By Chinonso Alozie

Owerri—A chieftain of All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, in Imo State, Mr. Okey Ezeh, yesterday, said the current structure of Nigeria has a lot of “imperfections.”

Reacting to the call for restructuring of Nigeria in  an interview with Vanguard in Owerri, Ezeh said Nigerian leaders were interested in how to share the cake and not how to bake it.

According to him, “restructuring is a topical issue that everybody is talking about now. But some of us prefer to go down memory lane. Restructuring is not a new issue in the history of Nigeria.

“It is an issue that has refused to go away. At some point, it will move around and turn full circle and before you know it, people will say it has been overtaken by events. At some point, it will resurface.

“The federation  has a lot of imperfections. If you are doing an experiment and you have not gotten the desired result, you will continue until you get what you are comfortable with.

“Restructuring should not only be a political thing. It should be a holistic exercise to determine how the federation called Nigeria can function optimally and how the component parts can exist and everybody will function optimally according to his or her endowment.”

“For us as a corporate entity called Nigeria, the restructuring should go beneath deciding how the components units can interact together with each other and the entity can restructure itself and reinvent itself economically.

“Many at times, we talk about how do we share the cake and we keep scant attention on how do we bake the cake. And you look at Nigeria, you see that we are prone to all manner of shocks, economic shocks.

“How many years after independence ,well over 50 years after independence, we are still a mono product economy. We have not restructured in order to diversify our economy.

“Nobody is talking about what we are saying,   is that whatever money we have what of the federating units, what kind of authority and what kind of autonomy and influence should they willed. The states, the way they are structured do the part of the federation have a sense of inclusiveness. All of these are on the table.”