Ibekimi Oriamaja Reports
Bamidele Salam, a member of the House of Representatives, has advocated for power devolution between the federal, state, and local governments.
This call was part of his lecture titled ‘Nigeria at 62: Poverty, Insecurity, and the Search for a Workable Constitution,’ which he delivered on Monday in Osogbo as part of the 2022 annual lecture of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Osun Council Week.
Salam, the lawmaker who represents Ede North, Ede South, Egbedore, and Ejigbo in the House of Representatives, maintained that Nigeria, at the age of 62, should have reached certain milestones in every aspect of life.
“Unfortunately, even those countries that we were on par with 62 years ago have overtaken Nigeria, which is so unfortunate,” he says, “but for every darkness there is a silver lining, and the silver lining is that we still have hope as a country.”
“To rebuild our fallen walls, to address insecurity and poverty, and to develop a system that will ensure that the government of Nigeria serves the greater good of the Nigerian people.”
“To build a system in which the average Nigerian will be very proud to live, work, and stay in his own country, so that we can save our young population from wandering around the world in countries where we are humiliated.”
“To build a prosperous country in which everyone, regardless of tribe or class, has access to justice.”
“Everyone wants to stay and work in Nigeria.” So, we still have a long way to go, as we discussed in the lecture today.
“Well, I said a lot of things, one of which is that we need to be able to evolve a political system that is as inclusive and less expensive than the one we have now, and that will put more resources into real development than the current expenditure.”
“We should be able to build a security system that will devolve security responsibilities to a government that is closer to the people, devolve more powers to states and local governments, and devolve more resources to states and local governments so that they can face insecurity, poverty, a lack of effective infrastructure, and every other problem that we have identified.”
“So it’s just another word for reorganization.” “All we have to do now is devolve powers and ensure that our country functions as a true Federal Republic of Nigeria,” he concluded.
Yemi Farounbi, the event’s chairman, compared Nigeria to a computer.
Farounbi, a veteran broadcast journalist and former Nigerian Ambassador to the Philippines, explained, “Because a computer is made up of hardware, software, and an operator, the hardware that has crashed is the constitution.” The politicians who have been infected by a virus are the software.
“I always ask myself, ‘What should I do next?’ Because, no matter how good the operator is, the software is virus-infected, and our hardware has crashed.” We need to find new hardware that is both functional and virus-free.”
