Does Nigeria need more states?

SIR: 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?

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 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 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 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,[email protected]