Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai says President Muhammadu Buhari supports the restructuring of Nigeria.
El-Rufai, who was Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Committee on True Federalism which submitted its report in 2018, stated this in an interview published by Sunday Vanguard.
He said that although the committee’s report covered many issues bordering on the restructuring of the polity, the National Assembly has not deemed it fit to act on the recommendations to enact needed laws.
However, he recognised that the recommendations have been difficult to implement because: “the status quo is always difficult to change. People don’t want change and you have to understand that we have a history of coming from military rule.”
El-Rufai added, “We have a constitution that was written under the military that still sees Nigeria through unitary lenses. But it is clear that this has not worked. We have submitted our report.
“The President agrees with the content, main crux of the report and we drafted bills that will enable the amendment of the constitution as well statutory amendments that will give effect to our recommendations.
“You don’t need the President or even the Federal Government or even the APC to put this into effect. Any member of the National Assembly can pick our report, any of the bills and sponsor as private member bill.
“The reason this hasn’t been done is inertia, the fact that people don’t want change but Nigeria is overdue for the redesigning of our security architecture and many other aspects of our polity and the economy.
“I call on members of our National Assembly to take our report, look at the bills we have drafted and work on them, try to give us state police, state judiciary, vest control of oil and minerals in the states, offshore in the government of the federal while states pay royalty and tax.”
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On one of the issues tackled by the report, he said, “We have always made the argument that centralized police does not work.
“Nigeria is the only country in the world that is a federation that has only one police force; we have made the argument that states should be allowed to have their own police and that even local governments should be allowed their own police.
“The number of the police we have is inadequate, we have less than half of what we need and a large number of them are engaged in non-police duties by carrying the handbags of the wives of important people.
“We need to have a greater footprint of policing in Nigeria. And the only way to achieve that in a fast track manner is to amend the constitution and put policing on the concurrent list as recommended by the APC Committee so that we have adequate policing. Even today more state governments are responsible for the running cost of the police.
“The Federal Government only pays the salaries of policemen but the running cost, the logistics, their vehicles, their fuel are all the responsibility of state governments across the country.
“So what are we afraid of? Let us just amend the constitution and allow state police and in fact go further and allow local government police.”