A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Afe Babalola, has called for the restructuring of the country with a view to returning the country to regional government as practised during the First Republic.
This, he argued, would enhance the speedy recovery of the nation’s economy and the elimination of the challenges facing the country.
Babalola, who is also the Founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, said having a central government with a President directing the affairs of a large and multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation like Nigeria, was the main reason for the country’s underdevelopment.
He said this in Ado Ekiti during a programme, ‘Diplomatic Talk’, organised by the Department of International Relations of the university.
Babalola, while responding to a lecture delivered by the Malaysia High Commissioner to Nigeria, Mr. Lim Juay Jin, said it was unbelievable to realise that Malaysia, a rather smaller country, which could not compete with Nigeria in anything many years back, had overtaken the latter.
He therefore canvassed a return of the country to regionalism so that too much power would not be concentrated at the centre, while the country would be easy to administer.
“Nigeria has six geopolitical zones and these can be allowed to function as component parts and Nigeria will be good for it. During the regional government, Nigeria was growing faster. Malaysia is a very small country with a population of about 30 million and this makes it easy to govern.
“If Nigeria has been operating the regional government, we would have developed even better than Malaysia. Our forefathers considered the population, land and resources as very large; that was why they introduced regional government. It has always been the smaller, the better,” he said.
Jim had earlier said no fewer than 9,000 Nigerian students were pursuing various courses in Malaysian universities at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
The envoy attributed the development to the availability of facilities, affordable fees, friendly learning environment, quality tutors, good governance and stable economy, comparable to what obtained in Europe and America.
Jim said the GDP of his country with a population of just 30 million people “currently stands at $237bn while her per capital income is $8,800.”
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