Igbo leaders insist on restructuring

BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHEMEANWHILE, Igbo leaders on the banner of Igbo Leaders of Thought ILT have insisted on restructuring of the country into true federalism as the surest way to cement the country’s unity, warning that those planning to use insurgency to get power at the centre are toying with disintegration of Nigeria.Rising from an executive committee meeting in Enugu, the ILT, which said that its leader, Professor Ben Nwabueze (SAN), who fell and hit his waist on the floor in the bathroom of his Lagos residence and rushed to the hospital, has been discharged from the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), stated that without restructuring the polity the confab would be a failure.Deputy Secretary of the ILT, Evangelist Elliot Uko, in a statement said: “After wide consultations with broad spectrum of Ndigbo, we hereby reiterate the position of the Igbo nation on the ongoing National Conference. If Nigeria is not restructured along the lines of six regions as federating units, with each unit maintaining its powers as democratically provided under the 1963 constitution, the ongoing conference would have served no useful purpose in the struggle to save Nigeria.“The present 36 state structure was not democratically created, but rather a contraption for lion share of war booty by generals of a section of Nigeria that seized power through coup de tat and thereafter became absolute dictators, enabling their region to exercise absolute control over the resources of the country and retarding the growth and development of the country. Failure to abolish this fraudulent scheme now, will only lead to continuing unrest and agitation. Even as they claim conquest at the ongoing conference, it would have brought them neither victory nor peace.“As the forces of retrogression plot to sustain the present unjust unitary structure, we warn that if this last opportunity to rebuild Nigeria fails, nobody can guarantee the continued existence of Nigeria. We remind all Igbo delegates that they have no mandate to compromise the core Igbo position (reconstruction of Nigeria into six regions as federating units). Ndigbo will not accept anything else; and that being the case, it would amount to betrayal and treason for any Igbo delegate to sign off on any -