The unending demand for more states

The issue of state creation hugged the headlines last week when the House of Representatives revealed that it had received proposals for the creation of 31 new states across the six geo-political zones of the country in the ongoing review of the 1999 Constitution. If the 31 states are created, the number of states will increase to 67. At present, Nigeria has 36 states. Apart from the South-East with five states, the South-South, South-West, North-Central, and North-East have six states each, while the North-West has seven states.

Under the proposed 67-state structure, the North-West will have 12, South-West 13, North-Central 12, North-East 10, South-East 9, and South-South 10. According to the Committee’s letter read during the plenary by the Deputy Speaker, Benjamin Kalu, some of the new states include Okun State, Okura State and Confluence State from Kogi; Benue Ala and Apa States from Benue; FCT State; Amana State from Adamawa; Katagum from Bauchi State; Savannah from Borno; and Muri State from Taraba.

Others include New Kaduna State and Gujarat State from Kaduna State; Tiga and Ari from Kano; Kainji from Kebbi State; Etiti and Orashi as the 6th State in the South-East; Adada from Enugu; and Orlu and Aba from the South-East. The rest are Ogoja from Cross River; Warri from Delta; Ori and Obolo from Rivers; Torumbe from Ondo; Ibadan from Oyo; Lagoon from Lagos; and Ogun, Ijebu from Ogun; and Oke Ogun/Ijesha from Oyo/Ogun/Osun states.

The demand for more states in the country can be traced to the structural imbalance of the 36 states and 774 local governments which were created without much thought for equity and linguistic contiguity. The ongoing demand for 31 states, though very unwieldy, signposts the urgent need to restructure the country, which many compatriots have called for. At every general election, restructuring has become a campaign issue which many of the presidential candidates promised to carry out if elected. But once they get into office, nothing is heard of restructuring again.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan convoked a national conference with far-reaching recommendations on restructuring. Unfortunately, he left office without implementing them. Ex-President Muhammadu Buhari did not do much in that regard. It will be good if President Bola Tinubu, an apostle of restructuring, will do something about it. Therefore, the current constitutional review will do well to create some states and local governments in the country. Apart from the regional government which created the Mid-West region in the First Republic, no civilian administration has been able to create any new state or council despite various attempts to do so. We cannot continue to postpone the issue and pretend that the problem does not exist.

The clamour for the creation of additional state for the South-East has been long and can be rightly justified. Apart from being the only geo-political zone with five states in the country, it has the least number of local governments. This can explain why the cry of marginalization has been strident and loud in the zone. In political representation and recruitment into the civil service, the military, police and other para-military agencies, MDAs, the South-East has been enormously short-changed.

For the sake of justice and equity, the South-East zone should benefit from the plan to create new states and by extension new local governments. However, it will be absurd and unwieldy to create additional 31 states in the country when some of the existing ones are finding it difficult to pay salaries of their workers. Moreover, the economy is not strong enough to cater for 67 states and over 774 local governments.

While the creation of more states to balance the federation is good, 31 state proposals amount to trivializing the issue. Politicizing state creation issue will not augur well for the country. We urge the lawmakers to handle the state creation requests with maturity and utmost sense of responsibility. It is sad that since 1999, no civilian administration has been able to create states or local governments despite the clamour for such from prominent Nigerians.

We hope that the present crop of lawmakers will eschew rancour and undue politicization of the issue and create more states and local governments where necessary. Their doing so will douse the feelings of marginalization and alienation in some parts of the country. Let them break the jinx and create some states to balance the federation.