Following the increasing calls for Nigerian federation to be restructured, Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka has stated that the sovereignty of the nation is subject to negotiation.
He said this on Tuesday during a visit to PUNCH headquarters located along Kilometre 14, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Ogun State. He opined that the decentralization of the nation will foster healthy rivalry among the different units.
He said it was wrong for the past administration to say that the Sovereignty of Nigeria was non-negotiable adding that statement was mutually incompatible to development.
In his words, “I am on the side of those who say we must do everything to avoid disintegration. That language I understand. I don’t understand (ex-President Olusegun) Obasanjo’s language. I don’t understand (President Muhammadu) Buhari’s language and all their predecessors, saying the sovereignty of this nation is non-negotiable. It’s bloody well negotiable and we had better negotiate it. We better negotiate it, not even at meetings, not at conferences, but everyday in our conduct towards one another.
“We had better understand it too that when people are saying ‘let’s restructure’, they have better things to do. It’s not an idle cry; it is a perennial demand. The Pro-National Conference Organisation was about restructuring when this same Obasanjo said it was an act of treason for people to come together to fashion a new constitution. Those were fighting words; that you’re saying, ‘I commit treason because I want to sit with my fellow citizens and negotiate the structures of staying together’ and ask the police to go and break it up and arrest us.
Soyinka urged President Mohammadu Buhari to take into account the report of the 2014 National Conference convened during the tenure of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan. He bemoaned the state of the country which he said has been going round in circles without clear direction.
“We have a habit of consigning files to the dust shelves and then we start all over again. The (confab) report that came under Jonathan is even more superior to the one that I participated in as a member of PRONACO and I think that should be addressed seriously.
“The recommendations strike me as workable, practical, and in fact, as answering some of the anxieties of this nation. This is something I think that Buhari should tackle seriously,” he said.
