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Foremost Ijaw leader and elder statesman, Chief Edwin Clarke, has declared that no elections will take place in 2019 if the much clamoured for restructuring of Nigeria did not take place.
Clarke who spoke during a recent interview with newsmen at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa said anyone who says Nigeria does not need restructuring is an enemy of the people, stressing that the best thing that could happen to Nigerians is for Nigeria to go back to what obtained in the first republic.
He recalled with nostalgia how the federal government of Nigeria was run between 1954 and 1966, when as a federation, individual regions took 50% of the proceeds of whatever they produced, gave 20% to the federal government and still share the remaining 30% with the FG, and other regions, but regretted that everything got changed after the civil war.
The elder statesman, who said he was one of those at the forefront of the fight for oil derivation allocation, which unfortunately did not go higher than 13%, also noted that had Nigeria still been a federation, the creation of local governments would have been an issue for the states or regions who would also pay the local government councils.
The situation where Rivers and Bayelsa states, produce oil that is the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy, have only 31 local governments, put together, while Kano and Jigawa have 44 and 27 local councils respectively, all collecting money from the federation account, is saddening, according to Clarke even as he decried the appointment into the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) where the north that has no oil produced 6 members while the South South and South West had one representative each, with none from the South East whose two states, Abia and Imo are oil producing states.
“Everything is going wrong in Nigeria and yet somebody like Chief Olusegun Obasanjo said we don’t need restructuring. As Buhari said if we don’t fight corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria, I am saying if we don’t restructure Nigeria, non-restructuring of Nigeria will kill Nigeria” he said.
On who will kick start the restructuring process, the Ijaw leader said “we are going to start it. Between now and 1st October or by the end of this year, restructuring must start. You can’t hold elections in 2019 when this country is not restructured we will go back to square one. So something must be done now.”
