Before we discard states

It sounded like a bland political statement when former Vice President Atiku Abubakar first made the call last year for a restructuring of the country. When he repeated the call in Lagos on Sunday last week at a ceremony where he received Hall of Grace Magazine’s Hero of Nigeria Democracy Award, folks like me sat up and listened because this time, he was specific. He said the 36 states should be abolished and replaced by the six geopolitical zones as the constituent units of the Nigerian federation.

Atiku’s shocking suggestion came just when many states in Nigeria are celebrating 50 years of their emergence in states. Even Lagos, which was earlier administered as a separate “Colony,” rolled out the drums in a massive celebration of statehood. It will amount to pouring sand in Eko’s garri to tell its chieftains that Lagos State should be collapsed into the South West geopolitical zone. Other states created in 1967 such as Kano, Sokoto, Borno, Rivers, Enugu, Kwara, Plateau, Oyo and Edo, which have since seen chunks of their territory spinned off into new states, are nevertheless celebrating General Gowon’s generous act of 1967. Contradictorily, Atiku Abubakar issued a statement through his media office congratulating them on the anniversary.

Atiku Abubakar is a latter-day convert to restructuring. In his heydays as President Obasanjo’s powerful deputy in 1999-2003, he was never on record as having expressed dissatisfaction with the country’s structural set up. Instead he appeared to be smugly content with the national structure, his main concerns being to further PDP’s complete dominance of national politics and to extend his personal influence into many centres of power in order to position himself to succeed Obasanjo.

So why is he campaigning for restructuring now? It could be a high stakes political gambit. Atiku is a very shrewd political calculator. As soon as he lost the APC presidential nomination to Buhari in 2014, he began strategising for 2019. There is an element of urgency in it because at over 70 now, he might see 2019 as his last chance. Before President Buhari’s illness crept into the picture, Atiku might have already calculated that Buhari’s political standing in the North is nearly unassailable. However, he might have calculated that Buhari has not made any political headway into the South East and South South zones. The one Southern zone that embraced Buhari in 2015, South West, might appear to Atiku to be slipping away from Buhari’s grip.

Trouble is, even though agitation for restructuring is heard loudly from the South West, Atiku Abubakar is not in a very good position to inherit the region politically. The same man who offered the zone to Atiku on a platter of gold in 2007, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, is still in charge of its politics. After he lost his 2007 presidential bid, Atiku unceremoniously abandoned ACN and returned to PDP, apparently without consulting Tinubu. So the two redeemable zones for him now are South East and South South.

As far as I can establish, the idea of replacing states with geopolitical zones is of South East origin. In 1994 when General Sani Abacha announced that he was convening a National Conference to rewrite the constitution, Eastern political leaders held a preconference meeting in Enugu. That was where former Vice President Dr. Alex Ekwueme first suggested that the states be replaced by the six zones. The underlying reason, according to a leaked document at the time, was to neutralise the Yoruba advantage over Igbos in the number of states. Smallness of territory has limited the number of Igbo states created by successive military regimes since 1967. Insofar as sharing of booties in the Nigerian federation is based on states, this disadvantage will persist unless the Yoruba are collapsed into one zone and the Igbos are also collapsed into one zone.

That is the underlying politics, but the call for a collapse into six geopolitical zones is dressed up as the fiscally responsible thing to do. Atiku said in his paper that most of the states are unviable, which is fiscally true. The creation of 36 state governments, FCT administration and nearly 800 local governments, on top of the sprawling federal government, has ensured that bureaucracy consumes most of this country’s revenue. Salary payment is about the only thing many of them do.

But what is the likelihood that states could be abolished in Nigeria anytime soon? Almost impossible, as things stand. Abolishing the states will require an amendment to the 1999 Constitution, which must be supported by majority of legislators in 24 states. Since abolishing a state will entail abolishing its State Assembly, it is the kind of bill that is likely to get zero votes in most state assemblies. Even if state legislators are kind enough to commit political hara-kiri, one must reckon with the governors. Governors are so powerful in such matters that during the last legislative session, they got most state assemblies to reject an amendment to give state assemblies first line charge on state treasuries. Since collapsing states into zones will abolish all but six state governors, the idea is up against the biggest force in Nigeria after the presidency.

In fact, many areas in Nigeria still aspire to get new states created for them. That Mid West was the only state ever created under a civilian administration is due partly to the stringent constitutional requirement and also partly due to governors’ opposition to splitting their domains. In the Second Republic when agitation for state creation was loudest, numerous requests for state creation were filed at the National Assembly but no governor anywhere in the country supported the splitting of his state. In the end, the Senate Committee on State Creation returned from a two weeks’ retreat in Switzerland and recommended “Zero Option,” that no new state be created.

The six geopolitical zones are no match for states in the psychology of Nigerians. They have made big strides in the consciousness of Nigerians since the 1990s, when Abacha hinted that he will adopt them as a fourth tier of government, though he never did. Since 1999 geopolitical zones also found expression in the allotment of political offices that are too few to be shared based on states. These include political party offices, membership of boards of some government agencies as well as Supreme Court judges. Still, geopolitical zones have a certain unreality in Nigerian politics. The zones that coincide with ethnic boundaries, such as South East and South West, have more psychological reality than others such as North West, North East and North Central. Niger State for example is geographically North Central but culturally and psychologically far Northern. Southern Kaduna State is geographically North West but culturally and psychologically Middle Beltern. The ethnically diverse South South Zone acquired political reality relatively recently due to Niger Delta agitation for resource control.

Since 1960, state creation has been the most popular act of government after Udoji salary arrears. It is one of the few acts of government that elicits spontaneous wild celebration. General Murtala Mohammed was so conscious of this that when he created new states in 1976 he said, “Government will not condone any emotional outbursts or provocative demonstration or celebration by any individual or group, in support or against the creation of states in any part of the country.” If we abolish 30 states, we will do away with 30 governors, 30 deputy governors, 30 Houses of Assembly, 30 Speakers and Deputy Speakers, 450 commissioners, thousands of advisers, assistants and permanent secretaries; 90 senators and probably a million civil servants. Murtala foresaw wild demonstrations 40 years ahead of Atiku Abubakar.