A former Minister of Youth Development and Sports, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, has claimed that President Muhammadu Buhari ignored the call for restructuring because he felt it was in favour of the south.
He made this claim in an interview on Saturday at Ilorin, Kwara State.
The former National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) said the ruling party had promised restructuring and it was entailed in their constitution but it was never implemented.
In his words, “I was a member of the committee and we travelled round the country and the take-off point was that the APC government promised devolution of power in its manifesto and it got to a point where Nigerians began to ask questions.
“We felt obliged as executives of the party to take action at that point in time regardless of the position of the government, hoping that we would start the conversation around it and be able to get the government to respond appropriately and that was why the leadership of the party at the time led by Chief John Oyegun set up a committee led by El-Rufai.
“One of the things we tried to do then was to disaggregate what people mean when they say true federalism. You would agree with me that the definition of restructuring has been caught up in all forms of political baggage to the extent that it means different things to different people.
“After our report came out, our hope was that we would be able to get the Federal Government to take the needed actions because apart from the report that made specific recommendations on what to do on constitution amendments, we even went to the extent of including draft amendments. I think what happened is that the manifesto of the APC had long been disowned by the government itself.
“The government felt it was the South-West wing of the party that inserted this into the manifesto of the party and the other wings didn’t believe in it; that was where the breakdown happened. So it was seen more or less as ACN South-West agenda, rather than the Buhari government agenda. That dissonance was a major challenge that report had.
“I don’t think anything would come out of the report for now especially as we head to the last lap of the administration.”
