“In other words, even
with the best of efforts, we are not likely to get far with whatever we want to
do. That is why the only option we have now is what is called restructuring or
restoration of federalism.
“The problem that I see is that, unfortunately, the
government of President Tinubu seem not to have anticipated or prepared for the
kind of challenges or crisis that we are experiencing.
“That, to me, is a sad commentary because if you are going
to run for the office of president of Nigeria and you have this period, between
when you are declared by INEC and the day you are sworn-in, that is about three
months. What did President Tinubu do with those three months? That was enough
time to simulate all the crises we are having now and how best to respond to
them.
“What is happening
now is inevitable. There is no way you are going to remove oil subsidy and
floatation of the naira that you won’t have the crisis that we have now. The
kind of policies that we have in place now can only work in the long run, not in
the short term. They ought to have anticipated all these challenges but they
did not. Now, we are seeing all manners of fire brigade approaches which
doesn’t work.”
While calling for a total overhaul of Nigeria’s
constitution, Osuntokun said it is clear that Tinubu and his cabinet members
are not well prepared for the numerous challenges facing Nigeria today.
“There are two major explanations for what is happening now.
First is that the president and his government are not well prepared for the
crisis we are confronting today. All these palliatives and monies they are just
throwing around, that should have happened from the very beginning,” Osuntokun
said.
“The second has to do with the insecurity crisis in the
country. Almost everybody now is being converted to the idea of state police.
However, state police is just an item in the constitution. There are a lot of
factors in it. In fact, the constitution itself, if we don’t overhaul it, we
are not going to go far as a nation.”
