Fagbemi advocates new political order for Nigeria

Nigerians need to unite and hold the 2019 general elections as scheduled, but with the mindset of constituting a Government of National Interest, Security and Unity (GoNISU) thereafter for democratic sustenance.Political scientist and national security scholar, Ayokunle Fagbemi, made this submission in a statement made available to The Guardian yesterday.

According to him, this is necessary for a stable, virile, self-reliant and egalitarian society.He called on the citizenry to agree to an elite consensus, which would guarantee sustainable democracy and drive the country towards attaining her greatest potentials.

In the statement entitled ‘Time to Save Nigeria’, Fagbemi urged stakeholders of Project Nigeria to support a scheme that would allow major political actors, particularly existing presidential aspirants, to constitute GoNISU for the 2019 to 2023 dispensation.

The executive director of Centre for Peacebuilding and Socio-Economic Resources Development (CePSERD) predicated GoNISU on the desire to bail Nigeria out of imminent economic collapse, break-up and protracted civil war.He explained that it would provide a quick-win political agenda designed to run concurrently with an efficient political system implemented within the first two years of the dispensation to secure legitimacy and wide-based support.

The political scientist, therefore, called on the Nigerian elite at home and in the Diaspora to unite in forging the required unity to salvage Nigeria. “The way forward is to take serious the warnings on Nigeria from the series of reports emanating from Action Aid International, Amnesty International (AI), Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU), HSBC, The Economist, Transparency International (TI), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United States Institute for Peace (USIP), World Bank, Wall Street Journal and others. It is time to address, holistically, the consequential issues emanating from these reports,” he stressed.

He also advised stakeholders to galvanise resources available in the political space to activate GoNISU, which, he assured, would address the nation’s current problems.

“From the foregoing, GoNISU will therefore emerge as an elite consensus of a seeming collegiate presidency where all the actors recognise that as per the 1999 Constitution (as amended) we can only have a president and vice president in the presidency.”