Former Nigerian military Head of State, retired General Yakubu Gowon has expressed doubt on the workability of the restructuring which some Nigerians are clamouring for.
According to him, carrying out a successful restructuring in a country with over 500 ethnic group, and other divergent socio cultural differences would not be very easy.
“Nigeria is made up of over 500 ethnic groups, languages and dialects and so many various groups called nationalities and they want restructuring.
“This restructuring everybody is asking for, we will have about 500 different ideas of restructuring. There is call for restructuring to reduce the number of states to only a few either back to the old region or to the zones.”
“Those are some of the ideas that I do not know whether it will be possible for any state today to wish to be merged with another state. Let us see whether our politicians will see guidelines to be able to achieve what they want.
“But I have my problem whether the states will be financially capable so they will be able to run their states properly.”
General Gowon spoke yesterday in Minna, the Niger State capital, saying that such diverse ethnic groups would not be able to form a united front for the restructuring.
Saying that each of the groups is likely not going to yield to another in terms of concession of certain benefits, the war-time Nigerian leader stressed that there would be various definitions of what restructuring is by the various ethnic groups and that this would make it impossible for the groups to come to general conclusion as to what it really should be.
General Gowon asked Nigerians to, instead be united because some states as components of the federation are not financially capable of going it alone.[myad]
