Senior Pastor, Latter Rain Assembly, Tunde Bakare, has warned the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) against the implications of its adamant posture to the persistent calls for Nigeria’s restructuring.

In the state of the nation broadcast 2017 entitled: “Looking into the future with the eyes of faith,” yesterday, he said whatever achievements the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government might have recorded in the past one year, could not take away the fact that the restructuring of the country would correct the fundamental flaws in the polity.

The cleric, who faulted the Buhari-led administration for refusing to heed the call for restructuring, said: “Restructuring will correct the fundamental flaws in the nation’s federal system. The hues and cries for restructuring in our nation appear not to have been well received by this present government. The inquisitive may ask: Why must we restructure? We must restructure to correct the flaws in our federal system.

“A federated state is defined as a territorial and constitutional community forming part of a federal union.”

He said in a true federal system, previously sovereign states agree to confer their individual sovereignties on a central government. In other words, the states create the federal government, as was the case with the original thirteen American colonies.

“This was also the case when the Nigerian federal system was originally conceived by our founding-fathers. Prior to the coming of the colonialists, sovereignty was domiciled in empires, kingdoms, city-states and republican villages. It was, however, taken over by the colonialists at which point it resided in the British crown.”

Bakare, who is also the convener of the Save Nigeria Group (SNG), called on Buhari and his party to be bold enough to make hard choices to restructure and embrace the necessary self-sacrifice that precedes economic recovery.

To him, the current government, under Buhari, has the opportunity to provide such leadership by being at the forefront of the quest for change.

“Guided by the indicators of good governance in a well-structured state, and propelled by a true unifying national vision, President and his team must summon the courage to make hard choices, especially the choice to restructure and the choice to embrace the necessary self-sacrifice that precedes economic recovery,” he stressed.