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A former governor of Imo State, Chief Achike Udenwa has claimed that a restructured Nigeria would be more beneficial to an Igbo man than producing a president.
He maintained that what the Igbo and other ethnic nationality needs at the moment is restructuring more than the presidency. He noted that the 2023 elections would be of no effect without restructuring.
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Speaking to newsmen on Friday, he said ‘It is useless having an election again in this country without first restructuring the country. What do you want to achieve if you cede the presidency to the Igbo? What do the Igbo want to achieve with the president without restructuring? Let us all insist on restructuring before elections.’
‘Restructure this country and let us have working federalism. That is what we think will solve most of our problems. The way the Federal Government is not taking the restructuring thing very seriously is winning over a lot of people towards IPOB. The best we can do is to restructure this country. I have said it in an earlier interview that restructuring this country is honestly a win-win situation for everybody.
‘Nigeria will wake up economically, socially. But as long as we continue operating this unitary government in the name of a Federal Government it will never work; you cannot run a unitary government in a multi-linguistic society like ours, in a multi-cultural society like ours. The presidential system, being a winner takes it, any of the tribes that grab power poses a danger to the other tribes and that is why we are saying loosen it; let us go back to true federalism.
‘This was what Aburi Accord was all about. If the Aburi agreement had been implemented at the time, perhaps there wouldn’t have been a civil war; perhaps we wouldn’t have been where we are today, economically, socially and otherwise. The in-fighting, strife, suppressions, the insecurity would never have been in this country today. We still have an opportunity to correct that mistake; let us restructure now.
‘There should be no 2023 elections without restructuring. It is useless having an election again in this country without first restructuring the country. What do you want to achieve if you cede the presidency to the Igbo? What do the Igbo want to achieve with the president without restructuring? Let us all insist on restructuring before elections. We have two years to the elections; we can restructure within two years. Restructuring to a large extent means rearranging the legislative list. It is not a very difficult thing; get a new constitution, talk of fiscal federalism.
‘How do we share our resources; how do we contribute to the Federal Government? What are the powers in the Exclusive List, which are the powers in the Concurrent List, and what are the Residual powers? If we want to rearrange these, it doesn’t need to take much time.
‘The 2014 National Conference Report touches on all these things. Even if you don’t like what they have done, take that document, you can set up a small committee to review their report. Everything we needed to do was contained in that report. We must have the will; what we are lacking is the will and as long as we lack the will even though we hold a hundred elections, it doesn’t take us anywhere.
‘It doesn’t improve our welfare, it doesn’t improve our economy. Look at where we are today, look at our GDP, look at the inflation rate, look at the number of debts we have. How can that economy ever rise under the existing circumstances? It is a very serious issue, and if we don’t attend to it, we cannot move a step further’ He concluded.
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