MID-WEEK ESSAY: The New Nigeria Proposed Map - And Lack of a Bold Geo-political Re-structuring

[Mobolaji Aluko]

August 20, 2014

My people:

According to pp 279-281 of the approved National Conference report:

http://www.nigerianmuse.com/20140811211605zg/nm-projects/sovereign-national-conference-snc-project/national-conference-2014-report-august-2014-table-contents-chapters-1-7/

you will read:

QUOTE

3. STATE CREATION

The subject of State creation has remained a huge political issue

in Nigeria. Conference examined the Reports of the 2005 National

Political Reform Conference and the Report of the Presidential

Committee On Review of Outstanding Issues from Recent

Constitutional Conferences 2012 (the Belgore Report) and after wide

consultations and extensive deliberations and in the interest of equity,

justice and fairness.

In addition, Conference therefore resolved as follows:

(i) In the spirit of reconciliation, equity, fair play and justice, there

shall be created an additional State for the South East Zone; and

(ii) That all other requests for State creation should be considered on

merit.

Conference approved the criteria for the creation of new States as

follows:

(1) Any new State sought to be created must be viable. In considering

viability, the following should be taken into consideration:

(a) Any new State should be economically viable;

(b) It should have human, natural and material resources;

(c) It should have a minimum land mass/water mass; and

(d) The viability of the existing State(s) should be taken into

consideration as well, so as not to create a situation where

new State(s) would leave the existing State(s) unviable.

(2) That State creation should be on the basis of parity between the

geo-political zones to ensure equality of Zones;

(3) Additional States should be created in each of the six (6) geopolitical

zones to bring the number of States in each zone to

nine (9);

(4) That eighteen (18) more States be created as follows:

a. 

       1.  Apa State from the present Benue State; 

       2.  Edu State from Niger State; 

       3.  Kainji State from the present Kebbi State; 

       4. Katagun State from the present Bauchi State; 

       5.  Savannah State from the present Borno State; 

       6.  Amana State from the present  Adamawa State; 

       7.  Gurara State from the present Kaduna State;

       8.  Ghari State from the present Kano State; 

       9.  Etiti State from the present South East Zone; 

     10.  Aba State from the present Abia State; 

      11.  Adada State from the present Enugu State; 

      12.  Njaba-Anim State from the present Anambra and Imo States; 

      13.  Anioma State from the present Delta State; 

      14.  Ogoja State from the present Cross River State; 

       15.  Ijebu State from the present Ogun State; 

       16.  New Oyo State from the present Oyo State;

b. That the third State to be created in the South –South Zone

will be named later, along with its State Capital;

c. That the third State to be created in the South-West Zone will

be named later, along with its State Capital; and

The 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria

shall be amended to allow for less onerous process for

creation of States.

UNQUOTE

Figure 1 below shows the current 36-FCT state structure of NIgeria:

Now, "Information reaching us" - as Nigerian parlance goes - is that the following table is what is being proposed:

 

S/N	GEO-ZONE	CURRENT STATES  (36)	ADD MORE STATES (18)	Total (54)
1	South-West	Six (6): Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Oyo	Three (3): Ijebu, New Oyo, Ose*	Nine (9)
2	South-East	Five (5):Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu,  Imo	Four (4): Aba,  Adada, Etiti, Njaba	-ditto-
3	South-South	Six (6): Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross-River, Delta, Edo, Rivers	Three (3): Anioma, Ogoja, Oil River*	-ditto-
4	North-West	Seven (7): Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara	Two (2):  Ghari, Gurara	-ditto-
5	North-East	Six (6):  Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Taraba, Yobe	Three(3): Amana, Katagum, Savannah	-ditto-
6	North-Central	Six (6): Benue, Kwara, Kogi, Nassarawa, Niger, Plateau	Three (3): Apa, Edu, Kainji (from Kebbi)	-ditto-
	Total	Thirty-Six (36)	Eighteen (18)	Fifty-four (54)

    * newly-named 

If/when these additional eighteen new states as proposed by the erstwhile National Conference are created, this is how the Nigerian map will look;

See https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/166982-new-map-of-nigeria-as-proposed-by-national-conference-ngconfab.html#sthash.7huyjpdX.dpuf

So what state are you from, may I ask? 

As for myself, I am STILL from Ekiti State (after Western Region, South-West State and Ondo changes), while some people in the prospective Anioma State would have changed from Western Region, to Midwest, to Bendel, to Delta, and now Anioma.  Some of our South-Eastern brothers (and not a few sisters) may have bounced from Eastern Region to South-East State, to Biafra, to Imo, to Abia, to Ebonyi - and now to Njaba!

Lord have mercy....

Furthermore, what is the basis of an equality of states in zones as stated in the Report, when  a FORMAL geo-zone based federalism was rejected in preference for states as "federating units"??

QUOTE

2. REGIONALISM

At independence in 1960, Nigeria had three regions and by 1964

had added a fourth region. All four were autonomous but subordinated

only to the Federal Constitution. Then came the military in 1966 when

aspects of the Federal Constitution were suspended leading to the

creation of 12 states, (six in the north and six in the south) in answer to

political exigencies including the protection of minority rights;

More states were created to satisfy the yearnings of various

ethnic nationalities which fear domination by some others. Nigeria now

has 36 States plus the Federal Capital Territory. In spite of this

subsisting arrangement, there continues to be demands for the creation

of more States.

After extensive consideration of Regionalism/Zones, Conference

decided as follows:

(i) The States shall be the federating units; and

(ii) Any group of States may create a self-funding Zonal Commission

to promote economic development, good governance, equity,

peace and security in accordance with the Constitution of the

Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).

UNQUOTE

Consequently, a bold re-structuring of the country is yet to be proposed - or  done.

