Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has tackled his predecessor, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar over claims that he will restructure the country if elected president in 2019.
Atiku, who is contesting for the presidency on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has made it clear at different fora that he plans to restructure the country if elected president on February 14, 2019.
However, Osinbajo described the claim as a plot to set Nigerians against the present administration, querying why the PDP administration under which Atiku served between 1999 and 2007 could not restructure the country.
Osinbajo made the observation while fielding questions from the audience after delivering the ninth public lecture, entitled: “Developing the Nation through Youth Empowerment”, as part of activities marking the 68th anniversary of the Sigma Club, University of Ibadan.
He said, “If you ask those people now talking about restructuring, none of them has done anything compared to what we have done. So, I am not a latter day convert to restructuring. I am an active practitioner of restructuring, and I have gone to the Supreme Court 12 times to test restructuring.
“If today, somebody is talking about restructuring, ask him what does he mean? And where was he when we were going to court? Were they not opposing restructuring when we were going to court? We were in the opposition then. They were at the Federal Government, and they opposed every step that we took on restructuring.”
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The vice president added, “Let me explain my position clearly. I am not just an advocate of restructuring, there is no other government in Nigeria that has actively pursued restructuring such as we did when I was Attorney General in Lagos State.
“People talking about restructuring, if you ask them ‘What do you mean by restructuring?’ They won’t even know what it means, and that is the problem we have and that we have to face.
“Let me tell you what it is. When I was the Attorney General in Lagos State, we pursued in the Supreme Court, all of the issues of restructuring. We started with fiscal restructuring, which is more of resource control. Should states control their own resources? We went to the Supreme Court. They argued that each state should control its own resources.”
He said that Lagos and the oil producing states argued in favour of resource control but the other states opposed it.
“So, our own argument was that each state should control its own resources. We lost at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said no, that you cannot control your resources. If you are an oil producing state, take 13 per cent extra, which is derivation,” he said.
According to him, Lagos also argued to be given 13 percent derivation from the ports within its jurisdiction like the oil producing states were getting from oil but the Supreme Court turned down the argument.
“All this time, this was 2000, some of those people, including the presidential candidate of PDP, who is talking about restructuring, was the vice president then; they opposed every step that we took. Of course, we were taking the Federal Government to court then. They opposed every step.
“The next thing we did was that the states should be able to create their own local governments, which is autonomy of states. So, we created 47 new local governments in Lagos. The president then, Chief Obasanjo, seized our local government funds and said we could not create new local governments. So, they seized the funds they were supposed to allocate for our local governments.
“We challenged the seizure by going to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court held that the president had no right to seize the funds meant for local governments of the state, and that we have a right to create local governments. But after hey have created the local governments, the process is not complete. They must still bring the list of new local governments to the National Assembly and the National Assembly will then amend the whole list of the local governments in the country.
“So, our local governments remain. But we could not get the National Assembly’s endorsement. So, we passed the LCDA Law. We created 37 and made them local council development areas.”
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