NGO Boss Commends Yoruba Summit on Restructuring

The founder of Ibadan-based Non Governmental Organization (NGO), Guildance Community Development Foundation, Mr Kabiru Adisa, has commended Yoruba leaders for convening Summit to deliberate on Nigeria’s restructuring and other associated issues targeting at moving the country forward.

The commendation was contained in a press release issued last weekend by the community development expert.

“I find it gladdening that Yoruba leaders are now following up their restructuring demand with concrete plans. It is easy to just shout slogan without been specific . With the recent submit, I have no doubt that we are now speaking as a united region on the issue and we can now have the much yearning aspiration ,” Mr Adisa said.

He however cautioned restructuring agitators against failing to take the aspirations and feelings of other Nigerians into account.

“I am a bit worried that some of these agitations are not creating common ground with regions that may not be disposed to restructuring. There are regions that may feel that restructuring is not in their best interest as it threatens to stop the federal allocation that is responsible for keep their regions running,” he said.

“If you are saying restructuring will take away that allocation, how exactly do you want the regions to support your proposal when such support is practically a suicide? Therefore, restructuring agitators must come up with a compromise that will interest these other important regions. We could look at reducing federal allocation to states over a period of years that would allow all regions time to create new revenue sources. With a compromise like this, the restructuring agitation may be dead on arrival.”

Adisa also emphasized the importance of ensuring that restructured federation does not suffer the same case of mismanagement of resources and power that Nigeria is currently suffering.

“I really hope that restructuring does not mean running around a vicious cycle. If we are not going to import people to run the restructured Nigeria, then we need to ensure that the new system is better designed to prevent mismanagement. We currently have out of control governors in many states; we need to make sure that restructuring does not end up creating more uncontrollable regional leaders.”

“We also need to create a reliable national database so that planning will be based on actual data on not fabricated data. Every Nigerian must be captured in the national identity database which must further be connected to BVN, international passport, driving license and others. A restructured Nigeria cannot thrive without this system,” he concluded.

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