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3 hours ago
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Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Benjamin Kalu, has revealed that all proposals for the 30 new states failed constitutional requirements.
This was as former Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, strongly opposed the creation of 31 new states in Nigeria, as proposed by the House of Representatives.
Jega asserted that decentralising power from the federal government to the individual states of the country was a key solution to achieving sustainable progress.
But Kalu urged the applicants to comply with the constitutional procedures outlined in Section 8, Sub-sections 1 to 3 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
The Deputy Speaker in a statement issued on Friday by his media office also clarified that the proposal was for 30 new states and not 31 as erroneously reported in the media.
He explained that to create a new state, the constitution requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate, the House of Representatives, State Houses of Assembly, and local governments.
Kalu said that parliament was committed to following the procedure and is inviting the applicants to resubmit their proposals once they’ve complied with the constitutional guidelines.
He said: “We are the people’s parliament. We are not taking any position on the issue of creation of states. We have heard a lot of people giving different narratives to the letter that was read.
“Let me clear the dust. During the Ninth Assembly, we received more requests for state creation and some of them came through private member bills.
“Some came from the memoranda we called for and in this Tenth Assembly, we have received 30, not 31. I think, on that list, they repeated Ibadan State twice. It is 30 that we have received.
“But having received that, in the last assembly, people did not know why their request for state creation did not go through.
“In this Tenth Assembly, we decided to let the people know that granted, we have received all the applications for new states to be created either through member bills or the memoranda but not conceding that all of them are good enough to be created.
“There are constitutional procedures in section 8 subsection 1 to 3 on how this application should be made. As we speak, none of these 30 proposals have met the requirements of Section 8 and that was why we decided to bring it to the notice of Nigerians that your application before us is ineffective.
“Therefore, you need to comply with Section 8 so that when we don’t consider the state creation request, you will know where it emanated from. So, the notice to the public is that you have between now and March 5 to enable you cure the gaps in your application for state creation.”
Meanwhile, Jega made these remarks yesterday during a live interview on Arise Television, a sister arm of THISDAY Newspaper.
According to him, “I have been engaged on the issue of constitutional reforms to address what we can call not only the imperfections of our federal system but to improve upon the structure and the operations of our federal system. And while I would say that many things would require a constitutional review, to be honest, to my mind, the creation of states is not one of them.
“We seem to already have too many states. And if we continue in the direction of every request that comes, then you create a state. We are moving in the direction of what one would call the atomisation of the Nigerian federation.
“You know, somebody used to speak about certain parts of Nigeria as atomistic societies. An atomistic society means there are so many small, small groupings that do not work together and cannot ensure efficiency in the delivery of goods and services.
“So we have to be careful that we don’t keep splitting the component units of the Nigerian Federation. Already, as has been mentioned, some of the states look like they are very unviable on their own, totally dependent on revenues from the centre. And the more you split them, the more unviable they become from the revenue generation and therefore ability to address the needs and aspirations of the people.”
He continued: “So to my mind, what we need to address is the distribution of power and resources in the federal system.
“What we need to do is to deconcentrate power and the resources from the federal government, which now seems to control a lot, to under-allocate these to the state government.
“If you maintain the current number of states and the FCT and they get more responsibilities, you know, by looking at the federal legislative list and the exclusive list in particular, and you make more powers either concurrent or more powers just assigned to the states rather than the federal government, and then you distribute resources appropriately so that the states now get more resources if you have good governance at the state level, then they can be made viable.
“And also, then it means that with good governance, they will also be able to generate more revenues to complement whatever they get from the centre. For me, that’s what we need to improve our federal system, to improve governance, and to ensure that governance addresses the fundamental needs and aspirations of the people.
“But to continue to split Nigeria into smaller and smaller, because the more the number increases, the smaller the states become, you increase the unviability of the states, and you continue to create challenges.
“Unfortunately, I’m sorry to say, and I’ve been saying this, our elites sometimes are so narrow-minded. They don’t seem to have an enlightened self-interest. So the elite will always, in one context, those who think that they are excluded from the governance system in the state, will now want another state to be created from within so that they can now become the leaders in court or the governors in court of that state.
“And we can’t just be doing that, because doing that will mess up the federal system and will not bring the kind of solution that we require to improve our federal system and to ensure that governance is improved to address the needs and aspirations of our citizens.”
The former INEC boss added, “I don’t see how it can improve governance; frankly, I think the argument people can make is that perhaps it may bring government nearer to the people.
“But if you bring government nearer to the people and you do not improve governance in terms of how it addresses their needs and aspirations, what have you done? What have you achieved?
“And if you create states and the resources are not available for people to actually, or rather the governance structure is such that the resources, as little as they are, cannot be managed well, again, you don’t address the problem.
“What people need is for their lives and aspirations to be improved. And it can only be improved through good governance.
“And it is only good governance, regardless of the number of states, that can manage resources well, that can be creative to generate additional resources and then to be able to use them efficiently and effectively to meet people’s needs and aspirations.
“But splitting the states, to be honest, to me, will not solve the problem, as we have seen from the history in Nigeria, the more states you create, the more you get demands for the creation of states.”
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