Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday gave more insight into his opposition to the calls for the restructuring of the country, saying he opposes a regional arrangement for the country.

He however said he was in total support of the call for state police.

Osinbajo’s position was contained in a transcript made available to journalists by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande.



Akande said the Vice-President spoke during a live television programme.

Osinbajo said he had always been an advocate of fiscal federalism which will lead to states having more resources.

He recalled that he approached the Supreme Court about 10 times as the Attorney-General of Lagos State on the issue.

He also said his position on the Value Added Tax was that the issue must be a state matter.

Although he supported the creation of state police, Osinbajo opposed the idea of restructuring the country along ethnic lines or returning to regional stricture.

He said, “I strongly believe that we must have state police.

“Dividing Nigeria, going back to regions and all of those kinds of things, I do not believe that at all. I don’t think that we need to go back to regions.

“So, if there are people who believe that we must structure ourselves again along ethnic lines, I don’t accept that that is the right way to go.

“So, when you say restructuring, I am sure that for many of us, there are certain aspects of this restructuring that you may agree with or that you may not agree with.

“But as a general position, Nigeria always needs to be re-engineered, we have to keep restructuring, re-engineering.

“For example look at (some of the current) questions today, around whether or not a state should have rule over its resources. That is a major point.

“Of course, states ought to have a good measure of control over their resources but we must have to agree on what to do to ensure that the Federal Government itself functions. Do you need a Federal Government or do you not need a Federal Government?”

On power sharing and rotation Presidency, Osinbajo said the choice of where the Presidency should go should be left entirely with the political parties and should be a political arrangement.

He said he did not support including such arrangement in the Constitution.

“But I don’t believe that we should go and write it in our constitution that the Presidency must go from zone to zone. I don’t think that should be a constitutional issue. I think we should leave that to the parties themselves.

“If a party decides that we want zoning, it’s a party thing, let it be so. But I don’t think we should go and write that into our constitution.

“And I very strongly believe that the time will come when we will no longer be emphasizing geo-political zone and that is the kind of Nigeria I will like to see.

“I like to see a Nigeria where we are all able to work together, where we are able to de-emphasize ethnicity, de-emphasize geo-political zone. That is the kind of Nigeria that I’ll like to see,” he said.

Osinbajo wondered if the current economic problems in the country and corruption were caused by geo-political arrangement.

“What I have seen, just looking at the case files, what I have seen is that when there is corruption in Nigeria, any case of corruption, you will find federal character, every geo-political zone is represented.

“If somebody steals today, if you find somebody stealing $200m or $2bn as we see, you will find that everybody is represented. You will find Yoruba man, Housa man, the man from South-South, you find the Igbo man. There is equal representation. I think we must also interrogate our elites, Nigerian elites,” the Vice-President said.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is calling for a deeper understanding of the current restructuring debate in the country, and supports the idea of having State Police in the country accordingly to his spokesman, Mr. Laolu Akande. Akande said there are have been different interpretations, meanings and purposes to which the restructuring debate is being put to.
BY LAOLU AKANDEJUL 12, 2016
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is calling for a deeper understanding of the current restructuring debate in the country, and supports the idea of having State Police in the country accordingly to his spokesman, Mr. Laolu Akande.

Akande said there are have been different interpretations, meanings and purposes to which the restructuring debate is being put to.

The Vice President's Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity made the clarifications in Abuja and while speaking to a radio programme on Orange FM in Akure, Ondo State amidst some media reports that the Vice President opposed the restructuring because of his reported comments during a question-and-answer session at the Second Foundation Day Lecture of the Elizade University, Ilara-Mokin in Ondo State last week.

But Akande explained that while the Vice President questions whether the allocation of more funds to the states from the federal would be helpful at this time considering the dwindling revenues from oil and taxes, he wholly supports the idea of having State Police across the country as articulated in the APC's Roadmap to a New Nigeria.

Akande said it was important Nigerians understand that the issue of restructuring should run deeper than some of the superficial and surface value focus. According to him some of the issues involved include notions or views calling for a return to regionalism, fiscal federalism, devolution of power, state police among others, adding that different interests are taking different approaches and at times this confuses the debate and reduces it to mere political rhetorics.

He said the Vice President while reacting to a question on whether allocation of more resources to states from the center would make them meet current demands of governance at this challenging period, emphasised that focus should be on economic diversification especially towards agriculture to make the states more vibrant in the wake of dwindling revenues from oil and taxes.

