A pan-Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, has said that there will be no peace in Nigeria if the recommendations of the National Conference are not implemented.
A leader of the pan-Yoruba group, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, who spoke with The Point in Lagos, said most of the problems currently facing Nigeria had their solutions in the recommendations of the conference.
“Being one of the key people that engineered the National Conference, and looking at how its implementation would benefit the country, I have cried out on several occasions on the need for President Buhari to implement it. But they have ignored my cry. Though, the Arewa people replied me, … what I actually want is immediate implementation of the conference report,” he stressed.
“If I may say anything, I will emphatically tell you that we won’t have peace in this country if the recommendations at that conference are thrown away,” he added.
Adebanjo agreed that the fight against corruption, which the current administration had started, was important in the interest of the Nigerian economy, but insisted that the immediate implementation of the conference recommendations would do the country more good.
“For instance, we are in the corruption mess because the Federal Government has too much money. They have more money than sense. And a recommendation of the conference has a solution to this menace. In the conference recommendation, we have reduced the allocation of the Federal Government to 30 per cent, while the state and local governments are given more money in order to help balance things,” he explained.
He accused the military of distorting the economic balance with the sharing formula adopted after the 1966 coup.
He said, “When you study the revenue allocation formula in our system of government, you will discover that it is biased in terms of the number of the local governments that were created under the military administration. It was the military that destroyed the country with the sharing formula after the 1966 coup.
“However, due to the fact that the Yoruba people are peace-loving people; we believe so much that you cannot restructure this country with crisis, we settled for the conference, which we engineered and the previous administration implemented.”
The Afenifere leader, who said the chance of implementing the conference report was very slim, explained, “When you look at it critically, you will discover that the recommendations may never be implemented because of its implications for the awkward government we have in the country, which favours a section. I believe that this is one of the reasons Buhari will find it difficult to implement the Confab recommendations, because it will bring about equity in the country.”
Meanwhile, one of the members of the rested Confab, Chief Bisi Adegbuyi, has expressed optimism that the National Conference recommendations will be implemented by the Buhari-led administration.
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