Demand for Restructuring Is a Covert Way of Opposition to Government – Says Buhari’s Media Assistant, Femi Adesina

Mr. Femi Adesina, the media assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, seems to be bewildered about the diversity of viewpoints that abound regarding what restructuring means to the typical citizen. According to him, this finding compelled the Buhari administration and the ruling party, APC, to set up a committee to travel around the country to ascertain the type of restructuring Nigerians want. That committee had long finished its task, but he would not delve into what was found and the subsequent recommendations. Mr. Adesina claimed that the Buhari presidency focused all its attention on the three principal pledges in candidate Buhari’s manifesto during the 2015 presidential election campaign, namely: – security, corruption and economic revival. The president’s media aide further clarified that what was promised in the APC manifesto in the 2015 general elections was “devolution of power”. No allusion, whatsoever, was made whether there is a significant difference between the promised devolution of power and the restructuring being agitated for.

He then proceeded to characterize the agitation for restructuring as a covert means to mount opposition against the incumbent government. This is disingenuous since Mr. Adesina did not care to fully explain the difference between the restructuring being demanded by the electorate and the “devolution of power” which he admitted was promised in the manifesto of the APC 2015 general elections campaign. If devolution of power is the only matter that the ruling party and the presidency had promised to deliver upon if elected, why should Mr. Adesina regard the popular demand for restructuring to be a covert opposition to the Buhari administration? To the electorate, devolution is a variant of restructuring. Why then blame the electorate for asking the Buhari administration to deliver on, at least, one aspect of what the president had promised only four years ago?

The media assistant defended Buhari administration’s laxity in addressing the “devolution of power” as promised by the ruling party in the electoral campaign that swept it into power in 2015 because the government’s focus primarily has been on fulfilling the pledges made in the realms of security, corruption and economic expansion. Suffice it to say that Buhari and APC have also failed woefully in these three crucial aspects since their ascendancy in May 2015. This video is not a good portrayal of President Buhari and the ruling party, APC. This is more so at the eve of the incumbent president’s re-election bid.

What Mr. Adesina failed to state before his audience is that his boss, President Buhari, is dead against restructuring the country’s geopolitical economy to change from the unitary state it is today. Buhari is quoted to have openly declared that Nigeria’s problem is not “structure” but “process”. Perhaps, this better explains why the pledge of devolution of power was totally jettisoned from the to-do list of the incumbent administration. Skeptics have a point in believing that Buhari’s promises of 2015 were a mere ruse deliberately peddled to garner votes. The policy of setting up a committee to ascertain from Nigerians what they really mean by restructuring/devolution of powers is a red herring because it was motivated by the quest to cover an insincere mindset in a political leader who is intent on lying and deceiving those who had voted him into the position of power.

It is a great concern to hear Mr. Adesina opine that he saw nothing wrong in a restructuring that is restricted to a tweaking of the subsisting 1999 Constitution. In other words, restructuring may be good as long as that can be achieved only by fine-tuning and amending the widely contested, denounced and rejected 1999 Constitution which was the creation of General Abdulsalami Abubakar military regime that put the document into force by the issuance of Decree No 24 of 1999. The said fraudulent constitution has the preamble which claims that “We the people……” produced the legal document and gave the same to ourselves. No! Nigerian stakeholders were imposed upon since they were never consulted during the writing of the document, neither were they asked to review and ratify the so-called constitution before it was foisted on all inhabitants of Nigeria’s geopolitical space. What an affront!

This video is such a poor showing by the incumbent administration, especially in the eve of a crucial election in which President Buhari is asking for another four years at the Aso Rock Villa.