Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo says the problems facing Nigeria are not about restructuring as being suggested in many quarters.
VP Osinbajo
Speaking while fielding questions from a cross-section of Nigerians at a town hall meeting in Minnesota, the United States of America on Sunday, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, said that the problem of Nigeria was not geographical restructuring rather prudent management of national resources and providing for the people properly.
According to a statement on Monday by Laolu Akande, the VP's Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Osinbajo also said prudent management of the nation’s resources and the provision of essential needs of the people were better ways of addressing Nigeria’s development challenges.
He said, “the problem with our country is not a matter of restructuring and we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into the argument that our problems stem from some geographical restructuring. It is about managing resources properly and providing for the people properly, that is what it is all about.
“I served for eight years as Attorney General in Lagos State and one of the chief issues that we fought for in Lagos state was what you call fiscal federalism. We felt that there was a need for the states to be stronger, for states to more or less determine their fortunes.
“So, for example, we went to court to contest the idea that every state should control, to a certain extent, its own resources (the so-called resource control debate). We were in court at that time up to the Supreme Court and the court ruled that oil-producing states should continue to get 13% derivation.
“While we were at the Supreme Court only the oil-producing states and Lagos were interested in resource control, everybody else was not interested in resource control for obvious reasons.
"Now, that is the way the argument has always gone, those who have the resources want to take all of it, while those who do not have want to share from others.”