Controversial entertainer, Charles Oputa aka Charly Boy says “Nigeria can’t be better as one country”.
According to him, the nation would be better off if the federating units went their separate ways.
Charly Boy stated this in an interview published by Saturday Punch while reacting to agitations by some secessionist groups in the country.
He stated that the nation was built on a “faulty” foundation, noting that this has continued to hinder its progress.
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“Nigeria can’t be better as one country. They say to see the end (of a thing) you look at the beginning and our beginning and our foundation are so faulty that it is really not a wonder why we have this kind of problems that we have – the injustices, the oppression, etc.
“In the beginning, it was by the British. Nigeria was not just a geographical expression, it was seen as a transaction, starting with the British. Initially when they came down here, the South fought them hard but they found the people up North, especially the Fulani, quite easy to get along with. And in the beginning, it was just the South that wanted independence; the North wanted to live their normal nomadic life but the British saw in them a people that they could easily manipulate. So, that was when they started to use them and got them into the contraption called Nigeria and aided them to do what they are doing now.
“Therefore, when you have a building, for instance, and already the foundation is faulty, you can’t start talking about putting floors upon floors. It’s not going to work. If you have a marriage and the spouses don’t respect each other, the marriage will not last.”
The musician and talk-show host stated that the nation last worked in the 1950s and 60s’ when “we had regional autonomy and the regions contributed to the centre. But that is not the case now.”
Charly Boy slammed the 1999 constitution as a “scam”, explaining that regional government was the only way out of the doldrums for the country.
“Another scam is the constitution, because it was the handlers of Nigeria that helped these people to figure out that kind of constitution that does not work for everybody.
“So, there is no way this union can go forward except we come to the table and talk about it and except we go back to the way we started, that is regional autonomy.”