Vice president Yemi Osinbajo yesterday said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate in the forthcoming February 16 presidential election, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku have always opposed restructuring of the country.
The vice president who was the chairman at the Bisi Akande Colloquium with the theme: “Nigeria: Achieving National Unity Through Peaceful Restructuring”, said Nigerians have to be careful and vigilant “because they have not changed”.
He specifically mentioned how the government of Olusegun Obasanjo/Abubakar Atiku withheld allocations to local government areas over creation of additional local government areas.
He explained that for effective restructuring, there must be strong states and devolution of powers.
According to him, states should be able to develop at their own space within their resources.
Osinbajo who admitted that Nigeria truly needs restructuring, said, “It is necessary that we strengthen the states so that we can have a rapid development and that we have to pursue this with litigation and not through the parliament because I can see that that is the only process that will make it effective.”
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Using Lagos State as an example, he said former President Olusegun Obasanjo, “has to bend down for Lagos State under the administration of Bola Tinubu who fought the federal government on physical federalism and other issues, this made him to bend on some issues that we pursued at the Supreme Court of law most especially over revenue sharing formula.
“This is what we need, we should be able to seek for restructuring through litigations to let the federal government realise what is proper for them to do over states and what the states can do for themselves.
“As we all know that Nigerians have been agitating for restructuring since and we have conducted series of conferences and confabs on restructuring but nothing has been done so far.”
Osinbajo described Chief Bisi Akande as a gentleman to the core.
He said, “Baba Akande is a one man one wife type of a person, he is an exemplary leader, he is so simple just like the late Sage Obafemi Awolowo.
Also speaking, former Senate President, Sen. Ken. Nnamani said, “ Those people that were using restructuring to campaign “are liars, they cannot do it, we all need to critically look at it, and fashion a way out for a better restructuring of the country so that the country can move forward.
