A former Legal Adviser of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Muiz Banire, has stated the country needs a benevolent dictator to restructure Nigeria.

The Nigerian lawyer and activist disclosed this on Sunday while speaking at an annual symposium of Muslim Students Society of Nigeria (MSSN) B-Zone, in Ibadan, Oyo State capital.

Banire said, “Nigeria needs a benevolent dictator. This is the dictator that will help us to restructure this country. How do we get him, I don’t know.

“The allocation of resources is to be addressed. All these are against some regions. The number of Local governments in your states determine the resources you get.”

According to the Lagos state former commissioner, “There must be inclusiveness. Under the civilian administration, there will still be injustice; the same thing happened under the Jonathan administration.

“Some of our brothers will say it can be done by divine intervention and Allah has warned us that He will not change the condition of people unless they change their ways. I used to be a nationalist, from what I said, it has even happened to me. I am a victim.

The senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN) further said the country needs to get census right in order to ensure equity since “everybody knows that most of the entitlements in Nigeria are based on the census figure”.

“There are some prerequisites that must be addressed. As of today, Nigeria has no reliable census. We don’t even know how many we are; the same manner we don’t know how much oil we produce,” he said.

‘So, we need certainly to get our census right, but I’m not too sure that that can ever be gotten right, because except there is a nationalistic conviction in all of us, we can’t get it.

“Everybody knows that most of the entitlements in Nigeria are based on the census figure — revenue, location of infrastructure, employment. So, everybody strives to manipulate it from one to the other and without it, no progress for the nation. We must get our census right.

“We must get the election right. Of course, we are making progress but we are not yet there. When INEC improved in technology and everything, now it’s vote buying. We have to tame that. We have to tame illiteracy.

“The last election, only 35 percent of Nigeria’s eligible voters voted Nigeria’s president, and out of this 35 percent, 70 percent of them are illiterates — those who do not know why they are voting; ‘they said we should go and vote’; ‘they said that man is in our area’; ‘he’s our town man’; ‘we attend the same mosque’; ‘he’s our pastor’ — and all manners of primordial considerations.

“We now have to go back to the regional government. Let each region develop on its own phase so as to address the agitations. So my conclusion is that we are at a crossroads. let us outsource the management of Nigeria to an external body.”