A few weeks ago, Dr. Femi Aribisala, wrote a provocative but logically unassailable article in this newspaper, entitled “No Yoruba president in Nigeria for another 20 years” (Vanguard, May 21, 2019). He argued that when it’s the South’s turn to produce the president in 2023, it must go to Ndigbo, not the Yoruba. He posited that, having produced Nigeria’s president for eight years and vice president for another eight years, since the return to civil rule in 1999, the Yoruba shouldn’t expect to govern Nigeriaagain until 2038!

Well, Dr Aribisala is right. I expressed the same view in this column. In a piece entitled, “Southwest APC’s betrayal of Yoruba cause” (Vanguard, January 24, 2019), I said: “Given that, since 1999, the Southwest has produced the president for eight years and the South-South for six years, the Southeast should provide national leadership in 2023 when power returns to the South”.

But some Yoruba leaders self-interestedly disagree. Last week, a Southwest APC leader, Adeseye Ogunlewe, a former minister, said that Bola Tinubu, APC’s national leader, “is a natural successor to Buhari”, adding that “to shut out the Yoruba is undemocratic”. The idea of the Yoruba producing the president again in 2023, when the Igbo, another major ethnic group in the South, hasn’t produced any for, by then, 24 years, doesn’t strike such people as risking further endangering Nigeria’s fragile unity.

Sadly, those who should rise above such ethnic jingoism also fuel it. Earlier this year, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who repeatedly said “Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable”, put ethnic sentiments above that presumed unity by urging the Yoruba to re-elect President Muhammadu Buhari in order to clinch the presidency in 2023. “We are not looking at the 2019 but 2023,” he said, adding: “If we get it in 2019, Yoruba will get it in 2023”. Of course, what he meant was that if the Yoruba help re-elect Buhari, the North would, as a quid pro quo, help the Yoruba secure the presidency in 2023. It was difficult to reconcile Osinbajo’s preachiness on Nigeria’s unity with his failure to recognise that any ganging up by the Hausa/Fulani and the Yoruba to exclude the Igbo from providing national leadership would severely undermine that unity!

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in a true federal system, “no part of the federation should be so dominant that others have little opportunity to provide national leadership”. In other words, a true federalism doesn’t only guarantee equal opportunities and fair material treatment for all constituent polities, it ensures balance among them.

But there is no balance among Nigeria’s constituent nationalities. The North is so politically dominant that it will always provide national leadership or determine which of the three Southern geo-political zones does. Given ethnic bloc voting in Nigeria, all the North needs is to speak with one voice and then align with one Southern geopolitical zone. For instance, in 1979, Shehu Shagari became President without the votes of the Southeast or the Southwest; in 2015 and, indeed, this year, Buhari won without the Southeast and the South-South. So, if, for instance, the core North continues to align with the Southwest, the Southeast may never produce the president. But that will fan the flames of disintegration.

For instance, the agitation for Scottish independence in the UK stemmed largely from the fact that the Scottish people felt their votes didn’t count because, for nearly 20 years, in the 1980s and 1990s, the Conservative Party won successive general elections and controlled Westminster by relying only on English and Welsh votes, without winning a single seat in Scotland. This was seen as an affront to Scottish sensibilities and led to a feeling of alienation and then agitation for independence. Truth is, in a multi-ethnic nation, concerns about how power is shared and exercised can create real tensions and schisms.

Nigeria’s sensible solution to that problem is an informal power-sharing arrangement to rotate the presidency between the North and the South. It was in recognition that the presidency must return to the South in 2023 that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, PDP’s presidential candidate in this year’s election, vowed to serve for only one term, if elected. So strongly did Atiku feel he must reassure the South of his intention that he said: “If there is an iron-clad legal document that binds me, I am willing to publicly commit to it”.

Some questioned whether Atiku would have kept the vow. But that’s hypothetical; the fact is that he recognised the imperative. In the same spirit of the politically imperative power-sharing, no one, except the self-interested ethnic jingoist, would say that once the presidency returns to the South in 2023, it shouldn’t go to the Southeast; it should!

But where does that leave the Yoruba? Well, their future lies in a properly restructured and decentralised Nigeria. Think of it: if the presidency is rotated among the six geopolitical zones and each does eight years, it means that it would take 40 years before a zone gets the presidency again! Forty years? Well, that’s partly why Nigeria must be restructured along regional lines, so that each region can develop at its own pace.

