EDITORIAL: The reckless and irresponsible quest for 31 new states

The ongoing amendment of the 1999 Constitution has unfolded the familiar script of greed and self-centeredness, which is cloaked in the garb of altruism, and characteristic of the political class, evident in the demand for the creation of 31 new states in Nigeria. The proposals have been sent to the House of Representatives’ Joint-Committee on Constitutional Review.

The Deputy Speaker and co-chairman of the National Assembly review panel, Benjamin Kalu, who revealed this a fortnight ago during a plenary session of the House, further stated that the advocates of the proposals had been given up to 5 March to meet the constitutional requirements necessary for action to be taken.

Reactions are as manifold as the envisioned new geopolitical entities. The Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, and the Arewa Consultative Forum, have scoffed at the idea. However, the Middle Belt Forum and Pan-Niger Delta Forum are upbeat about it, provided that all the regions of the country have an equal number of states. But Ohaneze Ndigbo questioned the distribution of the intended states, which marginalises the South-East further.

The weird proposals will bring the number of states in the country to 67 if this is acceded to. Nigeria had four regions in the First Republic, which morphed into 12 states in 1967 as a civil war strategy to neutralise the then Biafra Republic. The North-Central has six new proposals for state creation; the North-West has five; the North-East, four; South-West, seven; South-South, five; and the South-East, five states each. This portends a landscape with the same presently discredited disproportional state geopolitical distribution.

However, the Constitution provides the guidelines in its Section 8 and analogous subsections to be met for the National Assembly’s approval of any such request. First, the request must be “supported by at least two-thirds majority of members (representing the area demanding the creation of the State) in each of the following, namely,” the Senate and House Representatives; the House of Assembly in respect of the area and local government areas also.

More hurdles outlined are in the conduct of a referendum with at least two-thirds of the people in support; which will further be passed in the state assembly with a two-thirds majority. The same legislative ritual is to be observed in the Senate and House of Representatives. Consequent upon all this shall be the boundary adjustment of states and the creation of new local government areas, all subject to the approval of the foregoing layers of the legislature.

The process is by no means easy. Indeed, it is divisive, time and resource consuming, which present national realities do not support. The National Assembly’s Eighth and Ninth sessions failed in similar attempts at state creation. How the Tenth National Assembly thinks it can pull out all the stops to achieve the feat, is left to be seen.

With the 2027 election around the corner, the adventure smacks of the usual chicanery of politicians. It is absurd and a misplacement of priorities. Therefore, the parliament should smell the coffee and face the urgent task of devolution of powers squarely to make Nigeria function better as a federation.

In fact, we view these rash demands for new states as nothing but self-serving designs to create additional bureaucracies and gubernatorial offices to cater for political interests. The simulus for this irrationality is largely the itch to access the monthly proceeds of national oil revenues that are shared from the centre to the subnational, which are generally unaccounted for. A critical assessment of some of the proposed states will reveal their tribal and sectarian underpinning, which belie a critical stanza of the reintroduced national anthem that harps on national unity – “though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood we stand.”

Contextually, Nigeria presently has 36 states and 774 Local Government Areas, all created at the whims and caprices of the military. There are six geopolitical zones namely: the North-East with six states; North-Central, also with six states; the North-West having seven states; South-West, six states; South-South, six states; and the South-East with five states. The inherent imbalance in the above has continued to trigger agitations for equity, since the resources of the country are shared among the three tiers of government.

The current push is not the first seeking to reconfigure this skewed political morphology. Its looming largeness was originally fostered by the South-East’s demand for an additional state to square up with four of the other zones that have six states each, and the North-West with seven states.

The issue surfaced in the 1995 Political Conference of the Sani Abacha regime, when the six geopolitical structure unofficially became part of Nigeria’s lexicon, put forward by a former Vice-President, Alex Ekwueme, in an effort at restructuring the polity. The Political Conference of Goodluck Jonathan administration in 2014 proposed 18 new states, with an additional one to the South-East to address its concern about inequity. But the conference report was neither acted on by President Jonathan, nor by President Muhammadu Buhari, subsequently.

In a federation, states should not depend on the central government to survive. In Nigeria, most of the existing states are not viable and are dependent on federal allocations to function. Only Lagos and Rivers State can stand on their feet. The National Bureau of Statistics’ 2023 report on the internally generated revenue (IGR) profile of the 36 states puts this issue in sharp relief. While Lagos State generated N815.36 billion, Rivers State made N195.41 billion and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, N211.10 billion, to top the ranks. And, the N11.74 billion; N10.87 billion; and N11.19 billion of Kebbi, Yobe and Taraba states respectively, showed the worst indices.

Little wonder, therefore, that some states are yet to implement the new N70,000 minimum wage, six months after it was signed into law in July 2024 by President Bola Tinubu. This is a worrisome development for which the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has given the affected states a March deadline to implement the new wage, or face the consequences of labour unrest. New states, if they come into existence at this time, will almost immediately find themselves in a fiscal cul-de-sac.

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The atomisation of the country, such that every local government becomes a state, does not foster development, which is the pseudo logic behind the proliferation of states. Instead, only resourcefulness, zero-tolerance for corruption, investment in human capital and accountability in governance are the silver bullets.

Instructively, Alaska, the largest state in the US, with a landmass of 1,723,337 square kilometres is bigger than Nigeria, which has 923,768 square kilometres. Yet, it has not been Balkanised. The state of California, almost half the size of Nigeria, with its 423,970 square kilometres, and a $3.9 trillion GDP that makes it the fifth largest economy in comparison to countries of the world, is still a single entity.

Therefore, politicians should stop this state creation distraction and ponder on why real development has been elusive since the Fourth Republic began in 1999 and their role in it. Today, most citizens can hardly feed. Let’s focus on the urgency of now.