…demands implementation of 2014 conference reports
former delegate to the last three National Conferences organised in Nigeria, Prof. Joshua Ogbonnaya, has blamed Britain for the current problems facing the nation.
Ogbonnaya, who represented Abia State in the last three National Conferences, said that Britain, under its colonial policy, laid the foundation for the current incessant ethnic and political agitations rocking the Nigerian Federation.
The university don said this in a chat with our correspondent in Umuahia, the Abia State capital, as agitations for the restructuring of the country continues to gain momentum.
He said, in their bid to maintain a stranglehold on the country, even after their departure in 1960, the British colonialists deliberately created imbalance in the Nigerian state, resulting in a situation that had defied all solutions.
Ogbonnaya identified such imbalance to include alleged skewed census population figure in favour of the North against the South, lack of true and fiscal Federalism, divide and rule tactics and others.
He, however, argued that an implementation of the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference would bring an end to the imbalance tormenting the Nigerian nation since independence.
Ogbonnaya stressed that if restructuring, which was one of the recommendations of the 2014 confab, was implemented, it would address most of the issues in the country.
“We need to restructure this country according to the recommendations of that conference, which was convoked by former President Goodluck Jonathan, in his wisdom to ensure peace and equity,” he added
Speaking on the country’s 57th independence anniversary, he expressed displeasure that Nigeria did not have much on ground to show.
“In all honesty, there have been times, when after reviewing the discomfort and prices our pre-independence leaders paid to set us free from the colonial masters, one feels all their efforts were not worth the dangers,” he said.
Ogbonnaya also condemned the frequent invasion of farmlands by cattle in the state, describing it as worrisome.
He called on both the government and the cattle owners to find a lasting solution to the challenge, which he described as a time-bomb that should not be allowed to explode.
