NATIONAL: Addressing structural imbalance in Nigeria’s system more important than 2023 election — Bode George

FORMER Deputy National Chairman of People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olabode George, has said revisiting the documents of the 2014 Constitutional Conference could be helpful in solving the myriads of challenges confronting the country.

George noted that doing this will help the country to be redesigned along a true, fair, and equitable federation which according to him is more important than the subtle permutations for the 2023 presidential election which some politicans have started.

He made this known in a statement issued on Friday, titled, A New Year, A New Beginning’.

The former military governor of Ondo State identified banditry, kidnappings and #EndSARS protests alongside the “terrible” Covid-19 pandemic as the challenges the country faced in 2020.

He, however, noted that the pandemic was a scourge that spared no country.

The Atona Oodua of Yorubaland lamented that Nigeria as a republic was still much skewed, imbalanced and distorted by a constitutional arrangement that does not augur for national cohesion and growth.

He said, “Let us revisit the document of the 2014 Constitutional Conference which in totality is quite enlightening about how this nation can be redesigned along a true, fair, equitable, civilized federation.

“This is the real task before us all now. It is even more important than the 2023 presidential election,” he said.

“The year 2020 was indeed Annus Horribilis and at once Annus Miserabillis. It was a very terrible year on all fronts. No nation was spared from the terrible pandemic whose scourge still festers across the globe with increasing venom.

“Here at home we equally confronted the cankerworm of banditry, kidnappings, the Endsars protests that triggered ruin and bloodletting.

“Our nation is still challenged with the burden of inequitable obviousness in the machineries of the state. Our Republic is still much skewed, imbalance, distorted by a constitutional arrangement that does not augur for national cohesion and growth,”

George posited that the composition of power must ultimately yield to a true and genuine structural equity where everyone would have a sense of belonging and where every state can develop along its own natural path with the resources on its ground.

The former military governor, however, clarified that he was not calling for secession but devolution and decentralization of power from the centre to the federating units as exemplified by the United States.

“It is interesting that from the North to the South, voices are now coalescing that Nigeria needs a new constitutional arrangement. This is gladdening.

“I do not seek a dismemberment of our nation. But I am resolved, just like millions of our compatriots, that the stronghold of the center must be loosened for a decentralization that favors state autonomy along the line of a United States of Nigeria where the states are allowed comprehensive sovereign powers as reflected in the very constitution of the United States of America which we copied without thorough tidiness,” Chief George said.

Speaking further, the Atona Odua of Yoruba land, declared that the present constitutional arrangement in the country as wobbly and unjust as well as unfair, saying it had to give way for a new structural vision without which the continuity of the Nigerian Union would be fraught with festering maladies.

The elder statesman posited that there was need to start on a clean slate where justice, representative evenness define the nation’s democratic space, while wishing the country well as it grappled with a new, progressive idealism in its journey towards a new democratic nation.

“This present platform is wobbly. It is unjust. It is unfair. It has to give way for a new structural vision without which the continuity of the Nigerian Union will be fraught with festering maladies.

“Let us start on a clean slate where justice, representative evenness define our democratic space . I wish our nation well as we grapple with a new, progressive idealism in the journey towards a new democratic nation,” George said.