 Professor Zodim Manwala, the president of the ADF Foundation, has said original autonomy is the only solution to Nigeria's problems. According to him, with the Nigerian condition, the political structure in operation would not produce the expected leadership that would advance genuine leadership. Zodim has said the solution is to have self-determination for all various agitating groups in Nigeria, which is to allow the houses governed and organise themselves, just like others should be allowed to take charge of what is happening in their region or state. Earlier, former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, Dr Lisa Aguacuba Esayan, had also advised that Nigeria must develop or devolve powers and return to regional autonomy to overcome the crisis hampering its development. According to him, regional autonomy would resolve the country's diversity challenges. Well, joining us to discuss this is Dr Law Mefo. He is a forensic and social psychologist and a fellow of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thought, TES. Thank you so much for joining us, sir. Thank you. Thank you for hosting me. Great. Do you agree with this ideology of devolving powers back to original government and taking us decades backwards, as opposed to where we are, even though we call it a federal system of government, but it is a unitary system of government? Will that in any way, or how will that in any way, change the cause of things in Nigeria? Yeah, it certainly will change a lot and because if you do a trove back, you will see clearly that Nigeria phenomenally grew economically, socially, politically when we enjoyed the regional autonomy. But since the collapse of the First Republic to the present time, Nigeria has progressed to the state structures you have now, 36 of them. The regions we had there were only four. So when you compare the number of states today, 36, these are the four regions, you can see the phenomenal growth, if you must call it that. Yes, the situation is like the cat and the mouse, the rats they believe that if they could bell a cat to warn them of its advance, that the solution to their problem would be in place. But the question remains, who would bell a cat? Is the same thing here? How do you return to regional autonomy? I don't think it is feasible, even though it is terrible. What I think we should be looking at now is devolving the powers to the point where the state states as you have them today as the trading units would enjoy the powers enjoyed by the regions then, not necessarily collapsing the states again into regions. Because it is bound to meet with very steep resistance. The reason you have the states, of the 36 of them, and the pressure to create more is because many ethnic minorities are crying off a marginalization. So if you want to move the states back to regions, the people will resist it. But Dr. Befo, we have 36, can you hear me, Dr? Is that region over the state? I am giving an example with southeast. If you want to move the southeast to a region now, a state like Iboni will resist it. Because they believe they are marginalized in a bigger regional structure. And it is the same thing you will find everywhere. Iboni people are ebos. So if you go to a place like central, not central, where you have more than 150 ethnic groups, you can see that the cry and resistance will be much more obvious. So what you do is not necessarily going back to regionalism. I don't think it is feasible anymore. What you have to do is to move the powers enjoyed by the regions to the states. The same points are simple as that. Let me take you back to something that former president Goodlock Jonathan said. Because again, I notice that every time we have, it's close to election or we get to campaign season, we throw around the issue of restructuring. It becomes the word for campaign. But right after that, nothing is done. APC at some point as a party had a restructuring conference of sorts or a committee. The report from that committee is gathering dust somewhere. We've had constitutional conferences back and forth. We've had the national confab. Nothing has been done with the reports that came from all of those. So I ask you, I mean, because president Goodlock Jonathan, former president Goodlock Jonathan is saying restructuring alone cannot solve Nigeria's problem. So again, I ask, can we resort to restructuring? But what else do we need to add as an extra, you know, sweetener to the deal to help us douse the tension that we're facing now? Former president Jonathan has not been fed to Nigeria. He was the one that convened at the 24th International Conference and the confab came away with the well over 600 prescriptions and recommendations to deal with all the problems of Nigeria. And he didn't implement it in one line. And he's saying that restructuring cannot solve the restructuring. They look at not the country's problem. Deal with restructuring. Then you move to the other issue. Restructuring simply means restoring Nigeria to federalism. Simple. You know, those who don't understand what restructuring means, restructuring means restoring Nigeria to federalism. Nigerians set out as the federal system. But as such, today Nigeria is a unique system. Nigeria is federal. Only name. Look at that constitution. The exclusive list has about 68 items exclusive to the federal government. And the concurrent list is about 36 flimsy items by marriage and stuff like that. And even at that, the concurrent list is still retained as concurrent. Concurrent here means that even the federal government can also legislate on those items that the states can legislate on. And there's no residual list. What that means is that Nigeria is clearly a unique system in the federal environment. Simple. Devolve the powers to the states. Buhari has started it. Because Buhari has moved the electricity from an exclusive list to concurrent list. It has moved great way from exclusive list to concurrent list. You know, we need to move more. We need to move parts to concurrent list. There are things that if you move to concurrent list, regional integration, economic integration becomes possible. You don't need political integration. What you need economic integration. Let me give you an example with the southeast again. If you move parts, if you move parts to concurrent list, the enterprise state government and the remote state government can cooperate and they dredge the orange river that is about 18 nautical miles into the open sea. And have direct access to the sea. But they can do that now without the federal government approving, not even doing it directly. So, and again, they don't have the power to give themselves electricity. They can acquire Uji dam. They can do something about the coal in Enumuku and give the entire south is the electricity. That is what we mean by the evolution of power. And so now you can do that. Mr. Mepho, don't you think that that's also part of the issue of political will, whether we like it or not? Political restructuring and mindset restructuring because I think that governors are more happy to go cap in hand to Abuja every month to get monies as opposed to looking within the estates, even though we know that we're very blessed on every side right across this country. You are absolutely right. There is no political will. That is why the case of former president, good luck. And it's pathetic because he had the most beautiful document in the 2014 CONFAP report, 600 and something prescriptions. And he implemented not one. That is a problem of political way. It's obvious. And many, if a modern half of those prescriptions do not require constitutional amendment. They required only administrative presidential fiat. And he was the executive president of Nigeria and did nothing. So when you talk about political will, absolutely that is what we think. In fact, no matter how we vilify Buhari, Buhari is the one that has actually started the evolution of powers. I've given you two examples. He has moved the electricity to from the exclusive list to concurrent list, railway as well. If a region like Southeast should be able to come together and get themselves electricity, they don't need to wait for the so-called national grid. They can draw a ring, a rail ring to connect the five Southeast and states. Southwest can do the same, not West, not East. All this, this can generally happen. You don't need to have a single governor for the region for you to achieve integration. Economic integration is what we need. And once you devolve powers from more critical powers from exclusive to concurrent, regional integration becomes very simple, very easy. And I'm giving an example with three things. Electricity or powers, you may want to call it a port, very, very important to have access to the sea is very critical for any region that wants to relate to the grid. And railway is, for example, the northern part of the country that don't have access to the sea can use railway to bring themselves up and connect to the southern part of the country. That is what we need. We need political will. We need leaders. And that is what we don't have. We don't have, we don't have critically thinking and strategically planning. Yeah. Well, I want to say thank you. Dr. Law Meffo is a forensic and social psychologist and a fellow of the Buddhist school of social and political thought. Thank you so much, Dr. Meffo, for speaking with us. And that's it on the show tonight. I want to thank you for being part of all our conversations. And if you want to play back some of our previous episodes, just go to PLOS TV Africa on YouTube, like and subscribe. And Mary Anna Kun, have a good evening.