The Oodua Peoples’ Congress (OPC) on Sunday, reiterated its call for return of the country to regional system of government, calling on the National Assembly Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution to discharge its responsibility with utmost consideration to achieve such a goal.
OPC gave this charge on Sunday in a statement made available to the media by its spokesperson, Barrister Yinka Oguntimehin, saying that it was lending its support to the growing calls by various ethnic groups across the country for return to the 1960 constitution.
The Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, while further reaffirming its support for a call by a group of ethnic nationalities that met a few days in Kaduna, the Kaduna State capital, calling for Nigeria to be restructured into reorganised regions, pointed out that the country must return to regionalism for her to make any meaningful progress.
According to OPC, returning to regionalism is the best system that will engender progress and development for a multi-ethnic country like Nigeria, saying that what the Yoruba socio-cultural organisation was proposing is a regional system that would make the region self-reliant and in control of whatever was produced and generated in their regions.
Besides, OPC argued that with regional system of government in place, each region would also 70 percent of such generated revenue and send 30 percent to the centre, expressing the belief that with such arrangement, “the country will attain its God-given potentials, while peace will reign with attendant development.”
Speaking further, the Yoruba socio-cultural organisation listed countries with multi-ethnic nationalities like Nigeria, but with far smaller populations, that operated regional system of government, declaring pointedly that any country that allowed the federating units to be independent would develop rapidly due to ever “present socio-political cohesion and unity in the country.”
“We don’t have to travel far to see countries that operate regional systems. An example is Senegal.
“Senegal with an estimated population of about 17 million people has about 14 regions which are further divided into departments.
“Even Gambia with population of about 2.8million have six regions. It is a statement of fact that any country that allows the federating units to be independent will develop rapidly and there is always socio- political cohesion and unity in the country,” OPC said.
OPC, while insisting on the need to return to regional system of government, said it was high time Nigerians realised that the problem currently facing the country began after the military truncated the regional system of government in 1966 and introduced a unitary system of government.
According to it, right from that time, Nigeria has continued to walk in the wilderness without any form of appreciable progress, saying that Nigerians needed “to realise that the founding fathers of the country knew what was best for us when they bequeathed a regional system of government to us in 1960.”
“Therefore, for Nigeria to make any meaningful progress and stop this vicious -cycle of motion without movement, we must return to regional system of government, which was the original plan for Nigeria,” the socio-cultural group said.
The OPC spokesperson, while expressing the group’s support for the new proposal for a United Region of Nigeria, urged the National Assembly Committee saddled with the responsibility of reviewing the Constitution to know that now is the right time for Nigeria to go back to regionalism.
He said the committee was on the verge of making history and should know that whatever it does today would affect the nation either positively or negatively.
“The Committee on the Review of the Constitution is on the verge of making history and whatever they do today would definitely affect the nation either positively or negatively.
“As much as the OPC, under the leadership of our amiable leader, Iba Gani Abiodun Ige Adams, supports the proposal of all the ethnic nationalities in Nigeria for a United Region of Nigeria, I am also using this opportunity to appeal to members of the Committee on the Review of the Constitution to see themselves as ambassadors of the people and make sure that the wishes of Nigerians on the review of the Constitution to regionalism remains their utmost priority,” Oguntimehin said.
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