By Sina
Adedipe
This comes in
reaction to the statements credited to President Muhammadu Buhari in the
Nigerian Tribune of last week Friday in a story on Page 8 with the headline: Nigeria Abuja
 |
| *Buhari |
Earlier in the year,
political leaders from the South-East were at Aso Villa to discuss the problems
of their people and zone with the President. Like the Yoruba of the South-West
and the ethnic groups in the South-South such as the Ijaw, Efik, Ibibio,
Itsekiri, Urhobo and others, what the Igbo of the South-East want is the
restructuring of the country. To this end, they are demanding for the number of
states in the country to be reduced into six or eight regions or a return to
the 12-state structure of 1967-1976 and changing from the presidential to the
parliamentary system of the First Republic, so that, instead of a strong and
overbearing central government, the regions or states would be largely
autonomous and in charge of their economic resources, and only paying agreed taxes
to the Federal Government, which will take care of matters like currency,
postal services, security and foreign affairs.
For their part, the
Igbo also want another state created in the South-East to make them have six as
has been the case since 1996 with the South-West, South-South, North-Central
and North-East. The North-West, to which Buhari belongs, has seven states. From
the report in the Tribune, the President did not address any of these issues as
all he told the Igbo monarchs was that he would extend the new railway system
his government is planning to construct to their zone and that he had shown
interest in the Igbo by appointing four of their people as ministers of five of
the most important ministries, but which he did not identify.
For me, it is wrong for President Buhari to believe that God brought the ethnic
groups in Nigeria Nigeria
