Come out, defend your restructuring calls – Tanko Yakasai challenges sponsors

Elder statesman, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai has challenged those touting restructuring as the panacea to Nigeria’s problems to put their ideas in “black and white paper” so that others can contribute to it.

He made the call at the weekend during a Zoom conference organised by Governance Index, a global think tank creating virtual ICT-based conferences on crit­ical issues.

He disagreed with insinuations that the north was afraid of restructuring, saying the sponsors needed to put their ideas in a coherent document for fine-tuning.

In the same vein, Yakasai flayed the 1999 Constitution which he described as unworkable and urged a return to the 1963 Constitution.

The 94-year-old blamed former President Goodluck Jonathan for failing to produce a white paper from the 2014 Constitutional Confer­ence report to guide the present administration.

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Yakasai, who spoke during the video conference with the theme, ‘The Coronavirus Pandemic: Is it Time to Re-evaluate the Political Structure?’ admitted that the current political arrangement was sub-optimal but disagreed that it favoured the North.

He said it was therefore baseless for anyone to accuse the North of hating or being afraid of restructuring.

“I am not afraid of restructuring. What I am saying is that I want to know from the sponsors of this idea what we need to put down for Nigerians.

“I don’t see any reason to be afraid. I have never been afraid of an idea that I find does not tally with mine. I will propose mine, and if something is wrong, is not working, it is for him to articulate a substitute in place of the one that is not working.

“Nigeria has been op­erating this federation for more than 60 years even before we gained Independence. Now, if we can operate something for 60 years and that thing is not working, is it not fair to tell the people that this is why we feel the thing is not working?

“I will tell you some­thing probably you nev­er heard of, why my late friend, Anthony Enahoro, did not succeed in selling his eight-point agenda be­cause he was asking for eight republics.

“He called them re­publics, not regions, not states. Each republic will have its own military es­tablishment, police, judi­ciary, and other things.

“And we saw that as a manoeuvre by some ele­ments among our minori­ty groups to turn the sit­uation in favour of them.

“In my own opinion, even if they will turn the situation to favour them, they have a duty to come out and tell the people that would be affected how they will benefit from their own programme.

“Up till now, people are saying restructuring is good; they have never told anybody what is the benefit of restructuring.

“I will support going back to the 1963 Consti­tution, but I don’t want to take people for granted that under the present ar­rangement that the North will have advantage in terms of representation in the National Assembly, enough of that.

“We are talking about the future of our children, grandchildren, future generation of this coun­try,” Yakasai said.