Does Nigeria Need More States? -By Kene Obiezu

Many Nigerians experience a sharp increase in the racing of their hearts whenever the question turns on the creation of new states. Could it really happen? Can Nigeria have more than the 36 states it has had since 1999?

These questions have always engaged the mind of keen political observers and even the not so keen. Can names like Muri, Katagum, Okun and Apa suddenly become washed in the milk of statehood in Nigeria? It is not impossible, even if it seems more improbable by the day.

One of the reasons it doesn’t appear like it will happen anytime soon is that almost every Nigerian seems to want a state. If the floodgates are opened, every community, no matter how remote, may just want to become a state.

The House of Representatives suddenly stirred from its slumber to pass a motion calling for the creation of 30 new states across the country.

State creation has always been one of the thorniest questions in Nigeria’s constitution. Indeed, the hurdles placed on the path of those who would create more states in Nigeria by the 1999 constitution make it as seemingly insurmountable task. Those who try soon abandon the Sisyphean task.
When the drafters of the 1999 constitution sat to draw up Nigeria’s penultimate paper, it appears they deliberately decided that Nigeria would be fine with 36 states. To secure Nigeria’s 36 states, they strung into the constitution the stingiest and most stringent conditions for the creation of new states. That these strings, as fragile and legal as they are refused to snap in the face of the cyclone of agitation for new states means that the drafters of the constitution predicted they would come and stopped them even before they came. For those angling for the creation of new states, the provisions of section 8, subsections 1 to 3 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) which requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate, the House of Representatives, State Houses of Assembly, and local governments to create a new state has remained a bridge too far.

The question that must however engage the minds of Nigerians as this question has come up again is whether Nigeria needs more states. In other words, is Nigeria fine with 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, or does it require more states?

The question is not an easy one to answer, but the chaos that has unfolded in many states since 1999 makes it far from an impossible one. While the Federal Government and all the presidents Nigeria has had bar none have failed to lift Nigeria to the heights it can hit, the states have not covered themselves in glory either. Far from it. If anything, they have been disturbing reflections of the chaos at the center.
With many state governors playing god, brazenly bludgeoning through their state resources and showing laughably little regard for laws and institutions, many Nigerians have hardly felt the impact of their state governments.

People in the rural areas have fared worse. With many state governors content to sit tight and sit in on local governments and their allocations, rural dwellers are often without basic amenities to compound the harrowing experience that is government in Nigeria.

The solution to this kind of invasive incompetence is not the creation of more states. Far from it. Nigerians should be more invested in getting the existing states work and work well.

Nigerians should be channel their energies into fine-tuning the constitution to get existing state performing, instead of creating more states that will only deplete resources that should be committed to development.

Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com