And there you have it: 

Bolaji Aluko

Shaking his head

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[Mobolaji Aluko]

Joe Attueyi:

Notice that I wrote that the restructuring was not  "bold" - in other words, it is a timid restructuring, but some re-structuring all the same:

    (1)  number of states in four geozones has increased by 50%, except for South-East (by 80%) and North-West (by 28.6%).

    (2)  land mass and population of all geozones remains the same except for NW (decreased by the size and population of Kainji State) 

          and North-Central (increased by the size of the same state)

    (3)  while it is likely that the number of Local governments in rump states will remain the same, it is likely that the number of LGs in the 

          lopped-off states will on aggregate increase substantially (1999 Constitution requires a minimum of eight LGs)

Two major issues about the relationship between the Center and the Federating Units in a Federalism are:

     (1)  Revenue Allocation - largely based on  states, no of local governments, population, land mass, terrain, IGR effort

     (2)  Power relationships - real and imagined [I believe that it is better for the Center to relate to 6 GeoZones that 54 states]

Now with respect to Revenue Allocation  and states, those geo-zones with 9 states in the proposal and 6 states before now are not affected since 6/36 = 9/54.  The  states affected are South-East (gains on average by 20%  [(9/54)/(5/36)-1]  and the NW loses by 14.3% [(9/54)/(7/36)-1]   On the other hand, with respect to Local Governments (there are currently 419 LGs in the North and 325 LGs in the South], if all the monies previously allocated on an equality basis are turned over to the States from the center, the North will gain compositely by 11.6% [[1-(3/6)(741/419)]  while the South will lose by 14.5%  [1-(3/6)(744/325)]   - at least in a transition period.  Finally, population, which has a strong component in revenue allocation - up to 25% in state allocation and 30% in LG allocation - will not change matters substantially, since the zones are still largely intact geographically - except for the NW/NC transitions referred to earlier.

And there you have it - and we shall see.

Bolaji Aluko

Joe Attueyi wrote:.

.........................................

Prof Aluko

On the contrary I think the conference used some political ingenuity to come up with a political solution to the restructuring of Nigeria

1) states as federating units

2) equality of states in all zones

3) Any zone so minded can through a referendum collapse its states into one

4) States can create as many local governments as they want —and local governments are not a basis for revenue sharing.

IF all these are implemented then we would have taken a major step to a restructured Nigeria.

I would contend that if the SW should collapse itself into a region and others begin to see the benefits accruing from that you may see the zone as a federating unit faster than you imagine

Joe 

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[Mobolaji Aluko]

Dan Akusobi:

1.  Thanks for your thoughts, and kind words.  I am a firm believer of the notion that even if you are not heard, or your words are not acted upon - say "right away"  - you must speak what you firmly believe.  It is like prayer to God - it is hardly ever answered right away, except in a miracle.

2.  With respect to state creation, merging them now by fiat is a political impossibility, and to jump instead to nine per zone is simply crazy.  So this is my order of preference:

         (i)  no state creation;

        (ii)  one state creation - Njaba-Etiti in the South East [all geozones will have 6 states except for NW that has 7]

        (iii) six-state creation - two in the SE (Njaba-Etiti and Adada], one every other geozone [Ijebu, Ogoja, Kainji-Edu and Savannah-Amana] except NW [all geozones will then have 7 states]

        (iv) to accommodate the ever-agitating Southern Kaduna, we create 12 new states (for 8 states per zone),  forming Gurara in the NW, splittng all double-barrel-named states in (iii) above, and also create Ose in South-South, and New Oyo in the SW.

On the whole, additional state creation beyond one will enrich only the ruling politicians (executives and legislators) of the new states, but will impoverish the ordinary people as a whole because they have less to come to them.

3.  Geozone-based parliamentary, unicameral federalism, or presidential unicameral federalism, with a six-year-term Presidium rotated one-year-at-a-time between the geozones. Each geozone can create or merge as many states or local governments as it wants.

4.  Resource control, with 80%, 70%, 60%, 50% taxation on derivation for the next 5, 10, 15 and 20 years respectively, and maintaining it at 50% thereafter.

5.  Some actions can be taken by executive fiat eg resource control, Referendum.

6. A Referendum in February 2015 on the new Constitution that, for practical money-saving purposes, should be conducted as a Question on the ballot in the forthcoming Presidential or Gubernatorial Elections.  That is, the Referendum should not incur separate money on its own for INEC. 

And there you have it.

Bolaji Aluko

On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 3:35 AM, daniel Akusobi <daku...@gmail.com> wrote:

Mazi ALUKO.
It seems you have a better idea on how to restructure Nigeria for better so we can live in peace, develop faster and built a more prosperous nationhood.
Your criticism of the proposals so far by the confab strikes some sense in some of  us that is kin on this. Am surprised though that only few, very few here do respond to your opinions on this here. The apathy, it seems, is surprising. Anyway, the discuss has to go on.
My concern is on the revenue issue since it seems the revenue to be shared to the new and old states is likely going to be same as the states now get unless the FG has another  source of money or may be would  cut down on some federal budget allocations to herself to make room for funding the new states.
With the exception of one or two more states in the South East, for the sake of equity, an emotional concern, I think what we have today is OK.
If creation of more states becomes inevitable, what advice other than your PLEA formulae would you be presenting to the commission?. Please include the states you believe has to be created and why.
For me, an amalgamation of states on zonal bases for economic cooperation and development strategies would hasten our physical development and ensure some competition. That was the idea during Chief Awo, MI Okpara time ( regional governments) if we agree with this, the whole of South - South and Sout- East can become a block and produce the next USA and China and possibly India levels of economic development in the continent of Africa.
What do you think?

Dan.

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