Before new States get created

Before new States get created

It is apposite at this time to examine the phenomenon of States creation and indeed the functionality of the exiting 36 States structure as the advocacy for new States has begun to gather momentum once again.

As a definite political course of action, State creation crystallises in the crucible of the widespread concern for the situation of the minorities in Nigeria’s emergent polity dominated as it were in 1960 by the three largest groups – Igbo, Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba. In spite of the Henry Willink Commission’s 1957 Report to the contrary, the new political leadership accepted State creation as response to the agitation for minority rights protection.

Much later, as the Civil War threatened, the military latched on State creation as a weapon of war designed specially to weaken the structure of Biafran resistance by providing a basis for Eastern ethnic minorities rebellion against the Biafra project. Deriving from this brief historical background to State creation in Nigeria are a few realities.

The first is that devoid of all its facades, State creation in Nigeria remains an entirely elite affair. It is an enterprise contorted, prosecuted and employed by the elite for the satisfaction of elite desire for power and relevance and all the appurtenances that go with that. This is why even 38 years after the first State (Region) was created in 1963, the phenomenon has not been a basis for resolving the national question and the attendant problem of mass alienation from the political and economic processes of the nation, which it supposedly set out to do in 1963.

What has aggravated this arrant lack of effectiveness is that there does not exist an objective set of criteria for State creation. Devoid of this, State creation soon became an instrument in political patronage and one designed to enhance the competitive edge of particular tendencies or regimes that become dominant at different points in the historical trajectory. And as we have argued elsewhere, for as long as there are no objective criteria for the creation of State, for so long shall the clamour for new State in Nigeria continue.

Secondly, State creation has not only failed to solve the problem of ethnic minority rights, but it has also become a veritable instrument with which a string of unitarist leaders had dealt a fatal blow to Nigerian Federalism. It is trite to aver that only by the instrumentality of federalism can a hugely pluralistic polity like Nigeria be effectively administered. Yet, different leaders driven absolutely by the desire to privatise political power with the attendant primitive accumulative tendencies, have systematically undermined the structure of the Nigeria Federal system by creating States in an exercise designed, as it were, to weaken the so-called federating units vis a vis the central government. This has largely been achieved but in the context of emergent contradictions that have paralysed the Nigerian development agenda.

It is indeed a sign of the unviability of the Nigerian development project, that the provision of basic infrastructure requisite to "bringing the government closer to the people" could not be prosecuted unless and until huge administrative outposts called State were created. On the balance and given what goes into running these huge bureaucracies, it is doubtful if Nigerians as a people have been better off overall, with the rapid multiplication of these so-called development centres. For as long as we perceive development as something that can only take place in a rural environment only when a new development outpost, called State, is created, for so long shall the agitation for States continue. A more appropriate scheme would have been a complete overhaul of the philosophy and direction of government and governance in Nigeria to enable the three original federating units – the Regions – to deliver development to the people without the trouble and the high cost of the multiplication of States. In the contemporary time, we advocate that the geo-political zones step in to play this role.

This leads us to one of the rather unusual suggestions of the Clement Ebri Presidential Constitution Review Panel that more geo-political zones should be created even while these should not be formally constituted as governments. This recommendation denies the historicity of the geo-political zones. Rather it sees them as mere administrative units that can emerge, multiply or decrease by administrative fiat. By the time you start creating new zones, the same problems attendant upon the continuing bifurcation of Nigeria into States would have been relocated vis a vis geo-political zones, with all the associated problems.

The greatest advantage of this geo-political zones phenomenon remains decentralisation of power, greater political stability and heightened prospect for economic development. This is why while one may not canvass the extreme position that extant State structure should be jettisoned, it is high time we realised that these mini-States may not have served the purpose of development. What is more, they may be too weak to checkmate an overbearing central government and therefore irrelevant to the higher goal of evolving a true federal republic.

The role which the six geo-political zones can play in stabilising the democratic system and propelling development therefore needs to be hotly debated as we continue in the search for an enduring national formula for taking Nigeria out of the woods. But suffice it to say for now that creation of new States will not serve any useful purpose. Rather, it would further weaken the federal structure and keep Nigeria further away from the promised land of stability.

Dr. Mimiko lectures on Political Science & Public Administration, at the Ondo State University, Akungba-Akoko.