Every four years, Elections come and go. This has become a ritual and we need to start looking at issues and ways to improve Nigeria as a better society. What’s different today from the last election? I would say, not much. In Nigeria we have three fault lines, which are religion, ethnicity and language.
Nobody is talking about these, we all tend to shy away from these topics and live under the illusion that those problems don’t exist. In my opinion, Nigeria needs a National order, what I mean by a National Order is when a diverse group of people come together to legitimize their existence. Nigeria came about by the colonial masters and not every ethnic group gave their consent for the creation of a Nigerian state.
The way in which the Nigerian state can work properly and have a stable and growing Nigeria is for the leaders to address Nigeria’s structure. This structure can be in the form of grouping Nigeria into Regions such as South -East, South -South, South -West, North -Central, North- East and North- West. Regionalism will give ownership to state resources in the hands of state; Nigeria is not working because Abuja is too far.
Every state scramble for revenue allocation every month, this makes states lazy and reliant on the revenue allocation alone. State ownership of resources would give room for state sourcing for funding and manpower to harness its resources to facilitate rapid growth and development. Every region would have a president which would govern in line with state governors and also have a confederation of six regional presidents coming together on a roundtable to discuss bilateral, partnership and all other state matters among regions.
This concept solves the problem of ethnicity, religion and language, which has been the major problem we Nigerians have failed to address. The President Goodluck Jonathan’s National Conference didn’t address that, and the report from that conference has not been implemented. Nigeria is ours and as young individuals, it’s of essence to juggle ideas for a better Nigeria, Nigeria is ours and we would all live and face the consequences of a failed Nigeria or reap the reward of a stable and growing Nigeria.