Presidential Hopeful Wants Nigerians To Resist Temptation To Brake Up The Country

Former Presidential candidate in the 2019 General election, Mr Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim has called upon all patriotic Nigerians to unite and forestall the very tempting campaign by desperate forces of separation to break up Nigeria.

He said given the security situation in Nigeria and reality of almost total helplessness, the propaganda from ethnic warlords were gaining increasing attention, many people of various ages were now questioning “the sanctity of our union and the concept of indivisibility of the Nigerian state.”

Olawepo-Hashim, who spoke in an interview, explained that “the truth must be told that despite the increasingly frustrating realities in Nigeria, a united Nigeria still remains our best alternative.”

According to him, “separatists’ advocacies are always ever seductive during moment of crisis but they never deliver good results afterwards. Ask the people of Southern Sudan, after about 30 years war they seceded from Sudan, they are still embroiled in factional wars between their leaders.

“Despite their oil wealth, their people are still wallowing in poverty and the GDP of their economy is lower than that of Ogun state.”

He said: “Ethnic or regional homogeneity of a state does not necessarily guarantee peace. We have seen countries like Somalia who  are dominantly Muslims with one language but embroiled in unending war for over 30 years.

“The same for Ireland that is just trying to recover from internal division, where a predominantly Christian country has been divided along denominational lines of  Catholics and Protestants.”

He said separatism and division did not bring justice, but rather, it was good governance, sound policies and fear of God that ensured justice in the polity.

He maintained that Nigeria remained God’s gift to Africa, to every black man and woman in the Diaspora.

The global energy executive said now was the time for  an Executive- led initiative to immediately amend the exclusive, concurrent and residual legislative lists in the 1999 constitution  in order to ensure decentralization of power for the nation to effectively manage its democracy.

Mr Olawepo-Hashim also urged the Federal Government to “increase dialogue with all interest groups, as well as ensure that the Federal Character Commission deals with any genuine claim of imbalances in the distribution of  Federal offices with a view to addressing them.

“The founding fathers of our Republic in the Lancaster conference of 1957/58 agreed on a Nigerian state, which is indivisible and should exist in  perpetuity.

“Any group of persons who claim otherwise must have their positions re-examined because they are at variance with solid historical records.

“I quite agree that there is frustration in the land as a result of the  problems which over centralization of powers in the hands of the Federal Government has caused since the unfortunate military coup of 1966.

“The solution is not the dismemberment of the Republic but decentralization of power to the component states which must start now.

“Nigeria will do better ,and we are, in fact, better together if we immediately take steps to devolve powers to the states and Local Governments in areas where there is a clear national consensus.”

He listed some of the areas where there existed clear national consensus  to include “creation of states and local government police side by side with the Federal  Police so as to make policing more efficient and to bolster National Security.:

Others included: “amendment to enable States government to have some control over the development of all mineral resources in the inland basins; amendment to ensure concurrent jurisdiction of Federal and State Government over Electricity Generation, Transmission and Distribution; and,  electoral reform clause to include electronic transmission of results from all level of results collations.”

Mr Olawepo-Hashim reiterated that a simple Executive-sponsored constitutional amendment bill narrowed to these clearly defined items, might get a resounding support if properly managed with the 36 Governors in Nigeria, as well as Speakers  of the State Houses  of  Assembly.