Adibe Emenyonu in Benin-city
An Edo State-based group, God and People Prayer Parliament, has advocated the restructuring of Nigeria to eight regional parliamentary system of government.
The National Chairman of the group, Dr. Dele Oluwatade, while presenting the group’s proposal in Benin city, explained that in the proposed arrangement, President Bola Tinubu would transmute to a Prime Minister with Head of Premiers of eight regions to birth a new stable Nigeria Federation.
Oluwatade described presidential system of government as “a drain-pipe democracy” and the cause of the bottomless fiscal corruption in the country, saying that a nonproductive country has no business running such an expensive system of government, even as he stated that the advantages of parliamentary system practice is closest to the definition of democracy.
According to him, “There is minimum courtroom appearance and the political processes of election are inexpensive, fair and smoother compared to the money bags, slave trading ballot buying, and ballot box snatching presidential election.”
The group, therefore, appealed to the president and the National Assembly to hasten provision of structures for the debate of restructuring the country to commence.
The group noted that at independence, there were very significant intentional democratic mistakes/omissions in the parliamentary system of the First Republic which led to its failure.
It listed the omissions as absence of provision for a referendum clause, lack of exit clause from the federal union and the missing third clause: the definition of the territorial integrity of the federating regions in the constitution of the country at the time.
“The absence of necessary democracy stabilizers led to the mismanagement of the ‘crisis in the West’. It was a regional internal affair that would have resolved the issue without declaring a state of emergency which whirl wound to where we are today. Therefore, for stable polity in Nigeria, there must be at least five democratic provisions in the constitution,” Oluwatade said.
He also listed the five clauses as Referendum Clause for the public opinion/decision on critical issues, namely Secession or Exit Clause to enable any region to withdraw seamlessly from the federation, Regional Integrity Clause Expulsion Clause and Intervention Clause.
“The second advantage of parliamentary system now is that separatist agitations will calm down to embrace the new dawn, and join hands and hearts together to build their respective new Regions.
“All marauding terrorists will stop or relocate to their regions as there will be no more cover, as each region will tackle its security problems headlong without external interference.
“The unification of split ethnic nationalities for cultural harmony and freedom from oppression. This is a major benefit of restructuring.
“Another advantage of restructuring is restoration and preservation of minority ethnic nationalities of Nigeria, because they will be free from presidency cabals or an autocratic president, ambitious and predatory colonist nationalities disturbing others. It becomes necessary to adopt parliamentary system to secure all nationalities in Nigeria, or it might lead to a state of anarchy, and only God knows what will remain of Nigeria.”
