A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, has supported the call for a national dialogue to address the insecurity and other problems in the country.
Speaking on Friday when he featured as a guest on Sunrise Daily, he believes state governors are handicapped to address the challenges in their various domains.
“Look at what is going on in the land – insecurity. Farmers cannot go to work, you cannot even travel within your local entity, and the governors are not in charge because they don’t have control over security,” the senior lawyer said during an interview on the Channels Television breakfast programme.
He added, “The governors are not in charge because they cannot harness the resources in their states for the benefit of their people; the governors are not in charge because they go to Abuja every month to go and beg for money, in a federation.
“The governors are not in charge because even universities that they established and they call state universities, it is the Federal Government that will determine who can get admission into the university that is being funded by a state; the governors are not in charge because they cannot even generate electricity for their own people even though they have the resources.”
A Federation Called Nigeria
State governors in the South met on Tuesday in Asaba, the Delta State capital where they resolved to ban open grazing and movement of cattle by foot and called for a national dialogue to address the agitations by various groups in the region.
They put aside their political differences to demand a restructuring of the country along with fiscal federalism, devolution of powers, and state police, among other demands.
Supporting the position of the governors, Adegboruwa stated that the action of the leaders was a reflection of the will and desire of Nigerians.
According to him, there seems to be so much confusion in the land and there is a need for a cohesive discussion that will provide a meaning of what the Nigerian Federation is all about.
The senior advocate noted that the All Progressives Congress hinted at the devolution of powers and amending the Constitution in its manifesto while seeking to take over power at the centre in the build-up to the 2015 general elections.
He explained that it was important to ensure sub-nationals and the people have a say in how they were governed and in how their resources were being utilised.
“That has not happened since 2015 up till now,” Adegboruwa said, adding, “It is important that at the stage we are now, we should not be pretending that there is a federation called Nigeria; we should determine the terms of that federation.”
“We should dismantle the constitution and get us a new document that will define what indeed should be the terms of our togetherness, I think that’s what the governors mean by there is a need for a national conference,” he affirmed.
