.Demand restructuring
By Ishaya Ibrahim
Acting News Editor
More troubles for President Muhammadu Buhari as a group of Yoruba elders comprising the tribe’s finest in business, academy and military have issued a warning to the federal government of Nigeria to restructure the country before the 2019 general elections otherwise they would secede from Nigeria.
The group, on the platform of Voice of Reason (VOR), has among its members one of the founders of Eko Hospital, Sunny Kuku; former Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Professor Oye Ibidapo Obe; First Task Force Commander of ECOMOG, Admiral Okanlawon Oni; and 74 other influential individuals.
They stated in an advertorial published in one of the national dailies that they would invoke the United Nations charter on self-determination if the Nigerian government fails to restructure the country within the shortest possible time.
“The Yoruba people are irrevocably committed to a fundamental restructuring of the current union within the shortest possible time, preferably, before the next elections, failing which, we Yoruba may have to exercise our option not to continue to be part of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as presently constituted.
“In the inalienable right to self-determination guaranteed by the United Nations Charter, we are prepared to use all means and resources available to us to extricate our people from this failed, unfair and unworkable union,” the group said.
But President Muhammadu Buhari seems to have foreclosed the possibility of restructuring in an address he delivered on New Year day.
He had said: “We Nigerians can be very impatient and want to improve our conditions faster than may be possible, considering our resources and capabilities. When all the aggregates of nationwide opinions are considered, my firm view is that our problems are more to do with process than structure.”
Although the All Progressives Congress (APC) has said that it was still trying to define what restructuring means, the Yoruba elite say the restructuring they are asking for should not be carried out by the National Assembly.
“This is because the current constitution (1999) not only does not represent the will or wishes of ‘we the people,’ it is a flawed document conceived and hatched under a ‘Northern military government’ with fraudulent and unwarranted structural advantages given to Northern Nigeria and foisted on the rest of us,” they said.