That has long been the priority of the Yoruba: to develop at their own pace. Which is why they must fight for a properly restructured Nigeria and not a divisive contest for a symbolic presidency in 2023


https://www.vanguardngr.com/2019/06/yoruba-must-fight-for-restructuring-not-2023-presidency/

I really don't understand why the guy above me and others are allowed to spam topics like this with their long and distracting adverts that is in no way related to the topic. Why not pay for an ad and stop being an insensitive nuisance to others?

We should stop deceiving ourselves. Restructuring is not possible in Nigeria in the next 10 years..

Even some oil producing states wont survive it unless if angels are invited from Pluto

This article is so true.. Nothing to add

No! Yoruba masses would rather have tinubu as president than restructuring the country. If tinubu becomes the president they can brag to igbos about it but will still go about suffering in nigeria under the same status quo while tinubu continues to enrich himself. The yorubas moslems have sold any sense of a better nigeria for 2023 presidency.

Racoon:
Tinubu, VP Osinbajo and other former avowed SW advocates of the "restructuring" question have not only shamelessly gone mute but have even denounced their former stands on this sensitive issue because of political crumbs & lay hold to power.

Lol u don't talk while ur eating u know..


I remember wen tinubu was in the opposition and was making a lotta noise about restructuring.. Now he doesnt even know wats restructuring.. They are all thieves

The question is, who are these so called Yorubas fighting for presidency cos a common Yoruba man does not care who becomes president. So who are they?

E dey sweet if your tribe na President I just dey ask because I no no how e dey be because Edo man never be President before

Anyway, let's remember that we will always live to regret decisions that we make callously.

Restructuring is a tool yorubas are using to fight against Biafra because of fear of living in a country with hausafulanis without Igbos,and fear of standing on their own as a country.



If kanu come back to nigeria now they will start making noise again with restructuring.


Since nigeria terrorist army tried to kill Kanu but he escaped,have your hear yorubas talk about restructuring again.

izombie:
No! Yoruba masses would rather have tinubu as president than restructuring the country. If tinubu becomes the president they can brag to igbos about it but will still go about suffering in nigeria under the same status quo while tinubu continues to enrich himself. The yorubas moslems have sold any sense of a better nigeria for 2023 presidency.

yoruba christians are wiser than yoruba muslims.

Femi should understand that there is a silent restructuring sweeping across the country. It's understandable if his ilks decide to overlook it because they are in the opposition. For the first time since the return of democracy, our local governments are getting financial autonomy. The committee set up by the president in march to review the autonomy of state legislature and judiciary just submitted their report and will also be implemented. They would also get their own full autonomy. There is very strong advocacy for state police to enhance security of Nigerians. Truth be told, steps are been taking but I guess the present government is taking it in piecemeal.

Westtimeline:
The question is, who are these so called Yorubas fighting for presidency cos a common Yoruba man does not care who becomes president. So who are they?

you lie.

niyisky:
Femi should understand that there is a silent restructuring sweeping across the country. It's understandable if his ilks decide to overlook it because they are in the opposition. For the first time since the return of democracy, our local governments are getting financial autonomy. The committee set up by the president in march to review the autonomy of state legislature and judiciary just submitted their report and will also be implemented. They would also get their own full autonomy. There is very strong advocacy for state police to enhance security of Nigerians. Truth be told, steps are been taking but I guess the present government is taking it in piecemeal.

Seconded

Okay

Nooo they preferred to be fed rather than feeding themselves

Restructioning would be agitated by yoruba after completion of Lagos Kano rail, and Lagos Calabar Rail.


.

We don't want restructuring, what we should be agitating for is DE-AMALGAMTION! Period! Yorubas have been existing on their ancestral land, just like our fellow neighbors to the east and the middle belt and up-north long before Flora Shaw suggested to his boyfriend Lugard to slam the Nigeria identity on us all, no genuine Yoruba should settle for the restructuring nonsense! What we want and should be agitating for is the de-amalgamation of this sh!th0lew that was setup for the interest of the imperial British as at then, for it has never benefit us one bit, I am not talking from a political angle as I don't give a fvck about the social. That is what we should be agitating for. We Yorubas are more than 45 million in population and have every right to self-autonomy like many other countries who aren't even up to the whole of a suburb in Ikeja. I will defend and die for Nigeria if only the project is working, but it ain't. It's only the elites and the political class that's benefiting from the status-quo, the status-quo doesn't even make any sense as we aren't even practicing true democracy where my brothers up north can be locked up as an artist for making a song that snide a government official, (what should Trump or Bush should now do when Eminem hurls ), where mass murdering SARS, Boko-haram, kidnappers and various gangster groups (not cultists) reigns so much that the youths and the helpless are constantly getting sucked and consumed by it, mostly by we in the Yorubaland where the quality of things is no more under threat from external forces but has now fallen, no development except the state facility is monetized to be under the pocket of the likes who would want the status quo to remain, at the expense of whether the whole west plunges to hell.

