Owing to their inability to meet salary obligations of civil servants, there are growing concerns that states of the federation have failed as a responsible level of government, what is your take on this?

WE are all in trouble in this country. And the sooner we all knew it, the better. We cannot continue with the current structure of doling out money every month to states of the federation and asking them to go and spend it the way they like.

The governors often go ahead, and spend anyhow, mostly on projects that are not entirely in the interest of the generality of their people. They also go to the banks to borrow huge sums of money for projects, which repayment are deducted at source. They would have mortgaged their states for such a long period of time.

So, what is left that goes to the states after monthly repayment deduction at source is usually not enough to even pay salaries of civil servants. That is why most states of the federation do not just owe workers, but they are not in a position to even pay the minimum wage long after it was introduced.

On top of all this, they cannot spend on development in their states. They cannot train nurses that are needed in the hospitals, embark on a meaningful housing revolution in the country, revamp schools infrastructures that have long decayed and begging for attention, and therefore, worse still, cannot reduce the massive poverty and youth unemployment that are seen across the nation.

As far as I am concerned, we have to do a wholesale rethink on the current structure of governance that we have in the country. In my own considered opinion, developing the country is not something that the states can do alone. The development that we require in this time and age are so massive that both the Federal Government and the states have to come together first of all to identify what we require –– whether it is modern fast trains that can get you to Abuja from Lagos in three hours; then from Abuja to Maiduguri, Abuja to Port Harcourt, etc — and work out a formula for funding of those projects as a joint effort by the federal and the states –– putting money into a common purse, specifically for the development of the country. The same for development of roads infrastructure and hospitals.

If we don’t sit together to do a rethink, the states will continue to take money every month from Abuja, spend the money anyhow as they have traditionally done and will not see any tangible development. At best, what you will see is abandoned projects. And so, Nigeria will not develop and we will continue to wallow in poverty.

In coming together, will you advocate merging some of these states? Seeing that their resource base is weak?
Merging some states that are deemed to be financially weak and non-viable might be a sensible thing to do. But having tasted a semblance of autonomy, it might be very difficult to persuade some states to merge, especially, if they were to merge again with the bigger state from where they were carved out. The same complain that they would be subsumed in states that once dominated them before they were created are sure to surface. And they won’t want to go back there.

For instance, let us be fair, how do you want to persuade the people of Jigawa to merge their state with the bigger Kano again? The development and transformation in Jigawa, especially, in the past nine years, has been remarkable. It probably would not have taken place if it had remained within Kano –– and the same monthly allocation would have been given to Kano by Abuja. The same with Akwa Ibom State created out of Cross River. You might say it is one of the richest states in Nigeria, because of oil, but it is also true that it has witnessed tremendous development since it was created out of Cross River, developments that may not have happened.

I won’t want my state, Ogun, to be merged with and dwarfed by Lagos or Oyo States –– just to give you another example. I understand why some people want the merging of states to make the number smaller and reduce the cost of governance. However, I think we can go round this by getting better leadership both at the centre and state levels.

Part of the problem we have is that currently, some governors are embarking on projects that their people do not necessarily want or need. And I must say we must deal seriously with this cancer of corruption that has done untold damage to the development of Nigeria as a whole. If we embrace all this, it might not be necessary to merge states.
If the opportunity of sitting down presents itself, would it be better to return to a Regional arrangement? Would it reduce cost of governance and curb corruption to a large extent?

I am a federalist. I am not in support of going back to the old regional structure we had before and immediately after independence.

I have alluded to it earlier. I don’t think our problem is really in the present structure. It is just like our Constitution. Our Constitution has good intentions. Our Constitution is not entirely bad –– even as it is, currently. It is the operators of our Constitution that are bad. So, our problem is with the people who are our political leaders either as president or governor or local government chairman and their questionable sincerity of purpose, lack of vision, some with total inexperience in governance. And most especially, our political leaders have been unashamedly very corrupt.