I have been amazed and amused in the last one year hearing or reading in the mass media highly educated and upper-class Nigerians, including graduate columnists, professors and lawyers urging President Muhammadu Buhari to restructure the country and change from the presidential to parliamentary system.
Telling him the advantages in carrying out the two projects but failing to let him know how he can get this done by the National Assembly, while giving the impression that the president has the executive power to bring about these changes all by himself.
Which has always made me wonder if such people do not know that the two issues are matters that can only be dealt with through amending the country’s constitution by two – thirds majority vote of the members of the Senate, House of Representatives and those in 24 of the 36 states in the federation. I am also surprised that they do not realize that their campaign is an exercise in futility.
When it is common knowledge that before the 2011 presidential election Buhari as the candidate of the defunct CPC (Congress for Progressive Change) supported the calling of a national conference and restructuring.
But dropped the idea before the poll last year, which gives the impression that Pastor Tunde Bakare who was his running – mate at the time got him to have that stance in 2011.
Indeed, about five or six Saturdays ago, I heard Yinka Odumakin, an associate of Bakare, who was the spokesman of Buhari during the 2011 campaign, say on an interview programme on Galaxy Television that he left him to support President Goodluck Jonathan for last year’s poll because of his change of attitude on restructuring the country and carrying out other desirable changes.
Since he assumed office as president on May 29, last year Buhari has on occasions said he does not believe in the conference Jonathan organized and is not interested in the confab’s report, let alone implementing the decisions of the delegates. And two weeks ago, he said Nigeria’s unity was not negotiable.
With these facts known to all and sundry, how do the proponents of restructuring and return to parliamentary system think the president will accede to their call, without mobilizing Nigerians to compel him and the members of the National Assembly and the 36 State Assemblies to act? How this can be done is what I had expected from them but which none of them addressed.
Because I believe they ought to know that the legislators across the country, because of the wealth in several millions, if not in billions of naira they have acquired in the last one year through salary, allowances and constituency projects, made possible by the type of presidential system we practice, will never accept reconstruction and the parliamentary order. A system in which legislators will operate on part – time and receive only sitting allowances.
To be continued next Wednesday
Happy 90th birthday Pa Okolo
First, I apologize that I have to suspend the series on Igbo, Hausa and Fulani, not Yoruba, are Nigeria’s problem to pay tribute to Nri, Anambra State – born Prince Benjamin Egwuatu Okolo, who was born on Wednesday, July 21, 1926 and joined the nonagenarian age group last week Thursday.
As I did for Pa Grant Cap’n Briggs of Port Harcourt, an ardent reader of my column, when he clocked 90 three months ago, on Saturday, April 16, Prince Okolo is not one who will reach such a rare monumental age and I would not write about and showcase to the world. Especially for the lessons to be learned from how he made it in life and as an exceptional and exemplary father and the wonderful example of his children on how offspring should take heart-warming care of their parents.
I also have to write about Pa Okolo because in spite of his old age, he is one who in the last four years has been phoning on occasions to appreciate my column or raise issues on some of my articles. We met in July 1971 when I became a staff of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), at the Ikoyi national headquarters, Lagos.
He got there in 1951, exactly 20 years before I joined. Like Ile – Ife is source to Yoruba people, Nri, the hometown of Prince Okolo, is the cradle of the Igbo. He had his secondary education at the famous Christ the King College (CKC), Onitsha which along with Dennis Memorial also in the same town and Government College, Umuahia were the three most outstanding and popular secondary schools in what is today the South – East. In other words, the three institutions were among the leading ones in the country attended by very brilliant students.
To be continued next Wednesday