Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana on Wednesday stressed that those who allegedly cornered Nigeria’s commonwealth shouldn’t talk of restructuring.
He said while noting that former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar has not addressed the issue of wealth redistribution in his recent stance on restructuring.
Delivering a paper at the Mike Okonkwo annual lecture in Lagos, the activist lawyer said restructuring would not guarantee unity or political stability without the “democratisation of powers.”
Falana said Nigerians must demand an end to a policy that allows political office holders and civil servants who constitute less than one percent of the population to continue to allocate 70 percent of the country’s resources to themselves.
He said, “The country has always been restructured by the ruling class and that the current structure was imposed by the fiat of military dictators. No doubt, the country is ripe for restructuring or power devolution but it cannot guarantee unity and political stability without the democratisation of powers and equitable redistribution of the commonwealth along egalitarian lines,” Falana said.
“Restructuring without the equitable redistribution of the commonwealth will not promote unity or political stability.
“A leading PDP presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has become one of the leading proponents of restructuring. But his support for restructuring has not addressed the crucial issue of the redistribution of the national wealth.
“After all, in his capacity as the nation’s vice-president and chairman of the National Council on Privatisation, alhaji Abubakar presided over the restructuring of the nation’s economy through the liquidation of public assets and the privatization of the commanding height of the economy.
“The nation cannot be seriously restructured without equitable redistribution of wealth. Therefore, those who have cornered our commonwealth should not be allowed to talk of restructuring in vacuo. In other words, the campaign for restructuring should encompass the decentralization and democratization of political and economic powers which have been privatised by all factions of the ruling class.”
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