A Nigerian-born former Mayor of Portlaoise in Republic of Ireland, Rotimi Adebari, has identified parliamentary government as solutions to the many challenges facing the country.
Adebari who stated this while speaking with newsmen in Abeokuta, further identify greed as the major reason why the country may never go back to Parliamentary system of government.
According to him, greedy Nigerian politicians prefer the presidential system of government to the parliamentary because of the their political ambition.
He however blamed the underdevelopment of Nigeria on the adoption of the Presidential system of government which he described as the most expensive type of government to run anywhere in the world.
“Nigeria is a conglomeration of nations, Nigeria is not a nation, but we decided to make it a nation. The Yorubas are a nation on its own, Igbos are a nation on their own, the Hausa/Fulanis are a nation on their own, you can even take out as many nations out of Nigeria if you wish. But, I want to believe that the British that we got our independence from knew that before they left us with Parliamentary system of government.
“When we had our independence in 1960, what we got our independence on was Parliamentary system of government and Parliamentary is what equally operates in the United Kingdom. It is the same style of their Parliamentary they left for us and we are unique if we had stick to that.
“There is no type of government that does not have its own issues, but if we look at our peculiarity we will discover that the Parliamentary system of government is better than this.
“The Parliamentary will give every region the opportunity to grow and develop at their own pace as we have seen in other climes. Let each region govern itself so that each region can grow at its own pace.
“But we changed to American style, Presidential system of government is the most expensive system of government to run anywhere in the world, but that is what we have chosen to run, but you might say that it s very successful in the US why is ours the way it is, but you have to remember that it requires a human being to make it work.
“Those who are anti-parliamentary are of the opinion that that if we go back to regional government, we may scrap the positions of state governors and we may end up having only a premier for each region, this is human nature, this is the greed in human nature. They (politicians) will be like ‘when is it ever going to be my turn to rule?’ And this should not be the case, we have to look beyond all of that, we have to look at the bigger picture and make Nigeria work”, Adebari said.
