Your Excellency, The Senate President, Senator Ahmed I. Lawan,
We the Nigerian Global Roundtable, comprising of Nigerian professionals with diverse
backgrounds from across the world, a Think & Do NGO pursuing good governance and
accountability, with the aim to facilitate the economic empowerment and overall
development of Nigeria, have the honour to write you as our elected representatives to
express our concern over the current state of our beloved country. This letter has become
necessary, given that major issues such as insecurity to life and property, equity and
justice, and corruption facing our country are not being addressed adequately in such a
way as to bring about a lasting remedy. Instead, the country is drifting towards anarchy
and lawlessness.
May we remind you that as an oversight organ and lawmaker/s, through the laws you
make, you can influence and facilitate an inclusive and sustainable socio-economic
development of Nigeria for all citizens alike. We are of the view that the time has come
that no patriotic Nigerian should seat idle and pretend all is well. All is not well. We have
been observing the worsening security situation across the land, where bandits and
terrorists travel in convoy to harass and abduct law-abiding citizens, with our security
agencies looking helpless, yet we allocate several billions of Naira for security activities
yearly. We watch, as more Nigerians are expressing their feelings of injustice, inequity
and unfairness to our current political & economic arrangement. The cry of hunger across the land caused by systemic corruption and bad governance cannot be overheard, yet to
our surprise; our leaders are not cutting down on overhead expenditures or adequately
responding to the yearnings of the people.
As things stand, if nothing is done, under your watch, Nigeria is moving deeper into
anarchy and social unrest of unimaginable proportions that may consume many and set
us years backward. This may include the fortunes of those who consider themselves
invincible and immune to any accountability now. This is the time for all of us to find the
courage to stand out to do the needful to redirect our narrative in the interest of our future
generations. We believe it is a privilege by providence to be given the opportunity to serve
one’s own people and such opportunities should be used well to uplift the people from
misery. We are concerned that our leaders are not listening to the real yearnings of our
people and that this may have severe consequences sooner than later.
At a time of scarce resources, we do not understand why the parliament is approving the
concentration of our scarce resources on financing projects that are not adding economic
values to the growth of Nigeria. All infrastructures are important but they must be
prioritized according to economic values in times of scarce resources.
The Nigerian Global Roundtable is of the view that in order to develop, we need to
eliminate the number of duplications in our structure that includes the number of states
and the MDAs (Ministries, Departments and Agencies). Development is a factor of capital
investments that is rendered impossible by too high recurrent expenditures. Hence, the
astronomical high cost of governance in Nigeria has been an impediment to development.
May we also remind you that the purpose of government is to take care and provide
services for the people and government should never be an end in itself.
When we operated the republican parliamentary system between 1963 – 1966, with
regional autonomy and resource control, though, there were uneven growth but there was
growth everywhere, including capacity building and development. After studying carefully
and having extensive debates on the current state of the country, the Nigerian Global
Roundtable is recommending a return to the regional arrangement. The current
presidential system has been tried and seemingly not yielding the desired results, hence
many are calling for a return to our republican parliamentary system of 1963. Nigeria
urgently needs restructuring to do a political, social & economic reconstruction of the
country. Let us do what will unite Nigerians and make Nigerians proud of themselves and
of their country.
Some have said we should have six, seven or even twelve regions, where no ethnic
nationality is split into different regions. Let each regional government decide on how
many states and local governments it wants to have and finance. The federating units
should be the regions, and each region should be free to create as many states and local
governments as they may consider affordable based on the resources they can generate.
With a slim centre, mainly for the coordination and protection of the interest of Nigeria, the
current lure to federal appointments by corrupt and incapable hands would certainly
become less attractive.

We members of the Nigerian Global Roundtable are drawing your attention to the
following and urging you to take decisive measures by personally or in collaboration with
other patriotic and progressive colleagues submit a bill/s in the following areas; namely
corruption, Security and Restructuring:
1) Corruption: In other to address corruption decisively and shorten the length of court
proceedings, there should be a special court for corruption related cases. These
courts are to be established in all current capital cities across Nigeria.
2) Security: Since the current security architecture appears unable to adequately
respond to the increasing security challenges across the country, we recommend the
urgent decentralization of the security architectures. Like in other federal systems
across the world, policing is local and should be devolved to States urgently, who
know their regions and people better. In addition, a situation where the Commissioner
of Police is from a faraway part of the country is incomprehensible. Therefore, the
leadership of the Police in any state should be occupied by people with indigenous
knowledge of their region. In addition, the formation of regional security outfits should
be encouraged reason being that they are more conversant with the security realities
of their territory. The security of citizens is too important to be polarized or politicized.
