COMMUNIQUÉ OF YORUBA SUMMIT HELD IN IBADAN ON 7TH SEPTEMBER 2017
PREAMBLE
Leaders and people of Yoruba nation met in a solemn gathering at the Lekan Salami
After exhaustive deliberations by the largest gathering of Yoruba people from the six south-west states including Kwara and Kogi state, the following communiqué was adopted.
Summit recalls with nostalgia, the great strides made by the Yoruba nation in the years of self-government up until the abrogation of the federal constitution in 1966 evident in mass literacy, novel infrastructural strides and giant leaps in all spheres of human development.
Summit noted that the crisis of over-centralization has led to mass misery across the country with poverty levels at 72%, unemployment rate at 65%, internal immigration and internal displacement, security threat in form of Boko Haram, herdsmen and organized crime.
The Summit is convinced that Nigeria is moving dangerously to the edge of the slope except urgent steps are taken to restructure Nigeria from a unitary Constitution to a federal constitution as negotiated by our founding fathers at independence in 1960, it was resolved as follows:
1. That Yoruba insists that Nigeria must return to a proper Federation as obtained in the 1960 and 1963 constitutions. This has been our position since 1950 Ibadan conference and developments in Nigeria over the last fifty years reinforce our conviction.
2. That Yorubas are clear that restructuring does not mean different things to different people other than that a multi-ethnic country like Nigeria can only know real peace and development if it is run ONLY along federal lines.
3. That the greatest imperatives of restructuring Nigeria are to move from a rent-seeking and money sharing anti-development economy to productivity by ensuring that the federating units are free to own and develop their resources. They should pay agreed sums to the Federation purse to implement central services.
4. That the federating units- whether states, zones or regions must themselves be governed by the written Constitution to curb impurity at all levels.
5. Nigeria shall be a federation comprised of six regions and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
6. The Federal Government shall make laws and only have powers in relation to items specified on the legislative list contained in the Constitution of the Federation.
7. The Regions shall, in turn, be composed of states.
8. Each Region shall have its own constitution containing enumerated exclusive and concurrent legislative lists regarding matters upon which the regions and the states may act or legislate.
9. Contiguous territories, ethnic nationalities or settlement shall be at liberty through a plebiscite, to elect to be part of any contiguous region other than the region in which the current geopolitical zone or state boundaries places them.
10. States as presently comprised of the geopolitical zones into which they fall, which shall become regions, shall continue to exercise the executive, legislative and judicial functions currently exercised at that level of government.
11. The States with a region shall determine the items on the legislative lists in the Regional Constitution for the purpose of good government and the administration and provision of common inter-state social, economic and infrastructural requirements. Residual powers shall be vested in the states.
12. The power to create states shall be within the exclusive powers of the region which shall be obliged to create a state provided a plebiscite is conducted, following a request by an agreed percentage of the residents of the ethnic nationality within a state. The procedure for conducting a plebiscite and the percentage of any ethnic nationality shall be out in the regional constitution.
13. The power to create local governments and assign functions to them shall be vested in the states.
14. States shall be entitled to manage all resources found within their boundaries and the revenue accruing therefrom. The issue of the entitlement of littoral states to offshore resources and the extension of such rights from the continental shelf and rights accruing to the federal government shall be determined by the national assembly.