WAYS FG CAN END AGITATION WITHOUT DISRUPTION – EX-PERM SEC, OLAOPA

Former Permanent Secretary of the Presidency, Tunji Olaopa, sought ways of Biafra could end without causing disruption.

Olaopa referred to them as powers of state and local governments more freedom to the south-east, the south-east of the regional government and the federal character principle of decentralization, anti-corruption strategy review and the police.

He said this at a conference organized by the Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Nigeria (NPISS) Kuru.

Retired Federal Permanent Secretary, while speaking on the topic "Re-federalising Nigeria and the challenge of innovation," argues that the federal character principle was beautiful, in a plural society like Nigeria but insisted that its use has been continuous violence virtues of sacrifice to the detriment of the country.

Olaopa noted that the transfer of more powers, particularly Aboriginal governance structures and systems, would strengthen their capacity to respond to specific governance needs.

He stressed the importance of South-East regionalization for economic prosperity; Adding that it will also relieve the heavy burden on the federal government.


He said: "Regionalism devours critical autonomies to the unifying units of any federation Although the regional arrangement of the First Republic has long been compromised,

"I firmly believe that the six pragmatically timely geopolitical areas in Nigeria could serve as a launching platform to incite an economically dynamic rivalry that formed the nucleus of regionalism in the immediate period of independence.

"Nigeria's current structure of an overloaded center that struggles to carry 36 viable and unsustainable states does not have the capacity to maximize the significant gains of true fiscal federalism.

"The logic of re-federalization in this case is therefore based on a simple principle: political restructuring as a prerequisite for economic prosperity".

Olaopa, who is also executive vice president of the Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy (ISGPP), added that Nigeria needed to take advantage of the political and economic dimensions to make the regional idea work.

The political dimension, he said, requires transforming the six geopolitical zones into regions composed of states and local governments.

"The economic dimension requires taking advantage of the comparative advantages of each region as a source of development Although agriculture will definitely be a common denominator of development throughout the region as a counterpoint to the mono-economic dominance of oil Each region will be able to explore and exploit its particular economic advantage, particularly in mineral resources. "

Regarding the need to decentralize the anti-corruption strategy and police, the public administrator stated that the centralization of the fight against corruption "paradoxically makes the federal government too powerful but too weak to adequately Corruption and free development energies.

"The federal government is becoming powerful because the anti-corruption strategy is centralized within the Federal Ministry of Justice and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). But this centralized strategy immediately reveals the weakest point in the anti-corruption campaign: the multitude of cases concentrated at one point ensures that the campaign will never progress. "We are therefore faced with the imperative of decentralizing laws, regulations and anti-corruption policies in a way that builds legal capacities in states and local government as a twinning of justiciable actions."

Underlining the need for police at several levels, Olaopa said: "A growing sign of Nigeria's underdevelopment is its multiple security challenge demonstrated by kidnapping, terrorism and insurgency, armed robbery and miscellaneous Criminal activities, that a central police strategy has no hope of ever stopping.

"This is especially true because some of these security challenges have a regional locus, such as the Boko Haram insurgency in northeastern Nigeria and abduction in the southeast Criminal militancy in South South, so while we have been discussing the negative aspects of the police at several levels, I think it is high time we begin to question the many crucial benefits.