As long as Nigerians continue to reinforce and encourage failure, and electoral malfeasance through our hypocritical attitudes, as long as we continue to reward criminality and pretend that all is well because we happen to be beneficiaries of th`is fundamentally flawed criminal enterprise, which is devoid of equity, justice, and fairness, the country will continue to grow in the reverse.
When we come to the consensus that this country has not worked, is not working and will not work as presently constituted no matter who is at the helm of affairs unless fundamental surgical restructuring is carried out, then and only then shall we be ready to build a nation where economic growth and development, security of lives and properties of citizens and the welfare of the greater majority will be sustainable and guaranteed.
By restructuring this polity, the various federating units will have respect for each other, there shall be equality of citizen, the power of the people in power will become naturally subordinate to the power of the people. When the power of the people issuperiorto the power of the people in power, the nation will start realizing its true potentials. The Federal system operated in Nigeria today is uniquely awkward and promotes disunity, injustice, bigotry, inequity.
At every occasion you hear government functionaries declare that the unity of this country is not negotiable. The question should be, what are the factors that can guarantee non negotiable unity? Can injustice, tribalism, bigotry, inequality, guaranty unity? The lawyers will say you cannot build something on nothing and expect it to stand. The psalmist will admonish that if the foundation is faulty what can the righteous do? Consequently, we now ask ourselves who laid the foundation of this country? Was the foundation built on nothing? Is the foundation faulty? Can the country be sustained by its faulty foundation? Who signed the amalgamation agreement? Is it not time to renegotiate the amalgamation agreement? Must Nigeria remain a potentially great power?
The elites who constitute less than 2% of the 220 million Nigerian population have kidnapped Nigeria and Nigerians. They haveappropriated all the institutions of violence /coercion and are holding the country hostage.
The resources are recklessly and arrogantly pillaged. The citizens can not complain or else the law enforcement agents under their control are unleashed on you. Loans are taken for items that cannot be accounted for and frittered away, the era of forward sales of our crude oil as collateral for loan has become a new lexicon in the fraudulent and arrogant misappropriation of our collective resources. The future of our children and grandchildren are already mortgaged through these loans. Unfortunately those outside the corridors of power are waiting patiently to be admitted into the club of kleptomaniacs. This accounts for why voices challenging these misdeeds are drowning progressively.
In a country where some ethnic groups are above the law, in a secular country where some states are governed under a separate sharia law, in a country where the uniting force is the petrol dollar of the Niger Delta region. In a country where you have two different currencies, where any state of the Niger Delta can be sacrificed to protect and guarantee the flow of the petrol dollar for all to share, in a country where human lives do not matter and can be wasted by terrorists herdsmen who move about with sophisticated weapons of mass destruction to the knowledge of the law enforcement agents who do not arrest them, in a country where a man that climbs the electric pole and hangs the Biafran flag is declared a terrorists while one that moves about freely with AK47 and other dangerous weapons are hunters, can we ever be equal before the law? How can such a country make progress? While president Bola Tinubu led the vibrant opposition that dismantled the PDP, he advocated restructuring as the guarantee for a greater Nigeria. All eyes are on the president to walk his talk as the man in charge now.
Fundamentally restructuring connotes that every geopolitical zones takes control of its resources and administrative structures, control of the police, education, agriculture, mineral resources, crude oil and farm products. every zone will developed at its own pace and pay taxes to the federal government for issues like immigration, customs, army, Navy, Airforce. et cetra
The only guarantee for a greater tomorrow for Nigeria is restructuring the polity/ every other cosmetic policy by the ruling class is for the protection of their class interest and not in the best interest of Nigeria and Nigerians. Finally restructuring will emancipate Nigeria from British colonial bondage.
The priority of the police and security forces has been essentially regime protection. This is why they are swift in arresting critics of excruciating government policies. Nigerians have lost trust in the ability of the leaders and the security agencies in protecting them.
The uproar raised by the killing of the armed fulani whom the press quietly and mischievously branded hunters is an indication of the value the government places on the lives of the various nations that constitute Nigeria. A couple of days after the incident, there were attack on several plateau villages allegedly by fulani herdsmen where more than 80 innocent Nigerians were killed and over 5000 displaced and are now in IDP camps in their own country.
Ironically, in no distant time, herdsmen will occupy these land from which those plateau indigenes were chased out with their cattle, rebuild the land and occupy without any consequences or implications. The state government will continue to supply the internally displaced persons now refugees in their own country with food items. There are people in IDP camps in Benue state today. Some have been there for up to six years, their ancestral home are occupied by herdsmen. Nothing is happening to clear out the illegal occupants and resettle the original inhabitants in their ancestral land. This is Nigerian for you. A country of Absurdities. Nigeria cannot make progress until truth becomes the final authority in our dealings with each other instead of men of power.Is the loyalty of our political leadership to men or to the truth? We lack the courage to challenge falsehood.This is the greatest obstacleto unity, peace, and progress.
Our democracy as practiced today has become impotent,. Democracy without opposition will never be in the best interest of the people. As an opposition leader president Bola Ahmed Tinubu was at his best organizing, funding and physically participating in protests both after the annulment of June 12 presidential election and while PDP was in power.Protesting was a veritable weapon of trade used by the opposition AD, ACN and later APC to checkmate the PDP. All of a sudden under the presidency of Tinubu, protests are gagged, threatened and restrained. This is simply unacceptable.
SIR. TEMPLE OGUERI ONYEUKWU FCA
