Regional Govt Best for Nigeria, Afe Babalola Insists
Mon May 23, 2016 09:30:am National
2.1K By sosa hills
Eminent Lawyer and Founder of Are Babalola University (ABUAD), Chief Afe Babalola (SAN) has declared regional government as holding the ace for Nigeria's speedy political, economic and social transformation.
Babalola said the current arrangement of a central government where a President directs the affairs of a large and multi ethnic and religious country has been the bane of Nigeria's development.
He canvassed this in Ado Ekiti at the weekend during a programme tagged: Diplomatic Talk' organised by the Department of International Relations of the university where the Malaysian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Mr Lim Juay Jin, was the Guest Speaker.
According to Babalola, "I have attended three conferences in Nigeria and the return to regional government has always been my position. Nigeria consists of over 300 ethnic groups and with different religious bias, so what we need is a confederation or loose federalism where each region will be allowed to grow at its own pace and contribute to the centre.
"This has been the practice in the United States of America (USA), Australia and Canada. But in Nigeria, we have a central government where only one person determines what happens everywhere. In the past, we had regional governments where each was allowed to develop and Nigeria was better off then.
"Nigeria has six geo-political zones and these can be allowed to function as component parts and Nigeria will be good for it. During the regional government, Nigeria was growing faster. Malaysia is a very small country with a population of about 30 million and this makes it easy to govern.
"If Nigeria has been operating the regional government, we would have developed even better than Malaysia. Our fore fathers considered the population, land and resources as very large, that was why they introduced regional government. It has always been the smaller, the better."
Babalola said the current arrangement of a central government where a President directs the affairs of a large and multi ethnic and religious country has been the bane of Nigeria's development.
He canvassed this in Ado Ekiti at the weekend during a programme tagged: Diplomatic Talk' organised by the Department of International Relations of the university where the Malaysian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Mr Lim Juay Jin, was the Guest Speaker.
According to Babalola, "I have attended three conferences in Nigeria and the return to regional government has always been my position. Nigeria consists of over 300 ethnic groups and with different religious bias, so what we need is a confederation or loose federalism where each region will be allowed to grow at its own pace and contribute to the centre.
"This has been the practice in the United States of America (USA), Australia and Canada. But in Nigeria, we have a central government where only one person determines what happens everywhere. In the past, we had regional governments where each was allowed to develop and Nigeria was better off then.
"Nigeria has six geo-political zones and these can be allowed to function as component parts and Nigeria will be good for it. During the regional government, Nigeria was growing faster. Malaysia is a very small country with a population of about 30 million and this makes it easy to govern.
"If Nigeria has been operating the regional government, we would have developed even better than Malaysia. Our fore fathers considered the population, land and resources as very large, that was why they introduced regional government. It has always been the smaller, the better."
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