Guardian Anyaoku seeks true federalism to check nation’s woes THURSDAY, 04 JULY 2013 22:17 BY GBENGA AKINFENWA NEWS -NATIONAL FOR Nigeria to achieve the stability and pace of development to which it is entitled by its human and natural resources, it should return to true federalism by having six federating units with enough powers, according to the former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Emeka Anyaoku. Anyaoku spoke at the national conference of the Chartered Institute of Administration held in Abuja yesterday. According to him, the existing structure of the country, with 36 federating units and an all-powerful centre, compels disproportionate national resources on recurrent expenditure; and a destabilising competition for the control of the centre. For Anyaoku, to achieve true federalism, each of the six federating units should be responsible for the pace of their development with the revenue from all minerals shared equally among them after allowing a reasonable portion for the mineral-producing areas. He lamented that the failure of Nigeria to match the Asian countries with which it started the development race with similar social and economic indices at independence, had been primarily based on its pluralistic nature, which made it difficult for the country to field its first 11 team in the management of national affairs. “I am convinced from my long experience of the politics and development of over 50 other countries, that the governance structure I am advocating will give our country a much better chance of dealing with the multifaceted challenges that continue to retard its progress and stability,” he said. According to him, though the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan has embarked on transformational programmes in the socio-economic sphere of the country, a number of which have started yielding results, like the last national elections and the three state elections that followed, there are also areas where the impact of the transformation programmes is yet to be felt. “Our major roads are still crying out for attention; the quality of education in most of our institutions is still well below the standards that we had attained in the early years of our independence; our public health facilities are still inadequate and so inefficient that the massive drain on the country’s foreign exchange through citizens seeking medical treatment abroad continues; and our economic activities continue to suffer from inadequate power supply to energise our manufacturing sector thereby creating employment for our growing population of unemployed youths,” he stated. He urged administrators to shun party politics and restrict themselves to their two principal functions of advising and executing the decisions of their political masters, as according to him, in a multi-party democracy such as Nigeria, they are not expected to belong to any political party.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 06:24:48 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015