3) Restructuring: Given our peculiarities, with restructuring, we mean a new constitution
that returns Nigeria to regional arrangements, a constitution that will give more power
to the regions/states, with fiscal control. We have to prevent the ongoing rampant
killings, which is turning the country into a killing field. A restructured Nigeria would
bring new impulses and energy that can transform the country into the envy of the rest
of the world. A faulty system is never likely to produce the best result and we think the
first step is to admit that there is a problem. We think the issue of restructuring should
be addressed adequately before any further election in Nigeria. In this spirit, we refer
you to the submission of Dr. Akin Fapohunda, see attachment, which we fully support.
We know these are great tasks but we have confidence you are up to the task. These
tasks should now be top on the agenda of the NASS. We recommend that the NASS
should urgently consider doing the following:
(a) Insert into the constitution the possibility of a referendum to give
legitimacy to any new constitution. At this moment, we believe that it is
very urgent for you to start the process of physical restructuring of the
country, by amending the constitution to provide for the possibility of
calling for a referendum for the people of Nigeria to decide the way
forward. This will indeed be an enormous contribution to national
development of the country.
(b) Initiate or better still revisit the recommendations of the last sovereign
national conference that accommodates our diversity, ethnicity and
religions to negotiate the way forward. We are convinced that
periodically calling for the submission of memoranda to give what looks
like a superficial notion that the Committee on the Review of the 1999
Constitution is alive and working, is not the way forward. We think the
committee has enough materials at its disposal and Nigerians have
submitted enough memoranda, including the reports of previous
sovereign national conferences that are accessible, the time to act is
now without further delay. As you know, the people of Nigeria did not
participate in the drafting of the current 1999 constitution and there is the
yearning across the land to participate in the writing of their constitution.
The time to act and do what other countries did to get rid of their
problems and establish a united and peaceful nation is now. Across the
world, parliamentary systems with regional governments produce
leaderships that are more responsive, accountable and more
progressive. It is now obvious that our current structure is an impediment
to our progress.
(c) Initiate a referendum after the sovereign national conference to request
Nigerians to decide on the result of the conference. We are concerned
that if we do not handle our unity and independence very well, we are on
the way to losing it.
(d) To never assent to the National Water Resources Bill. At a time, people
are calling for resource control and devolution of power, assenting to this
bill would not only be a wrong signal that government is not listening to a
vast majority of the Nigerian people they are supposed to be serving but
this will also be counterproductive. We urge you to only support what
unites and not what divides the country. May we also remind you that
such a bill would be at variance with our 1999 constitution as amended,
in line with the Land Use Act that rests all matters concerning Land to
the states (Water basins and shores are part of the land in States).
Rivers, lakes and their banks across the world are resided with
Regions/States. The introduction of the water bill act is a deliberate and
brazen disregard to the constitutional land use provisions and therefore
should be rejected as it is a nullity in itself
We are concerned that any inaction on the above issues could lead this country to
monumental crisis and even disintegration. Therefore, it behoves on you to take urgent
actions to address all these lingering issues that had kept the country on edge.
Lastly, Nigerians exercising their constitutional rights to express themselves, who
peacefully request for accountability from those serving them, must not be allowed to be
harassed by security agencies, when indeed terrorist groups are driving in convoys
terrorizing the people with no appropriate responses from the same security agencies.
We call on the NASS to send a clear message to these agencies to henceforth desist
from bullying citizens who express their views, follow rule of law and to call on
government officials who use their powers to terrorize or even kill protesting citizens for
demanding accountability from government to stop this unacceptable trend.
We assure you of our highest esteem and look forward to your actions, response, and
thank you.
The Nigerian Global RoundTable.
Signed:
Dr. Adedeji AgangaWilliams UK
Dr. Peter Agwi Germany
Mr. Sidney ‘Kewe Akaphiare Nigeria
Dr. Tony Alabi Nigeria
Mr. Adeshina Ayodele Austria
Madam Oti Ayenbi France
Dr. Jones Edobor Austria
Dr. Akin Fapohunda Nigeria
Venerable Aghama A. Imade, DCCS Nigeria
Dipl. Ing. Festus Imarhiagbe Austria
Mr. Ifeolu Jegunma UK
Dr. Chief Amb.
Camilus Konkwo Austria
Dr. Bashir Obasekola Russia
Mr. Anthony Ogochukwu Ireland
Mr. Sidney Ogodo Nigeria
Mr. Ikechukwu Okafor Austria
Mr. Samuel Orovwuje Orovwuje Nigeria
Mr. Jeffrey Oviasu Austria
Ambassador Abdul Rimdap UK
Madam Titi Sorungbe USA