The Security Adviser to the Abia state Governor,a Capt. Awa Udonsi Agwu (Rtd) has identified ethnicity as the bane of Nigeria citing unification and restructuring as the panacea for the growth and development of the country.
Speaking on the sidelines of Nigeria’s Independent Anniversary,Captain Awa argued that for the country to move forward, issues such as ethnicity and clannishness must be done away with while issues such as merit should be embraced.
He called on Nigerian leaders to jettison tribalism and nepotism and work towards redefining, re-strategizing as well as restructuring the country to make for unification of all citizens irrespective of tribe and ethnicity.
Captain Awa emphatically stated that in achieving the Nigeria of our dreams, Nigerians, as a people must learn to live together in unity, identify and eschew the things that have, over the years, been a clog in her wheel of progress adding that leaders should set aside clannishness and ethnicity for a better Nigeria for the sake of posterity.
He said: “Nigeria has not been able to achieve much in 60 years running. This is because we have people who are tribalistic. Ethnicity is one of the bane of this country. A country that is running on a political platform that is structured on ethnicity can not get it right in terms of unification.
“I think our major problem that is affecting us is that we operate a system that is dividing us a lot more than bringing us together. If we must achieve a Nigeria of our dreams, then we must think of unification of this country.
” We have to come together, we need to learn to live together and live in unity. We need to look at our constitution once again, find out those things that have made it difficulty to achieve that level of unity and remove them.
“This can be achieved only if all aggregating sections of Nigeria come together and agree that Nigeria must be equitable and must progress. If we forgo our clannish alliances and forge ahead as Nigerians, that will guarantee us that level of peace we need even after this 60th Independence anniversary”.
While stressing that Nigeria has the wherewithal to be the world’s second America alongside China and Japan, the Security Adviser to the Governor, regretted that the country has not been able to achieve much in her 60 years of existence in terms of economic development.
This, he said, is owing to the fact that Nigeria has, overtime, become a mono product country which deals only in the production and export of crude oil thereby neglecting Agriculture as the pillars on which the then booming economy of the nation was founded on.
He added that the road taken in the nation’s economy has not yielded much fruit adding that refineries are not working while the farming system has gone moribund, resulting to the high level of poverty in the country and called for more productive, diversified economy.
According to Capt Awa, “we are not doing so well. Our people are hungry and by statistics, we are being referred to as the poverty capital of the world which is most unfortunate because there is no mineral resource that you can think of which is not in Nigeria in a very large quantity”.
The Security adviser to the Governor tasked Igbo leaders to ensure they unify the Igbos both at the regional and national level to pave way for actualizing Igbo presidency in 2023.
He expressed confidence that achieving Igbo presidency will go along way to turn around the fortunes of the nation pointing out that it will take an Igbo man to unify the country as they are known to be industrious, hospitable, accommodating and positively adventurous.
