IT is very sad indeed that many Southerners are wallowing in inexcusable ignorance with respect to the manipulative leadership in Nigeria.

I could not understand why the people, especially the elite who ought to know and enlighten their people, could not discern the consistent overt and covert agenda of the Northern Moslems who have never hidden their resolve to be controlling the corporate affairs of this obviously accursed country directly and indirectly.

If majority of the Southerners are not bemused and bewitched as it were, there would have been no need to subject the issue of state-run police to debate since well meaning Nigerian are fed up with the pseudo federalism (veiled unitary system of government) being practiced and want to go back to True Federalism. In a federal system government all over the world, the constituent units or polities established no society is static and Nigeria cannot be different.

Since it has become crystal clear that the muddle and systemic dysfunction in the administration and leadership of the country since its flag independence in 1960 has run its full course, the restructuring of the country has become not only inevitable but imminent. The restructuring is simply to go back to True Federalism as it was before the civil war (1960-1966).

The former regional governments had their police but were arbitrarily abolished by the NPC-controlled Federal Government due to the flagrant abuse by the regional governments.

The Federal System of government which the British colonial masters guided the nationalists to put in place due to the striking features which made the system applicable to other countries was truncated by the Yakubu Gowon- led  military regime in 1967.

Since it is impossible to violate empirical findings and principles that undergird a system and expect the original outcomes, the country ceased to register socio-economic and political growth and development in real terms in spite of  over $300 billion earned in oil revenues. Poverty has registered exponential increase as Nigeria ranks as one of the poorest nations of the world with about 70 per cent of its citizens living below the poverty line of $1 per day.

Today, Nigeria is rated among the under-developed third world countries and on the path of a failed state going the total collapse of security apparatus and infrastructure.

In many states in the North, lives and government facilities and security agents are being destroyed; people are subjected to privations as a result of the Federal Government’s obvious failure to discharge the fundamental duty and responsibility of providing security from the rampaging and unrelenting onslaught of Boko Haram bloodhounds, kidnappers for ransom, armed robbers, motor park touts, pipe-line vandals and sundry criminality which evade justice.

Deliberate distortion of the principles of Federalism led to impunity in governance at all the three tiers and branches of government. Corruption has become pervasive and uncontrollable in government and the organised private sector.

In spite of public protestation based on factual instances, the immunity clause to protect the president and governors from criminal prosecution which emboldened them to be making ducks and drakes with public money and getting away with it at the expiration of their tenure in office has not been considered overdue to be abolished in the Constitution.

The military regimes which were headed by the Northern Moslems (apart from General Yakubu Gowon who is a surrogate to the phalanx) deliberately and brazenly distorted the principles of federalism to centralize every key aspect of government to enable the Northern Moslems to directly and indirectly control the corporate affairs of the country perpetually, hence the insulting slogan “Born to Rule”.

Thus what is being practised in Nigeria is totally at variance with the principles that undergirded federal system of government as practised in countries like India, United States, Australia, Switzerland and Pakistan.

In these countries, there are federal police organisations as well as regional, state or provincial police organisations. Even in Britan and Wales there are about 41 police authorities.

These countries have not disintegrated because of multiple law enforcement organisations since they are very conscious of the fact that the primary objective of government is security of lives and property.

The secret behind the shenanigans of the Northern Moslems in its stout resistance to decentralize the police force and restructure the country to berth federalism (no need to call it true federalism) is that they will lose their vice grip on the levers of power to control the country directly and indirectly.

If they are not in the sensitive positions, they make sure that they install timid people from the South who tremble at the phone calls of Northern political and religious chieftains.

For instance, the Director General of the NYSC, Brigadier Okorie Affia, did not muster the moral courage to stop the posting of corps members from the South to Northern states to be slaughtered by the BokoHaram and religious bloodhounds because of the fear of being harassed by the almighty Northern Moslems who purportedly dictate what will be done in the country.

POLYCARP ONWUBIKO , an author, wrote from Awka, Anambra State.