Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, former governor of old Anambra State bares his mind on the restructuring of Nigeria… “The issue of restructuring should unite us. There is no reason for disagreement; maybe we do not even understand. I was recently misquoted somewhere as saying that this issue of restructuring is political. Indeed, it is more economic than political.”
“We are concerned about improving the welfare of ordinary Nigerian people. It is not a matter of the rich. Those who are against it may be feudalists, who do not care very much about the welfare of the ordinary people. What am I talking about? The present states, which are not feasible are spreading hunger and suffering to ordinary Nigerians because the states are too small to cater for the economic interests of their people. I was trying to explain what is called ‘Economies of Scale’”.
“You don’t have it in politics but in economics. When you have large population or space, you can produce anything at lower unit cost than when you have a very small population. Now, it is not just a matter of lower unit cost but also the capability to establish something like power in any state. For now, the capability is not there because the states are too small to afford what it takes to generate power easily. When you are dealing with water supply, power, transportation, environmental problems, it is always cheaper if you have a larger space, so, the issue is very economic and it is ordinary economics, not high-level economics.”
“Now, the political aspect of it has to do with how to begin to create more states. Ironsi recognized 26 provinces, not states and we said he was going to make Nigeria a unitary system and killed him. Now, after killing him, they wanted to defeat Biafra in war, they started with 12 states and eventually we got to 36 states plus Abuja; and northern military men created the states to favour the North. That is why you hear some people from the North attacking restructuring. Indeed, the political aspect of it has been taken care of. We can negotiate. Instead of all of us suffering lack of welfare, we can make some concessions to the North so that they can agree to restructuring properly.”
“Only about four states can support themselves; every end of the month we rush to Abuja to go and take oil money and we have learned not to do anything anymore except to share oil money. I am told of some local governments where people only go to the secretariat just once in a month when they share resources at the federal level and it gets to the local government, then the chairman calls people and says, okay o, e don happen, and they share the money and go away. States were created to fight Nigeria-Biafra war. After the war, subsequent military leaders from the North created states to favour their areas. That is why the North-West has seven states and Kano has by far more local governments than Lagos.”
“Bayelsa produces oil but has only eight local governments and we are sharing money based on that. Somebody opened his mouth, a big man from the north, and said, Nigerian oil is northern oil. You see what comes out of our mouth? The North and the South were always treated equal, that was why Ironsi recognized some provinces, equal number in the North and South. The regions were not the same. We had extra region, Mid-West. Out of four regions, one was north, three were south but we then developed a fair system of having six geo-political zones; three in the North and three in the South like it used to be, equality of units.”
“Now, let’s use the six geo-political zones as federating units that enables each unit to be big enough to take care of the needs of the people and benefit from economies of scale. Think about the past when we had the regions, there was ‘ownership’ of regions and therefore, not too much corruption. If you squandered our money, we could literally kill you but today, ‘Nigerian money’ is like nobody’s money and so people steal anyhow. There was also competition among the regions. Eastern Nigeria was very developed. Look at what Awolowo did in education in the West and it lasted up till today.”
Educationally, the West is still ahead, the foundation was laid by Awolowo. So, the issue of restructuring should not divide us.
“If the North is so sad about losing some majority institutions, the unfair number of states given to them, we can make some political amends by way of compensation, but they should not go about telling outright lies that oil belongs to the North.”
– Culled from Vanguard