The path to nation-building is never straight or painted bright—it’s always treacherous, dirty, and dark.  Notwithstanding, the challenge for humans is to reconstitute its space to meet his existence continually.  The questions—if Nigeria should and could restructure are fundamentally flawed.  The right set of questions ought to be what and how Nigeria should restructure, considering her current existence and challenges.  The questions ought to be the political, social, and economic costs of restructuring.  We have failed to make each of these inquiries, and even when we ask these questions, we’re politically inadequate and intellectually unequipped for answers.

The good book tells us that Adam and Eve found a way to reconstitute and re-define their existence inside the Garden of Eden, even if incompatible with the nudist colony that the Garden envisaged—they covered up their nudity and forever buried truth.  Whether to restructure or not shouldn’t be a question; we must continually restructure and re-negotiate our national existence.  The current #EndSars, a demand by our youths, shouldn’t confront us as an aberration, just as the shenanigans or fervor beneath the various movements under IPOB, Arewa group, Afenifere, Boko Haram, and other outside groups ought to confront us as abnormal.  These passions are indications of fracture in our co-existence, and which, in each case, are the basis for restructuring or the negotiability of our national existence.

Another reason to restructure our existence is the disproportionate percentage of our national budget and asset that our political system consumes.  The ineffectiveness of our systems, as evidenced by shortages of basic infrastructure and social amenities, the number of school shutdowns, and others, each constitute bases to reassess our national existence.

Having said, the argument that restructuring means different things to different people is inarticulate, at best.  Any commentator should contribute his or her idea to the debate and without having to wait for permission—what does restructuring mean to each is a right of the citizenry.  I don’t think any individual Nigerian qualifies to provide a comprehensive definition of restructuring Nigeria.  Even if the definition is to break the country up, you still owe the rest of us your reasons.  The right approach is to suggest what restructuring means to you.

For the first six years of our existence, the most challenging debate centered on our country’s structure, and for two years after, the military struggled with the same question.  However, the ensuing Civil War and the military’s heavy involvement, with its pyramidal structure, introduced a unitary system as the default.  The various declines in our system, however, have trusted the debate about the Nigeria’s structure into immediacy.  The good part is that along this treacherous road; there are few things we were able to accomplish.  For example, we have given many of the various smaller groups more political visibility; and created more States, and initiated infrastructures in more places than we can manage.

In light of the preceding paragraph, restructuring is for Nigeria to subdivide into geopolitical zones, where each zone becomes a governing layer—regional government, above the currently existing States. The emerging regional governments then become the federating units.  For example, the States in the Southwest, Southeast, Northeast, Northwest, and others could co-exist under each regional government, and without diminishing the qualities or existence of the States.    The next stage is to redistribute the items on the so-called concurrent and exclusive lists.  The objective would be to empower the various regions to develop, and in the process, initiate a competitive environment among the regions.  We could remedy the fear that some regions would be shut out of revenue sharing from oil and the ports through appropriate legislation.

One of the arguments against this approach is that it introduces another layer of governance into the system–the Federal, Regional, and State governments.  For one, it would be impossible to eradicate the existing States, even if many of them are ineffective and economically bankrupt.  The solution to eradicating any extra expenses from the multiple layer would be to structure the relationships between the States and Regional governments.  The advantage, though, is that States could now leverage their power within the Region and eliminate redundancies within the system.

Alternatives to the above include amending the existing constitution.  To re-arrange the items on the exclusive and concurrent lists, give our States additional autonomy and abilities to function independently—enter into bankruptcy, if a State chooses, and decide if to merge functions with a neighboring State or relinquish control to the Federal government.  Among the States’ additional powers would be the creation of an independent judiciary and the enumeration of citizens’ right of action.  Equally, we could modify our current presidential system to a hybrid system, which may incorporate the benefits of parliamentary and presidential systems of government to reduce the cost of governance.