Nigeria must be restructured to avoid breakup – Pastor Adeboye

The General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has said the only way to quell the agitations by several ethnic groups seeking to break away from Nigeria is to restructure the country.

The pastor said this at the 60th Independence Day Celebration Symposium co-organised by the Redeemed Christian Church of God and the Nehemiah Leadership Institute.

While some Igbo groups have called for the creation of Biafra nation, some Yoruba leaders have backed the agitation for a Yoruba Republic.

Speaking at the symposium titled, ‘Where will Nigeria be in 2060?’, Pastor Adeboye advised the Federal Government to give Nigeria a lasting solution to secession agitations and its economic challenges by restructuring the country.

He said the restructuring must be carried out as soon as possible to forestall a breakup of the ethnic components making up Nigeria.

He proposed the adoption of an indigenous system that would be unique to the country or a merge of both the presidential and unicameral systems of government.

He said, “Why can’t we have a system of government that is 100 per cent Nigerian, unique to us? For example, we started on with the British system of government, somewhere along the line, we moved over to the American system of government.

“Can’t we have a combination of both and see whether it could help us solve our problems because in Mathematics, if you want to solve a problem, you try what we call Real Analysis. If it doesn’t work, then you move on to Complex Analysis and see whether that will help you.

“If that fails, you move on to Vector Analysis and so on. I believe that we might want to look at the problems of Nigeria in a slightly different manner.

“Some people feel that all our problems will be over if Nigeria should break up. I think that is trying to solve the problems of Nigeria as if it is a simple equation. The problems of Nigeria will require quite a bit of simultaneous equation and some of them are not going to be linear either – forgive me I am talking as a mathematician.

“Why can’t we have a system of government that will create what I will call the United States of Nigeria? Let me explain: We all know that we must restructure. It is either we restructure or we break. You don’t have to be a prophet to know that one. That is certain.

“Restructure or we break up. Now, we don’t want to break up, God forbid. In restructuring, why don’t we have a Nigerian kind of democracy? At the federal level, why don’t we have a president and a prime minister?

“If we have a president and a prime minister and we share responsibilities between these two so that one is not an appendage to the other. For examples, if the president controls the army and the prime minister controls the police. If the President controls resources likes oil and mining and the prime minister controls finance and inland revenue, taxes, customs, etc. You just divide responsibilities between the two.

“At the state level, you have the governor and the premier. And the same way, you distribute responsibilities between these people in such a manner that one cannot really go without the other. Maybe we might begin to tackle the problems.”