Senior Advocate of Nigeria and former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Dr Olisa Agbakoba, says President Bola Tinubu’s efforts at economic reform will fail unless Nigeria’s political structure is overhauled.
Agbakoba made the remarks on Friday during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, where he criticised the centralised governance system for stifling progress.
“He cannot achieve any meaningful economic reform in the context of the current political governance structure,” he said.
According to Agbakoba, the disconnect between government statistics and everyday hardship is glaring.
“Right now, the streets are not showing it. It’s a different thing. When the National Bureau of Statistics announces a GDP growth rate of 3.3 per cent, is it happening on the ground where garri, rice, beans, palm oil are crippling people?” he asked.
In a statement made during the broadcast, Agbakoba urged Tinubu to decentralise power, noting that real development cannot occur under the current top-down arrangement.
“Some say restructure, some call it decentralisation, others call it rebalancing. Some call it devolution, whatever name it is, the President, please take some of the powers that have been vested in the exclusive legislative list and transfer them to the state government.”
He also called for a comprehensive shift across all tiers of government, including more autonomy at the grassroots level.
“And the state government itself needs to transfer serious power, real political power, to the 774 local governments so we can have a broad-based three-tier government all focused on the delivery of services,” he said.
Agbakoba stressed that Nigerians are not asking for too much.
“All Nigerians want are services: education, health, jobs, security of tenure, good pension, that’s all they want. And the only way that can be achieved is to rejig Nigeria.”