goodnessme1:
Restructuring is a tool yorubas are using to fight against Biafra because of fear of living in a country with hausafulanis without Igbos,and fear of standing on their own as a country.If kanu come back to nigeria now they will start making noise again with restructuring.Since nigeria terrorist army tried to kill Kanu but he escaped,have your hear yorubas talk about restructuring again.

How dare you make this about the Yorubas against the Igbos, listen and listen carefully, because Yorubas aren't as boisterous as your Jewish-adopting, self-conflicted folks agitating for the actualization of the Biafra state, which is a just course supported by many from the west (but are not Nairaland to make their opinion known) doesn't mean the Yorubas don't seek to get out of this unholy union as well just like the middle-belt have now begun agitating for, and stop the idiotic generalization that it is all Yorubas who are in support of the dominance of Hausa/Fulani on their politicosphere, it is only those who are one way or the other benefiting from such that are for that, mostly those Yorubas who don't realize how self-compromise they are but also those who can't see beyond the Arab religion they share in common with the people of the Fulani-occupied ancestral land (the true Hausas).

goodnessme1:
yoruba christians are wiser than yoruba muslims.

Both Christianity and Islam aren't our religion, as a matter of fact, both Abrahamic religion has nothing to do with us niggers as it is a burden belong to the semitic stock of the Jews and Arabs and ofcourse Europeans who brought Christianity just like the Fulani arabs brought Islam to the Hausa-lands through violent jihad the likes of Boko Haram is tying to complete now. Wake the fvck up bro! Let's leave all these religion crap and come together as one, do the incompetent clowns and opportunists in politics allow Christianity and Islom brought here by missioners, colonialists and jihadists respectively to divide them when they share funds and money stolen/embezzled from the coffers ?

izombie:
No! Yoruba masses would rather have tinubu as president than restructuring the country. If tinubu becomes the president they can brag to igbos about it but will still go about suffering in nigeria under the same status quo while tinubu continues to enrich himself. The yorubas moslems have sold any sense of a better nigeria for 2023 presidency.

Where the hell do you scallywags keep getting these bunkum talks that every Yorubas are behind Tinubu and whatever his ambitions are from ? You all even suck at the misinforming job you've all set out to do on here and on twitter, even once ignorant now know what's up.

niyisky:
Femi should understand that there is a silent restructuring sweeping across the country. It's understandable if his ilks decide to overlook it because they are in the opposition. For the first time since the return of democracy, our local governments are getting financial autonomy. The committee set up by the president in march to review the autonomy of state legislature and judiciary just submitted their report and will also be implemented. They would also get their own full autonomy. There is very strong advocacy for state police to enhance security of Nigerians. Truth be told, steps are been taking but I guess the present government is taking it in piecemeal.

Thank you, but between you and I, let's be honest, is federalism truly been practiced in Nigeria ? Is Nigeria really democratic or one based on hegemony ? Is democracy tenets been upheld here. Does the common man feel democratically governed ? Why can't you all see how the restructuring solution of a thing can never work as it will never be accepted by the northern oligarch who think they only should have the sole right to power whilst others be under their draconic rulership. Why not everyone go become whoever they want to become while those who want to retain the Nigeria sham identity continue ? What are they actually restructuring to even start with ? Is it the ever corrupt judicial system or the electoral body is set up ? the bogus constitution ? What is there that they want to restructure ?

When the igbos were kicking agaonst buhari they were called fools. Now u hv it. Good morning nigeria

here we go again with restructuring scam

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Restructuring died the day IPOB was proscribed

And how wiill that haPpen without yoruba at the center?

which kin wahala be this...
you guys you focus on moving the nation
forward than... we are in 2019 for god sake...

Official Yoruba stance on restructuring


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdbCYXcoaAw

Northern Nigeria has ruled for decades but look at them

How can it be possible if not by first clinch presidency?

Its audible to the deaf and visible to the blind now that Nigeria is not ONE the way Buhari runs is government, any southerner that clinches presidency and refuses to do devolution of power to the federating in other for states to control her own resources will sure regret as Obasanjo and Jonathan are regretting now