The year 1967, and fifty years later …

Many thanks must go to the governments of Kano, Kwara, Lagos and Rivers states for marking the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of states in the country in 1967. For emerging as the ultimate survivors in the miry game of state creation politics, these states are deservedly in a class of their own.  They have […]

Many thanks must go to the governments of Kano, Kwara, Lagos and Rivers states for marking the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of states in the country in 1967. For emerging as the ultimate survivors in the miry game of state creation politics, these states are deservedly in a class of their own.  They have transcended the highs and lows, the worst and best of several transitions of the country from military administrations to brief stints of civilian rule, as well as the hiccups associated with dangling between the extreme swings of the pendulum of governance in Nigeria. Hence they need to be lauded for emerging the only states that have retained at least their names all this while as their contemporaries at different times have either been dissolved, broken up into several components and even lost their identities.  

By marking their relative longevity, they collectively took Nigerians through a journey in history to that landmark year of 1967, when the ground-breaking restructuring of the country by the administration of General Yakubu Gowon into a twelve state structure, took place. Before then the country was a four region set-up that was contrived largely after the colonial permutations of Britain. Finding it expedient to respond to the growing pressure from pioneer Nigerian nationalists for self rule, Nigeria’s colonial master Britain, deemed it expedient to avail Nigeria some semblance of self government. Hence the colonialist offered the colony the opportunity of picking its own leaders through ethnic based political groupings. Hence the first set of political groupings. 

However while this arrangement favoured the British colonialists,  it inevitable generated negative fall outs, whose roots were inherent in the political alchemy of colonial Nigeria. For a country that comprised an assemblage of over three hundred ethnic groups of varying population sizes and cultural traditions, with many of them having not heard of each other earlier, the adoption of such a catch-all dispensation created an unjustified pecking order, among the constituent groups, with the three majority groups of Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo dominating the remaining minority groups.  Hence arose the persistent clamour for a remediation of sorts that would address the fears of the minorities, in order to ensure peaceful coexistence among all the groups in the country, regardless of size or culture. It was therefore Gowon’s restructuring through the creation of states that actually set the stage for today’s multi-state Nigeria. And that dispensation was on May 27th 1967. Yesterday Saturday May 27th 2017 therefore marked the 50th anniversary of that day. 

Incidentally contemporary Nigeria has long re-designated May 27th of every year as the National Childrens’ Day – a development that offers many Nigerians better comfort than any reference to the state creation politics, given the state of affairs as pertains to the decadence playing out in the terrain of states administration. Ordinarily, the justification for creating states rests on several premises including the following two. Firstly is the need to address the fears of the minorities as earlier mentioned.  Secondly, is the expectation that creating states to replace the four regions would take government presence and development closer to the people.  However the experiences of Nigerians in these past fifty years with respect to how far the states have brought governance to the people, have left much to be desired. By a large measure, many Nigerians see  the most popular indicator of the style of administration in any state as not being the proximity of governance to the people, but the level of  misrule by successive governors; which leaves the citizens bereft of the very dividends they are entitled to have.  In state after state there are instances of extreme play out of impunity by governors, in their desire to play god, while their tenures last. Many state governors have turned their states into private theatres of the absurd with them acting as lead actors in the tragic drama. One governor even tried to demonstrate his capacity for unparalleled magnanimity with distribution of caskets to the state indigenes. Another would sponsor marriages for his loyalists while yet another other would distribute rams to select beneficiaries.

 However, lying beyond the idiosyncrasies of errant state governors is the other question of how far the country has progressed with allaying the fears of the minorities through the state creation exercise. This consideration remains critical given the unending demand for new states as soon as new ones are created.  For in the past fifty years the country has restructured politically. The country has undergone four state creation exercises excluding Gowon’s pioneering effort.  Hence the country increased states from 12 to 19 in 1976 under the administration of late General  Murtala Mohamed; 21 in 1987 under General Ibrahim Babangida; 30 in 1991 under the same Babangida and 36 in 1996 under late General  Sani Abacha.  But for the stringent Constitutional provisions for creation of more states in Nigeria, and the apparently indefensible insolvency of most of the existing states, their proliferation would have continued unabated as even the report of the last National Conference under the administration of Goodluck Jonathan, recommended the creation of additional 19 states to bring the total number of states in Nigeria to 55.

 Contemporary events however point to the fact afterall, the state creation exercise had always had a missing link that must be plugged, if the country must move forward. A typical area of concern is the syndrome of ethnic irredentism whereby virtually all ethnic groups are complaining over one perceived privation or the other. The majority groups of Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo groups who dominate the country’s public life and hence call the shots are complaining.  Just as well are the ethnic minorities who are left to grovel at the command of the domineering majority groups also protesting the onslaught of the later. It is this state sponsored inequity in the country’s public life that constitutes the bane of Nigerian politics, and denies the country the full dividends from the serial exercises in state creation. 

The ultimate lesson from the 50thanniversary of state creation is that the country needs to go back to the drawing table to revisit the issue of restructuring until a dispensation acceptable by all is achieved.  That is the Nigeria of the collective dream of her founding fathers.