Restructuring Will Save Nigeria: Atiku

 

Former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, has said that restructuring the nation is needed if national integration and stability to be ensured.

Atiku by said this in a paper he presented at the just concluded memorial service of the Late Gen.Usman Katsina Memorial Conference, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua Memorial Hall, Murtala Square, Kaduna, on Saturday.

He spoke on the theme of the conference, “The Challenges of National Integration and Survival of Democracy in Nigeria.”

The former president noted that he has been advocating restructuring because he believed it is the solution to most problems in Nigeria if not all.

He stressed that Nigeria had struggled to build a nation where the component units would feel a true sense of belonging.

Atiku said, “As a country we have struggled to live up to this ideal. We have obviously not done enough to realise national integration, and the survival of our democracy is still a work in progress.

“The cost to us has been enormous. We even fought a civil war to forcibly keep the country together.

“Since the various amalgamations that created the entity that we now call Nigeria, different segments of Nigeria’s population have, at different times and sometimes at the same time, expressed feelings of marginalisation, of being short-changed, dominated, oppressed, threatened, or even targeted for elimination.”

According to him, previous initiatives geared towards addressing these concerns had proved as mutual suspicions still exist adding that other pressure groups had expressed similar frustrations arising from a sense of exclusion and helplessness, as they believed their voices were not been heard and they could not hold those in power to account.

“If anything, our unity has been fragile, our democracy unstable, and our people more aggrieved by their state in the federation.”

He believed that the unity of Nigeria was worth sacrificing for, stressing that his belief in one strong and united Nigeria has remained strong and that we are stronger together.

He noted that it was not a secret that many Nigerians who are not northerners believe strongly that northerners are the main beneficiary of the status quo.

Atiku said, “The north and Nigeria have not been served well by the status quo and there is need for change”.

“Who among us who went to primary and secondary school in the 1960s had much to do with the federal government? Did the northern regional government wait to collect monthly revenue allocations from Lagos before paying salaries to its civil servants and teachers or fixing its bridges and roads?”

He urged Nigerians to put all forms of discrimination aside and support the restructuring process.