What Nigerians need right now is the idea of restructuring said Henry nwosu.

Agitations for restructuring of Nigeria’s political system have been going on for eons without fruition. While the agitations have raged on, there has been no agreement among the Nigerian elites on the “why” and “how” the country should be restructured. Whereas there is a broad consensus among southerners that Nigeria needs to be restructured, the northern compatriots on the other hand are not so crazy about the idea.

The demand for restructuring is largely driven by what has been identified as a dysfunctional unitary system of governance that was foisted on the country since the 1966 military incursion into public administration of the country.The system entails the full control of revenues generated from taxes and mineral resources at sub-national levels by the central government, which then allocates proportions of such revenues to the federating units in an inequitable manner. Thus, the proponents of restructuring argue that this negates the letter and spirit of true federalism.

The major focus of the restructuring debate has been on changing the percentage of the derivation formula for the regions, where mineral resources are extracted. This formula, which has gone through various iterations, has dropped from 50 per cent in the 1960s to currently 13 per cent. If we have to be realistic with ourselves, this preoccupation with sharing revenue in our extractive economy is antidevelopment. Therefore, what we need is a restructuring of our thinking.

I will strive, in this opinion piece, to show why we need a new development model that shifts the mindset of our states and the various regions of the country away from dependence on oil & gas and makes us a more economically prosperous nation.
In the substance of it, I do agree with the need for devolution of powers to the federating units but I go farther in my submission than most adherents of restructuring. The federating units that I refer to are not the states and local governments but the six geopolitical zones or what is called regionalism. This, too, is not a new idea per se. I maintain that the states can remain as they are under the regional system I am proposing.