Anambra State Governor, Charles Chukwuma Soludo, and his Kaduna State counterpart, Nasir El-Rufai, have rekindled the call for the restructuring of Nigeria to devolve more powers to the federating units and narrow the over blotted size and powers of the federal government.

They both made the call on Tuesday at a policy conversation and book presentation event that was jointly organized by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Agora Policy in Abuja.

Both governors among other speakers at the event said they are expecting the incoming administration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu to immediately take the decision to restructure the country and remove the controversial fuel subsidy to free up the fiscal space.

Prof. Soludo said the All Progressives Congress (APC) has failed within the last 8 years to live up to its campaign promise of halting the dangerous drift of Nigeria to a failed state with a plan for post oil economy in Nigeria through restructuring of the country, devolution of power to the units and eliminate unintended paralyses of the centre.

Governor Soludo said the party failed to deliver on the promised competitive and compassionate federalism – restructuring. “From 2015 to now it hasn’t happened,” he said.

“They put their finger on what the problem is. There is an optus, largely inefficient concentration of everything at the centre,” he said.

“If we don’t tame the politics, if we don’t produce what I call productive politics, rather than consumption-oriented politics that has dominated over time, we are not going to be able to achieve both speed and sustainability,” governor Soludo stated.

Also, governor El-Rufai said failure of the administration to restructure Nigeria and remove fuel subsidy was a manifestation of lack of political will and the right capacity to do so.

Mallam El-Rufai was chairman of the APC committee on restructuring that gave wide ranging recommendations on how to move Nigeria back to the original political settlement of 1954, which were not implemented by the current government.

The Kaduna State governor said Nigeria is practicing a political culture that has no regard for public service. “It’s a toxic political culture that has developed. And until we find a way to address it as politicians. It has to start from politics and politicians,” he stated.

“We all agreed to remove the subsidy and the framework on how to distribute the revenue. All the governors agreed that we must remove it. “The president said no,” El-Rufai said while lamenting Buhari’s failure to remove the controversial petrol subsidy programme.