Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has said that Northern Nigeria is ready for the restructuring of the country, despite contrary wide-held belief.
El-Rufai said this on Wednesday in Ibadan, Oyo State while presenting a keynote address at the Bisi Akande colloquium with the theme “Nigeria: Achieving National Unity Through Peaceful Restructuring.”
According to him, “The coincidence of the mindset of most of the military leaders being of Northern origin must not be confused with that of the ordinary Northerner.
“I want to state here and now, that not only is the North ready, willing and able to embrace inclusive restructuring of our polity, but to add that those that speak loudly against it represent no one.
“Most of them have never held elective offices, and therefore do not appreciate that the North with its natural endowments stands to be the biggest beneficiary of restructuring.”
He added that “With all sense of responsibility, I believe some Nigerians have made a career and livelihood around “restructuring” without deep thought, or a clear plan or implementation strategy.
“For them, it is a tool to alienate rather than convert our compatriots to the nation-building imperative that restructuring offers.
“Rather than the hard graft of solving our governance problems, this group would rather grab headlines and mouth sound-bites at opportunities like this.
“You can almost sense that these people actually dread restructuring becoming public policy, having succeeded in living off a serious national imperative for so long.
“We must be mindful of this class of people.”