‘The North Will Regret, I Repeat…If They Stop Restructuring’ — Osoba Warns

Former Ogun State Governor, Olusegun Osoba, has warned northern political elites that the region will regret any attempt to stop current calls for restructuring of the country.

Osoba warned that the South would pay the North in their own coin if in the future the region decides to push for restructuring when it starts to tap natural deposits in the region.

The former governor spoke during an interview on Arise TV’s ‘The Morning Show’, monitored by THE WHISTLER on Wednesday.

“The North will regret, and I repeat it, the position some of them are taking now because oil now has a terminal period with solar, electrical, gas and all kinds of modern developments [coming up]. The minerals that are there in major parts of the northern Nigeria would be the future of this country and they will regret it, because at that time we (the South] will resist attempt by anybody to ask for derivation. That is a thing they must think about,” he said.

Osoba’s warning came few days after President Muhammadu Buhari’s senior media assistant, Garba Shehu, rebuked southern governors for demanding restructuring and banning open grazing in the region.

Shehu had accused the southern governors of attempting to “demonstrate their power” by engaging in “other acts of politicking”.

But Osoba, who is a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), cautioned Shehu and other government spokespersons against issuing statements capable of setting the nation on fire, warning that “We have to be careful, a little statement can trigger a more dangerous development that we cannot handle.”

He said, “I, as a former reporter, am worried. Because the Nigerian civil war was started by a fake news on AFP that northerners were killed in Port Harcourt and that led to massacre of Igbos…. That was the beginning of civil war in Nigeria. I covered the war and I don’t want to discuss the destruction that happened.”

Osoba also explained why members of the APC-led government make discordant remarks on issues bordering on restructuring and insecurity, amongst others.

He said, “…It is because pandemic has made it so impossible for us [ to meet physically]. We have not had any major party engagement. All these zoom meetings are not really the kind of meetings you can use for [resolving issues]. Unfortunately for a whole year, we have not had the chance to the meet.

“Usually, Femi Adesina and co are part of the meeting of the party that we hold. The officials who are issuing statements are not party members and there should be a point where we should sit down together and they should reflect the policy trust of the party.

“It is not an issue of a section versus a section, it is the issue of some individuals who are also part of the same government that I’m criticizing, who indiscriminately issue statements that is doing damage to our government, the APC government.”

Asked if he supports current agitations for Yoruba nation in the South West, Osoba said he and other elders in the region agree that the agitations were due to frustrations from insecurity and unemployment that the youths were currently suffering.

“When you talk about Oduduwa Republic, I must say that we the elders across the board agree that the frustration that the younger ones are facing is what is leading them to the extreme and asking that we should separate. When young men come out from the university and they now resort to doing menial jobs…we’ve refused to develop our technical education which would give them practical work that they can do. Unemployment and insecurity are on all of us now. If I dare go out in the night now, my family will be wondering what I am doing outside. That was not the Nigeria that we grew up to know, we used to enjoy travelling at night from Lagos-Ilorin, Ilorin-Kano, but nobody would dare do that these days. So, it is frustration of the younger ones,” said the former governor.

Osoba added that Nigerian leaders must be “very careful” and must pay attention to opinions of the youths and persuade them in other to avoid another civil war in the country.

On why the ruling APC was yet to implement its party’s 2018 report on restructuring, he said: “The report of the APC, I can tell you, is an exhaustive report. It took time for them to go to all the six zones of this country. It is not something you do overnight and its not a document you produce by fiat. They did extensive consultation in all the six zones and they were scientific and analytical. The responses they got from each of the zones from all the issues

“If you don’t want this thing [restructuring] to become war, we need serious analysis and engagement to arrive at a consensus that will make us have this done in a way that will not create war in the country.

“For example, now, virtually the whole country has accepted state police, because the way they [ the Buhari administration] are handling insecurity, if we’re not careful, we are now going beyond Boko Haram

“The Islamic State for West Africa who wants to Islamize the whole of West Africa and are already infiltrating into Nigeria. We have to be very careful because it is dangerous.”

Speaking further on Yoruba nation and whether Nigeria should go back to the 1963 Constitution, Osoba said: “Of course, I wish we can go back to the 19643 constitution, because at that time, we had the kind of Australian constitution where the provinces were virtually independent of the federal government. And at that time, the western region had its own Agent-General in the UK. The Sardauna of Sokoto didn’t bother about leaving the North to come to the center and Azikiwe had to return to the East to become the premier of the Eastern region and each of the regions developed at their own [pace]. It would have been most beautiful to go back to the 1963 constitution which was negotiated over and over with many conferences before the independence in 1960.”