Citizens’ loud complaints in recent times about the high cost of living in the country, about the high cost of governance while leaders live in splendour, the reluctance of governments to pay a living wage and the inability to provide or maintain basic infrastructure and services suddenly took a back seat last week when the House of Representatives announced that its constitution review committee had received requests for 31 additional states. One of the requests seeks to turn the Federal Capital Territory into a state, thus throwing away nearly all the reasons that General Murtala Mohammed advanced in 1976 for creating a constitutionally queer, District of Columbia-style FCT. To do so, General Murtala’s military government grabbed ancestral land from the old North Western, Benue/Plateau and Kwara states. Some people will support this idea of a new Abuja State because it will send Minister Nyesom Wike back to Rivers State, there to continue his fight against Governor Simi Fubara.
Sixty-seven states in the Nigerian Federation, up from the present thirty-six and a half states. I was supposed to be resting in a Sokoto hotel room at the weekend, but I sat up and did a rough tally of what it will entail when we have so many more states. Right now, with only 36 state governors and one additional Governor in all but name, we have so many long motorcades and so many siren cars that throw commuters off the roads and people in the neighbourhoods of Government Houses find it hard to sleep.
A state Governor is the juiciest political position in Nigeria after the Presidency. No wonder that tens of thousands of politicians are dreaming, scheming and plotting to become governors, either when the tenure of incumbents expires or if possible, by denying current office holders their second terms. If the number of governors increases to 67, many more citizens will be pushed off the roads by convoys and many more neighbourhoods will be denied sleep due to VIP movements.
The governor of a new state’s top priority is to build a befitting Government House, with spacious living rooms and bedrooms, lush gardens and furniture and a coterie of cooks, butlers, cleaners and a battalion of guards. Next, there must be Commissioners to match. Back in the 1980s when soldiers ruled in this country, I remember that we had but ten commissioners in the old Sokoto State, which is three states today. With the arrival of civilian rulers from 1999, some states now have up to 30 commissioners. If we take an average of 25 and multiply it by 67, we will have 1,675 commissioners in the country, each with two or three official cars, a hefty salary and several assistants.
For each commissioner, there must be a ministry. Governors in some states struggle to provide portfolios for the commissioners they appointed, often ending up with absurd-sounding names. Some states, for example, have Commissioners for Student Affairs. I often wondered what remained of Ministry of Education without students. What is a Governor without Special Advisers and Special Assistants? In the Second Republic, governors had no more than 5 Special Advisers and even President Shehu Shagari had only ten, three of them assigned to Vice President Alex Ekwueme. From 2003 however, some states appointed more than 1,000 Special Advisers, Senior Special Assistants, Special Assistants and Community Liaison Officers. Most of them have no schedules of duty, only salaries. When the states increase to 67, there will be nearly twice as many advisers and assistants as there are today.
State Assemblies will increase to 67, each one of them with a Speaker, Deputy Speaker, Majority Leader, Majority Whip, Minority Leader, Minority Whip, Clerk and Deputy Clerk. States have a minimum of 24 and a maximum of 36 legislators right now, so by the time they increase to 67, the number of state legislators will double, to more than 2,000. In the National Assembly and in many states today, every legislator chairs at least one standing committee, so the number of legislative committees will have to double. In 2000AD Nigerian legislators invented what they call “constituency projects,” a crude version of what Americans call “pork barrel” projects. You find hundreds of millions voted to buy Keke Napeps in an Education agency, for example; multiply that by two when 31 new states come on board.
Civil service is Nigeria’s biggest industry. Each Ministry must have a Permanent Secretary, sometimes more than one; a dozen Directors with two or three dozen deputy and assistant directors. There will be in Nigeria 67 state Accountants General, 67 state Auditors General, 67 state Attorneys General and 67 state Solicitors Generals. Each state must have a Revenue Board with many commissioners and directors, even if what it generates cannot fuel their official vehicles.
Not only ministries. Every new state in Nigeria must create more agencies than you can count, including a Civil Service Commission, Legislative Service Commission, Judicial Service Commission, State Universal Basic Education Board, Secondary Schools Commission and Primary Health Care Agency. Most of the states will have Pilgrims Welfare Boards, so-called Hotels and Tourism Boards, Water Board even when the taps are dry, a Rural Electrification Board in the midst of darkness and a Health Services Management Board, even when hospitals under it are mismanaged.
