Dr (Chief) Ramon Adegoke Adedoyin, the Maye of Ife Kingdom is an educationist and a successful businessman. Atobatele, as he is fondly called, is the President, Oduduwa University,Ipetumodu, Ile-Ife;The Polytechnic,Ife, among other educational institutions he founded within and outside Nigeria. On the separatist agitations by some groups in the country, he propounds a theory:”Nigeria Empirical Formula 2017″, which he believes can end the agitations and restore Nigeria to the path of taking her rightful position as the giant of Africa.
Agitations
Evil starts from somewhere, so we have to be very careful in Nigeria. Even those of us who were young during the period of Biafra, I remember clearly that they said we should dig holes and hide inside them to avoid being killed by fighter jets. So,this issue of war being talked about, we have to be careful. If we want to break up, it must not be by war,and according to my own formula, we can break sensibly without shedding blood or firing one single shot. In the USA, states operate on their own and they have one central President. The driver’s licence of the state of Delaware is different from that of the state of Illinois and they operate separately. We can also be united as a country and every state, every region can operate on its own.
What informed this concept?
The concept came because of the people agitating for a separate country such as Biafra. But that is not even enough, you know it has always been Biafra! Biafra!!Biafra!!! But look at the North, the northern people will be the last people to agitate for separation. This worries me because the general belief is that they don’t have anything in the North. So,if the North could now start talking about separation,then we have problems on our hands,if we don’t take quick and wise decision.
But there has always been this belief that the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable,why are you talking like this now in 2017?
Yes.This is because the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable. I don’t support separation. But my belief is that if we don’t restructure as people are saying, there will be problem and we will still come back to restructuring. So, my theory is to ensure that we achieve that purpose without firing a shot anywhere. For instance, we already have six zones. So, instead of allowing this matter to degenerate to war, I think the best thing will be to understand ourselves and resort to what I call NIGERIA EMPIRICAL FORMULAR 2017.
But some people believe if we restructure today, we will still have to repeat the restructuring tomorrow, because we have several ethnic groups in Nigeria?
We have been living peacefully in the South-West, despite various multi-ethnic languages, same for other regions. What you are advocating is peculiar to the South-South. With this formula, everybody does his own thing and that could be the solution. When we published this theory, I checked people’s comments like, ‘Which Adedoyin is this?’ ‘Where is he coming from?’ ‘You better face your school’ and so on and so forth. The Igbo people are just pouring abuses here and there. They say they don’t want any empirical formula, that all they want is Biafra. But with my formula, we are not breaking, and the name Nigeria will still be there. However, the problem has always been with the presidency. That the President must be Yoruba; he must be Hausa/Fulani; he must be Igbo. With this formula, all of us will be President one after the other.
Also the critics are asking how Nigeria will be developed if we have President on yearly basis? With this formula, ours will just be a ceremonial President. He will have no executive powers, He will not construct roads, He will not be saddled with any projects, He will build no schools. We just have him there, whenever we want to commission project, he will just come and commission it and go. Already we have Vice Presidents in each of the six regions who are powerful and who ensure that the zones are running smoothly.
With your regional formula, there will be problem of who controls the resources?
There will be no serious Federal Government in my theory. Rather, each region, depending on whatever you have and you want to assist the
