Former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, and human rights activist, Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), has told President Muhammadu Buhari to divide the country into eight regional structures. Agbakoba, one of the greatest heroes of democracy in Nigeria, noted that there are so many unclear issues in Nigeria about how people of the country want to organize themselves and how they want to live together.
The senior lawyer told reporters at the weekend that insecurity and other serious issues facing the country “can’t [be] fully arrested,” if the central government remains so strong as it is now. He added that, “This is because community policing or state policing is a tactical tool to deal with the problem, but the strategic tool is the bigger question of the national question.
“There are so many unclear issues in Nigeria about how we want to organize ourselves, how we want to live together, this is what some people have called the restructuring question, some call it the national question, but I call it devolution of powers question.
“Whatever it’s called that is the central issue that needs resolution so that even if you use tactical tools like community policing, but the bigger issue remains then I don’t know if we can resolve it. “What Nigeria needs is space, there are diverse ethnicities and they are living in such close proximity that one ethnic community is in the face of the other with counter-cultures, counter-religious beliefs and that is not healthy.