The Senator representing Cross River Central in the national assembly, Prof Sandy Onor, has stated that it is high time the country’s cooperate existence should be renegotiated.
Prof Onor, a professor of history and fellow of the historical society of Nigeria, made this known during the 8th distinguished lecture of the Institute of Public Policy and Administration of the University of Calabar.
The lecture was titled: “Insecurity and national unity in Nigeria: Righting the Wrongs of Public Policy”.
According to the scholar, “while it is unpatriotic and inadvisable for any region of Nigeria to canvass for the dismemberment of the country, it is important to renegotiate the basis for the continued cooperate existence of Nigeria.
“Here lays my support for restructuring which seems imperative as the federal pendulum swings between centripetalism and centrifugalism in the nation-building process.
“A restructured federation will heal and free the nation from some of the security challenges it is currently facing.
“We must restructure in order to untangle the federal government from too much power and responsibilities foisted upon it by many years of centralizing militarism”, Professor Onor said.
He contended that in Nigeria today, our experience with democracy has been less than satisfactory.
This, he said, is because “geo-ethnicity, political partisanship, religious bigotry, incompetence, corruption and nepotism are some of the factors that hamper good governance in Nigeria.
“As it is today, we must own up to the fact that never before has the unity of this country been so maximally abused and threatened,” he said.
He suggested policy options in the hope that if applied can restore hope to our people and rescue our country from the very slippery precipice upon which we are presently dreadfully gyrating.
Credit: Daily Sun