"Restructuring debate should do deeper than what we see on newspaper headlines and we need to understand all the angles to it...What do people mean when we talk about restructuring? some focus on regionalism, some focus of the fiscal part, allocation of more resources devolution of power, state police...it's important we understand which part we are talking about at any given time."

Continuing Akande said "in recent times, ‎we do not have much resources that we used to have from oil and taxes and what we need to get the states to be more vibrant is to diversify the economy‎."

He said the constitution recognises a Federal System of government already and the federal government is truly committed to true federalism.

Akande then submitted that the federal government is giving much attention to fighting corruption and ensuring effective governance at all levels because this is far more important than some of the political rhetorics and superficial arguments around restructuring so far.

Speaking on the president's view to put the 2014 Confab report in the archives, Akande said with or without any Confab resolution, the Buhari-led government is much concerned with ‎the overall well-being of the people, delivering results and bringing governance closer to them.

He said for instance, the current administration has implemented some of the decisions listed in the 2014 Confab report, not because it was in the report but because they were sound decisions. He listed two of such decisions including the merging of Budget office with National Planing as one full-fledged ministry and also the adoption in the 2016 budget of a 60-40% recurrent and capital expenditures

"The president will do what is right even without recourse to the Confab report. We have an agenda which is to promote the well being of the people and bring the benefits of governance to the people‎". Akande said, adding that "we will not be stuck in an elitist political rhetoric that does not deepen the issues."

Oksman:
One bottle of Origin for the prof,
i dont understand him again o! baba kilode now?

shaddoww:
I saw d programme live n wat the Vice president explained is dat some people who are calling for restructuring are not making it clear wat they meant, cos wat some people want is the breaking of Nigeria, while some want us to go back to regional government, some want fiscal federalism, while some want rotational presidency along the 6 geo-political zones. So he said he is in support of restructuring our country by finding solutions to our different problems through legislation n government efforts but he doesn't support dos calls dat we need to go in d line of adopting a new system.

erinolu:
Hmmmm.....

The prof would probably need to be schooled by Senator Okorunmu and Pastor Tunde Bakare

Has he looked at the wisdom of the proponents of "Nigeria Restructuring ". Late Pa Anthony Enahoro, Late NADECO ace, Abraham Adesanya and others.

The current Nigeria is governed by a Constitution drafted by the Military boys such that a technical absolute power resides with the executive.

All control of resources, all appointments, all authority,etc, etc, technically speaking comes from the executive

It stripes each state + regions of the capabilities to evolve and develop and thus become subservient to the centre.

Worst still is the denial that we are one Nigeria, which has never been the case and can never be with a style of government where the center rules all.

The sure way out is to allow what the founding fathers of Nigeria had created, a federal system which recognised the different components that made up Nigeria and thus gave autonomy, resource control to the then regional government. And this worked perfectly well until the military boys spoiled everything with a useless constitution that has bedevilled us to this day.

Nigeria surely needs to be restructured by the following. ..

1. Devolve power to the states or region
2. Give back resource control to their owners and see if resource management will not be at its zenith
3. Allow for state police
4. Restore true fiscal federalism

All these were addressed to some reasonable length at the 2014 confab. Start from there


This is not a PDP vs APC thing. This is the only project that can keep Nigeria as a working country


QED.......

TheFreeOne:
Is this dude claiming nigeria is better as it is with glaring injustices, underdevelopment, ethnic jingoism, nepotism, parasitism, anarchy e.t.c

If with all his professorship he's got nothing sensible to offer than asslicki.ng then he should zip it.

Volksfuhrer:


Even though I disagree with the VP on regionalism, I understand clearly his position. I believe he wants restructuring without regionalism.

Vatsyayana:
Pls kindly tell us. What is Regional Government?

shaddoww:
I saw d programme live n wat the Vice president explained is dat some people who are calling for restructuring are not making it clear wat they meant, cos wat some people want is the breaking of Nigeria, while some want us to go back to regional government, some want fiscal federalism, while some want rotational presidency along the 6 geo-political zones. So he said he is in support of restructuring our country by finding solutions to our different problems through legislation n government efforts but he doesn't support dos calls dat we need to go in d line of adopting a new system.

amaechi1:


Will people have time to always X-ray information? They will always jump at it, especially those who wish this government and Nigeria to fail. As if, if buhari fails or Nigeria goes down further their lives will be better.

omowolewa:
Yes o, but anybody looking for the head, legs and tail of a tortoise is actually looking for wole tortoise.

Regional government is the way to go