Nigeria news : Buhari agrees with restructuring – Gov El-Rufai

Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has said that President Muhammadu Buhari is not opposed to state police and true federalism.

El-Rufai, the Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Committee on True Federalism, which submitted its report in 2018, said Buhari is not opposed to restructuring.

The Governor said that the National Assembly has failed to act on the recommendations to make the laws.

“Nigeria is the only country in the world that is a federation with only one police force. We have made the argument that states should be allowed to have their own police and that even local governments should be allowed their own police,” El-Rufai said.

“The President agrees with the content, the main crux of the report, and we drafted bills that will enable the amendment of the constitution as well as statutory amendments that will give effect to our recommendations.

“I call on members of our National Assembly to take our report, look at the bills we have drafted and work on them, try to give us state police, state judiciary, vest control of oil and minerals in the states, offshore in the government of the federal while states pay royalty and tax,” El-Rufai said as quoted by Vanguard.

Many individuals and groups have sustained the call for Nigeria to be restructured, with the latest call coming from Ifeanyi Okowa, the Governor of Delta State.

Okowa noted that the country’s constitution was a major problem, adding that politicians must stop playing politics with restructuring.

In the same vein, a former Chief Security Officer to the late military ruler, General Sani Abacha, Hamza Al-Mustapha, advised Nigerians not to allow politicians to restructure the country.

He said such would be dangerous and will break the country, adding that citizens were toying with the issue by allowing the political elite to take the front seat in the agitation for Nigeria’s realignment.