Former Vice Chancellor, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Prof. Ango Abdullahi has said that the north would reject restructuring because it is targeted at a particular section of the country.
Abdullahi, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), made this known in an interview with The Sun.
He said that for Nigeria to make any gains from any restructuring, the nation must first jettison its presidential system of government for a parliamentary system.
He also highlighted other conditions that needed to be fulfilled before restructuring can take place.
He said, “We have all personalised restructuring with a view to targeting a section of the country and this is the area that we feel very sensitive about and we will resist it. Even if we don’t resist it objectively, we can resist it politically.
“If there is going to be restructuring in the country, first, we should change from the presidential system of government to parliamentary system, and in terms of institutions that are in charge of elections; we should abolish the State Independent Electoral Commissions and we should ban any party from contesting elections unless it has direct primary where all its members will come out and decide who is going to contest council chairmanship up to the presidency.
“The State Independent Electorate Commissions do the bidding of the state governors. I can give you a recent example in Kano. How could in Kano recently a PDP state, PDP failed to win even a council seat? Something is basically wrong.
“So the manipulation of State Independent Electoral Commission is for me, today, the most dangerous threat to democracy in Nigeria. I have seen this now more or less in the light of 2018 where we are, one year to the election and politicians including governors, politicians from all levels here, I don’t make any exception, are trying to play to the gallery, in playing to the gallery, they are looking for votes.
“If we want Nigeria to be restructured, the only thing that is required is for us to call a sovereign national conference. It is the only conference that Nigeria has not experimented.”
The elder statesman also described as “irresponsible and deceptive” the calls by some governors for establishment of ranches rather than cattle colonies to stop incessant herdsmen-farmers clashes.
Abdullahi said that the governors were only playing to the gallery to win votes in 2019.
He said ranching was previously practised in the north but failed.
Abdullahi stated, “If they had forgotten their history, they should go and read their history books particularly on ranching development that was. But all these failed, some for careless reasons, some for purely unavoidable ethical reasons, they failed.
“So for them to be talking to us about ranch now, I consider it irresponsible and deceptive but I challenge them, we want to see model ranching in each state that talked about ranch now within the next 12 months.
“Certainly, they should know that this is not a solution to a problem that had been with us for hundreds of years.”
He stressed that herdsmen-farmers clashes in the country were being fuelled by political, religious and ethnic jingoists, not because of shortage of land.