The Judiciary cannot be left behind. Each state must create its own High Court with a Chief Judge and many High Court Judges. Many states will have Shari’a and Customary Courts of Appeal, in addition to lots of magistrate, area and customary courts. Creation of new states will soon be followed by a clamour for the creation of more local governments. Bayelsa State today has only eight LGAs; if you split it, you mean two states will have only four LGAs each? The number of first-class traditional rulers will also multiply. When Zamfara State was created in 1996, it did not have a single emir; today it has 19 of them.
When the states multiply to 67, there will be a ripple effect on the Federal Government and its agencies. Since the Constitution says each state must have at least one minister, the Federal Cabinet must increase to at least 67. People complained when President Tinubu appointed 48 ministers, saying it is the largest cabinet in Nigeria’s history. Wait until the number of states hits 67. In addition to satisfying the constitutional requirements, presidents often like to add zonal representations in order to accommodate friends who couldn’t make it through their state party chapters, in addition to accommodating some technocrats. The number of ministers could then approach 100.
National Economic Council will become unwieldy. With a Chairman, 67 governors as members in addition to other statutory Federal officials as members, it can no longer meet in a small conference room and must move to the Presidential Banquet Hall. Ditto the Council of State, in which all 67 governors are members, plus National Assembly heads, former Heads of State and current and former Chief Justices. Even the Police Council, with all governors as members, will be hard put to find adequate space for its meetings.
The Constitution stipulates that each state has three senators while the Federal Capital Territory presently has one. When states increase to 67, the number of senators will increase from 109 to 201. At present there are 360 House of Representatives members, or three and a half times the number of senators, so a way must be found to maintain the current balance. We will then end up with at least 700 Representatives.
Many agencies of the Federal Government will move quickly to open offices in all the new states. The first will be Police Force. Every state must have a State Police Command with a Police Commissioner and several Deputy and Assistant Compols to head Operations, Force Intelligence, Force CID, Mopol, Force Animals etc. Customs, Immigration, Department of State Services, Correctional Service, Civil Defence, Drug Law Enforcement, Road Safety Corps, Central Bank, Nigeria Television Authority, Federal High Court, Bureau of Statistics, National Population Commission, JAMB, WAEC, NECO and INEC must immediately open branch offices in every new state. As must many Federal Ministries, such of Federal Controller of Works and Zonal Education Inspectorate. Some Federal agencies do not have offices in every state but they group some states into zones. Well, with 67 states, they must increase the number of zones and divisions, such as Court of Appeal, Corporate Affairs Commission [CAC], National Broadcasting Commission [NBC] and Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN.
With nearly double the number of states and the consequential increase in government agencies and their state and zonal offices, private sector will be playing catch up. Banks, especially, cannot afford not to have branches in any state, since most deposits come from state governments. Telecom companies, media houses, major NGOs, trade unions and religious bodies must all scramble to open offices in new states. How can a major media house not have a correspondent in any state, however new, when the best news items could suddenly come from there?
Pity political parties. Even for the major ones, there isn’t enough room in Wadata Plaza or Legacy House for their NEC meetings, since 67 state chairmen and 67 state secretaries will be attending, in addition to National Working Committee and Board of Trustees members. Even the zoning formula of political parties will be severely affected. Politicians being what they are, each of 67 states may demand that a certain Working Committee office be zoned to it, necessitating the committee’s expansion. Ok, with so many states at hand, even the Federal ruling party will have many failed governorship candidates, which it must compensate with federal appointments.
My final, real pity is for our primary school pupils. How will they be able to recite “States and their capitals” of 67 states? During my own primary school days, there were only 12 states and we easily recounted their names, their capitals and even their military governors. When the states increased to 36, despite the best efforts of teachers, many pupils could not recite “Abia, Umuahia. Adamawa, Yola. Akwa Ibom, Uyo. Anambra, Awka. Bauchi, Bauchi. Bayelsa, Yenagoa…” to the end. In our primary school days, we were also made to recite the regions of Ghana, only eight of them. Today they have increased to sixteen, still a manageable number. Nigerian primary school pupils and teachers seriously envy their Ghanaian counterparts.
