The General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has said that the only way to avoid Nigeria from breaking up is for the Federal Government to quickly address the agitations for the restructuring of the country.
The cleric, who spoke today, October 3 at the 60th Independence Day Celebration Symposium organised by RCCG and the Nehemiah Leadership Institute, proposed the adoption of both the British and the American systems of government to pave the way for Nigeria’s future.
“Why can’t we have a system of government that is 100 percent Nigerian and unique to us? For example, we started with the British system of government, somewhere along the line, we moved over to the American system of government.
“Can’t we have a combination of both and see whether it could help us solve our problems because in mathematics if you want to solve a problem, you try what we call real-analysis, then if it doesn’t work, then you move on to complex analysis and see whether that will help you. If that fails, you move on to vector analysis and so on.
“I believe that we might want to look at the problems of Nigeria in a slightly different manner. Some people feel that all our problems will be over if Nigeria should break up. I think that is trying to solve the problems of Nigeria as if it is a simple equation.
“The problems of Nigeria will require quite a bit of simultaneous equation and some of them are not going to be linear either – forgive me I am talking as a mathematician.
“Why can’t we have a system of government that will create what I will call the the United States of Nigeria? Let me explain. We all know that we must restructure. It is either we restructure or we break. You don’t have to be a prophet to know that one. That is certain – restructure or we break up.
“Now, we don’t want to break up, God forbid. In restructuring, why don’t we have a Nigerian kind of democracy? At the federal level, why don’t we have a president and a prime minister?
“If we have a president and a prime minister and we share responsibilities between these two so that one is not an appendage to the other. For examples, if the president controls the army and the prime minister controls the police. If the president controls resources like oil and mining and the prime minister controls finance and inland revenue, taxes, customs etc. You just divide responsibilities between the two.
“At the state level, you have the governor and the premier, and the same way, you distribute responsibilities between these people in such a manner that one cannot really go without the other. Maybe we might begin to tackle the problems.”
