When about thirteen months ago the Nigerian military manifested its loathsome capacity to intimidate and terrorise by invading some parts of the south-east, code-named Operation Python Dance, the ancestral home of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) at Afaraukwu, Umuahia, was ransacked and several people were killed.

President Muhammadu Buhari, APC stalwarts and a handful of prominent northern politicians who utter the shibboleth that our problem is more of process than structure, that restructuring means different things to different people and, consequently, it might be impossible to reach a consensus about what it really means are, to put it mildly, insincere.

Continuing from where we ended last week, it is crystal clear that northern Nigeria has an advantage over the south with respect to any federal money spent or shared on the basis of senatorial zones.

Fiscally it means that automatically northern Nigeria has the advantage of two extra states than the south, in addition to the extra funds given to Abuja because of its special status. With respect to the structural composition of the National Assembly, the deliberate strategy of favouring the north is evident as well

It is well documented that on several occasions the north had demanded confederation, including the right to secede. But sometime after the July coup, the same northerners suddenly became staunch advocates of a unitarist arrangement

For the colonialists, the dominant Islamic theocracy in northern Nigeria was malleable and made colonisation easier, unlike southern Nigeria where rebellious ethnic groups particularly in the east fought colonisation to the last

Dishonest cash-and-carry politicians who point to conceptual ambiguities surrounding the notion of restructuring are right to some extent, because from media reportage of the issue the word ‘restructuring’ means different things to different people

I laugh whenever hypocritical Buharimaniacs proclaim that the President is fighting corruption. This is because Buhari and his party not only harbour some of the most horribly corrupt Nigerians, they also celebrate with fanfare the harvest of PDP members they had previously accused of gargantuan corruption into their fold

In the First Republic, the Akintola-led faction of the Yoruba political class tried to supplant Ndigbo by forming an alliance with the NPC in the competition for patronage that flowed from Balewa’s government

As one acute observer of Nigerian politics noted, political violence has almost become the second nature of Nigerian politicians which usually manifests itself through both inter-party as well as intra-party feuds

It is necessary to point out that the traditional British parliamentary system bequeathed to Nigerians by the colonialists was unsuitable for the country

On the national stage, the preoccupation of Ahmadu Bello and his closest allies was to maintain and consolidate northern political domination of Nigeria, a mindset that has remained relatively unchanged among the dominant segment of the northern ruling elite till now

The Richard’s constitution which divided the country into three legislative regions created favourable conditions for tribal politics and inter-regional tensions

The escalating social anomie is the heavy price those of us at the receiving end of misgovernance by the APC are paying for that error of judgment

In my view, for the President June 12 is a weapon or steroid needed to reinvigorate his drooping electability