Nigeria’s sovereignty is negotiable. Let those who don’t want to stay, go. – By Professor wole Soyinka.

Professor Wole Soyinka has lent his voice to recent calls for the restructuring of Nigeria, saying decentralization of the country would ensure healthy rivalry.

The Nobel laureate also stated that the sovereignty of the nation is negotiable.

Soyinka stated this on Tuesday when he paid a visit to Punch, adding that it was wrong for previous administrations in the country to say that Nigeria’s sovereignty was non-negotiable.

Soyinka said: “I am on the side of those who say we must do everything to avoid disintegration. That language I understand. I don’t understand (ex-President Olusegun) Obasanjo’s language. I don’t understand (President Muhammadu) Buhari’s language and all their predecessors, saying the sovereignty of this nation is non-negotiable. It’s bloody well negotiable and we had better negotiate it. We better negotiate it, not even at meetings, not at conferences, but every day in our conduct towards one another.

“We had better understand it too that when people are saying ‘let’s restructure’, they have better things to do. It’s not an idle cry; it is a perennial demand. The Pro-National Conference Organisation was about restructuring when this same Obasanjo said it was an act of treason for people to come together to fashion a new constitution. Those were fighting words; that you’re saying, ‘I commit treason because I want to sit with my fellow citizens and negotiate the structures of staying together’ and ask the police to go and break it up and arrest us.

“I remember that policeman, who said if we met, that would be treason. I wasn’t a member of PRONACO at the time.

That’s when I joined PRONACO. If you’re saying to me, ‘I am a second-class citizen; I cannot sit down and discuss the articles, the protocols of staying together’ and you’re trying to bully me, I won’t accept.”

Soyinka said it was not wise to continue with current centralisation policy as encourages what he called “monkey dey work, baboon dey chop” mentality.

“We cannot continue to allow a centralisation policy which makes the constituent units of this nation resentful; they say monkey dey work, baboon dey chop. And the idea of centralising revenues, allocation system, whereby you dole out; the thing is insulting and it is what I call anti-healthy rivalry. It is against the incentives to make states viable.”