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Politics Of Local Government And State Creation
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They are:
(a) their land (territorial) areas (sizes);
(b) their natural resources (in terms of economic viability;
(c) their population size; and
(d)
the equality for living standard of their population (Obateru, 1999).
In a perceptive work, Aaron Gana (2008), observed critically from
Willink Commission of 1957 to the Politburo of 1986, that principal
reasons advanced for creation of states can be classified into four viz:
(a) to promote stability;
(b) to promote unity and harmony;
(c) to facilitate cultural authenticity and
(d)
to promote rapid development(Gana, 2008) An elder statesman – Chief
Obafemi Awolowo – also opined that “ethnicity is the major factor to be
considered as a criterion in creating any state in a federation so that
minority groups in the midst of majority groups who differ in language,
culture and historical The Politics of States and Local Govt. Creation
& Nigeria’s Search for … Balancing 336 background will not feel
inferiorâ€. In another work credited to the amendment of creation of
Western Region, Awolowo came up with another set of criteria for
creation of states in a federation like Nigeria thus: The Action Group
(AG) had adopted two distinct but coordinated approaches to the issue of
more states in Nigeria. The first approach is the idealistic one, while
the second is the materialistic approach. The AG as a matter of
fundamental principle believes that if the unity of this country is to
be enduring and if our populace is to have a binding peace and
happiness, each ethnic group or linguistic group in Nigeria must be
assured of political self-determination within the federation
Viewed
from the angle of economic development, dominant views in the literature
aver that the major driving motive which has sustained the quest for
state creation is the general impression that development will
necessarily follow the exercise. Succinctly put, this school of thought
is of the opinion that, with state creation, rural communities would
experience automatic growth and development. Development in the notion
of pundits of this school refers to the expansion of opportunities for
communal and individual advancement, particularly in the provision of
more schools, roads, electricity, hospitals, water and industries. This
notion is also predicated on the belief that states are instruments of
resource allocation and development. This is evidenced in the practice
whereby the bulk of funds available to all states and local governments
in the country are sourced from and come from oil revenues controlled by
federal government and it’s through the state structure in the
federation that these funds are share, hence the interminable demands
for creation of states by prospective beneficiaries. Paradoxically, the
mushrooming of the states had diminished their operational capacity and
capabilities, hence only a very few out of the 36 states so far created
are self-sufficient as allocations to them from federal revenue are
grossly inadequate and as such rapid development remains a mirage.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]Agitations for state creation are almost as old as the Nigerian nation. The more states that are created, the more the problem they are intended to solve persists. Just as the exercises enfeeble the constituent units vis-Ã -vis the federal government so do they detach the units one from the other. The state creation exercises have heightened the indigene-non-indigene phenomenon (statism) which is antithetical to a sense of common nationhood. The federal character principle which is intended to ... Continue reading---
