Permit me space in your widely circulated newspaper to air my views on state creation and local government autonomy. In independence, Nigeria was governed by three regions headed by premiers. Later with successive military regimes after the coup and countercoup of 1966, the country was fragmented into smaller administrative units called states with corresponding local units called local government areas.
This structure are at today stands at 36 states and 774 local government areas. However, there has been calls for more states and local government based on equity.
The General Abacha administration, for the sake of easy monitoring of security and even development after a national confab, has created six states autonomous zones of non administrative nature.
These zones have six states in each except that of the southeast and northwest that have five and seven states respectively. In the spirit of equity, it makes sense that the Igbo speaking zone should be given an extra state to make it six states in the zone while another state should be created in the North Central to balance the equity in state creation.
The states should be Njaba state in the South East while Kainji state should be created in the South Central. While it is evident that more local governments should not be given financial and political autonomy to enable them generate revenue of their own to implement projects and execute policies peculiar to their administrative areas while political autonomy will ensure that the citizens of such local government units can select leaders of their choice with interference from state governors.
This will ensure that the tenets of federalism, as enshrined in the 2011 constitution which operates as at today, will be protected.
⦁ Orfegah writes from Makurdi, Benue State