Second-Republic Governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Balarabe Musa says a return to regional government would address the plethora of challenges currently bedeviling the nation.
He stated this in an interview published by Saturday Sun.
According to Musa, the present system of government cannot support the nation’s development.
He said instead of 36 states, the federating units should comprise six or seven regions that would develop at their own pace.
Musa said, “In practical terms, we have seen experiences of governance in this country over a long period of time. The request for restructuring is valid, but those people who are supporting it should then make it clear to Nigerians what restructuring constitutes; is it ethnic nationalities problems because some of the people are thinking that it is about creation of more states.
“As far as we are concerned, our restructuring idea is that, we have now seen the problem of weakening our regional government. When we had regional government, we had more responsible leadership and we had more progress.
“Let us go back to the regional arrangement, where we had Eastern Region, Northern Region, Western Region and later, Mid Western Region, and we saw more sense of responsibility in the leadership and we also saw coordinated progress, so, let us go back to that arrangement.
“Let us restructure the country and go back to the regional arrangement, and so, should abolish the states and go back to regions; instead of the 36 states, we should have six or seven regions. Let each regional government decide how many states and local governments it wants to have and finance.
“The federating units should be the regions, and resources should be allocated to the regions, and each region can create as many states and local governments it wants based on allocations it has and resources available to it.
“We will make the centre not as strong as it is, and make the regions and local governments stronger, but the federal government will also be strong enough to coordinate and protect the interest of Nigerians who don’t want to identify themselves with regions, but Nigeria. We can do that only if we have a relevant central government that is not too strong, but certainly not too weak to be able to coordinate and bring about national unity.”
The elder statesman equally flayed the nation’s current party system which he described as a two-party system.
Musa noted that the two main political parties – APC and PDP – have shown over the years that they are two sides of the same coin.
He said that if the current party system that has become dominated by money politics was not addressed, Nigeria would have a worse president than Muhammadu Buhari in 2023.
Asked for the type of leadership could have after Buhari, Musa said, “A worse leadership has been the trend, and that trend will continue unless something decisively is done by the Nigerian people, we will not see a better situation when Buhari goes in 2023; we will see a situation worse than during Buhari.”