Dr. Jonathan, who was president of Nigeria from 2010 to 2015 spoke on the theme, ‘Restructuring: Why? When? How?’
He said, “My conviction is that discussion on restructuring will not help except we restructure our minds because some of the challenging issues at the national level still exist at the state and local levels.”
He said at Independence in 1960, Nigeria had a 45 million population and the British colonial government decided that the young nation was too vast and complex to be governed centrally from Lagos and introduced the federal system which changed to a Republican Constitution in 1963.
He added that 61 years after independence, the population has exploded to an estimated over 200 million people.