By Olakiitan Victor
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Chief Afe Babalola, has canvassed
for a return to regional governments for Nigeria to recover fully from
its economic woes and myriad of challenges confronting it.
The founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti(ABUAD) said having a central government with a president directing the affairs of
a large and multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation like Nigeria had been the
reason that the country has failed to develop.
The senior lawyer said this in Ado Ekiti at the weekend during a
programme tagged ‘Diplomatic Dialogue’ organized by the Department of
International Relations, where Malaysia High Commissioner to Nigeria,
Mr Lim Juay Jin was the guest speaker.
Babalola said: “I have attended three conferences in Nigeria and
return to regional government has always been my position. Nigeria
consists of over 300 ethnic groups and with different religious biasrs. So what we need is confederation or loose federalism , where each
region will be allowed to grow at its own pace and contribute to the
centre.
“This has been the practice in the USA, Australia and Canada . But in
Nigeria, we have a central government where only one person
determines what happens everywhere. In the past we had regional
governments where each was allowed to develop and Nigeria was better
off then .
“Nigeria has six geopolitical zones and these can be allowed to
function as component parts and Nigeria will be good for it. During
the regional government, Nigeria was growing faster . Malaysia is a
very small country with a population of about 30 million and this
makes it easy to govern.”
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