Former Kaduna State governor, Balarabe Musa has made case for restructuring of the country and return to regional government, as a panacea for the multifarious problems confronting Nigeria.
In this interview with Saturday SUN, the elder statesman said;
“Let us think of what will unite Nigerians; what will make Nigerians proud of themselves and of their country. In practical terms, we have seen experiences of governance in this country over a long period of time. The request for restructuring is valid, but those people who are supporting it should then make it clear to Nigerians what restructuring constitutes; is it ethnic nationalities problems because some of the people are thinking that it is about creation of more states. As far as we are concerned, our restructuring idea is that, we have now seen the problem of weakening our regional government.
“When we had regional government, we had more responsible leadership and we had more progress. Let us go back to the regional arrangement, where we had Eastern Region, Northern Region, Western Region and later, Mid Western Region, and we saw more sense of responsibility in the leadership and we also saw coordinated progress, so, let us go back to that arrangement.
“Let us restructure the country and go back to the regional arrangement, and so, should abolish the states and go back to regions; instead of the 36 states, we should have six or seven regions. Let each regional government decide how many states and local governments it wants to have and finance. The federating units should be the regions, and resources should be allocated to the regions, and each region can create as many states and local governments it wants based on allocations it has and resources available to it.
“We will make the centre not as strong as it is, and make the regions and local governments stronger, but the federal government will also be strong enough to coordinate and protect the interest of Nigerians who don’t want to identify themselves with regions, but Nigeria. We can do that only if we have a relevant central government that is not too strong, but certainly not too weak to be able to coordinate and bring about national unity.”