, believe that there is no issue more important and urgent than restructuring in present day Nigeria, due to the fact that almost all the challenges the country is battling with – insecurity, underdevelopment, economic backwardness, massive corruption and inter-ethnic distrust, religious violence and allied crises – are not unconnected with the warped structure of the country that is not only unsustainable but also unworkable.

“We believe strongly that development and peace will continue to elude Nigeria if the federating units – geopolitical zones, states and local government areas – are considered mere appendages to the so-called Federal Government to which the former must kowtow for monthly handouts without the capacity to determine the direction they want their communities to proceed and the development templates they wish to apply as relevant to their environments.

“There is no gainsaying the fact that this type of system discourages productivity and kills creativity and consequently stifles development.

“We demand that each of the presidential candidates running for office in the 2023 presidential election make public their restructuring plans for Nigeria.”