The Governor of Niger State, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, has called on members of the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Dialogue to de-emphasise any form of ethnicity or religion in the cause of their finding lasting solutions to the keeping the country together.
Aliyu said this on Wednesday in Minna when the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Dialogue paid him a visit.
He said those who do not understand the intellectual issues that are involved are free to get out and go on exile.
According to him: “We must de-emphasize ethnicity and religion in what we do so that this country will move forward.
“I watched on television yesterday when they are talking of ethnic nationality and I remembered throughout the history of this country there was never a time when tribe or ethnicity became the basis of policy making.
“I wondered and I said you want to waste my time after six years trying to see that in Niger State we de-emphasise tribes.
“We have been able to establish that any group, whether you call it ethnic or tribe, migrated from elsewhere and whoever will contribute meaningfully to the development to Niger State is a Nigerlite even if he arrived today.
“Anybody who feels that he wants to get out, you are free to get out and go on exile.
“If you don’t want to be Nigerian, you are free to go on exile and stay wherever you want.
“But you must not use the conference or another thing to begin to think that you can dis-member this and that.
“Let us use the institutions, no matter how imperfect they are, they are on ground.
“So, our suggestion is to say, use the local government as a basis for selection or election of delegates to the National Conference.
“Which means we have 774 elected delegates, then use 100 delegates to represent special interests and then you add 36 or 37 to represent the traditional institution.
“Each State should be able to say, I have eight first class Emirs and they have their own Traditional Council.
“They should be able to send one of them to sit in that conference.”
Furthermore, Aliyu urged the committee to consider using the 12 states crated by former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, as a basis for the restructuring of the country.
He said: “If Nigeria must be restructured, I think the basis is to start with the 12 States of General Yakubu Gowon.
“In so doing, whether we want to call them regional, I have no problem with that, but a situation where you say outright dividing or doing otherwise is not good.”
Aliyu warned that if Nigerians call for Sovereign National Conference then all public officers, including the President, will have to give up their offices to the sovereignty.
He said: “My argument has always been that you cannot have two sovereignty in one place.
“It is either you dissolve us who represent the sovereignty of this country, that is from the President to National Assembly, from the governors to states assemblies and indeed even the local government chairmen and their assemblies must transfer that sovereignty to the conference, for you to be able to get the sovereignty as you want.”
Earlier, the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Dialogue, Senator Femi Okunrounmu, had said that the committee will take all contributions from Nigerians, adding that the findings of the dialogue shall become part of our constitution.
Okunrounmu said: “Various people have different issues that they want us to put on the agenda.
“As mush as possible, we shall try to accommodate the views of all Nigerians, so that nothing that touches their hearts is left out in the agenda.”
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