Date: 24.09.2020

Your Excellency, 
The Senate President
Chairman of National Assembly
Senator Ahmed Ibrahim Lawan

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 Aganga-Williams 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