Ahead of the new constitution review about to be embarked upon by the National Assembly, Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, has put the number of memoranda submitted by various interest groups on state creation at 45, the Daily Sun has reported.
Ekweremadu, who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Constitution Review, dropped this hint while delivering a paper entitled: Constitution Amendment and State Creation at a public lecture organised by the Otu Oka’Iwu Lagos, a group of lawyers of South East extraction in Lagos at the weekend.
According to him, 34 of such memoranda were intra-state demands, seven interstate, while four cuts across geo-political zones.
He attributed the increase in the number of agitation to minority fears, search for equity as well as desire for speedy development.
Ikeremadu assured that everything would be done to address the critical issues of the Nigerian federalism such as devolution of powers, local government administration, structural imbalances, state police, among others in the proposed constitution amendment.
He observed that the nation was yet to provide satisfactory answers to some nagging questions regarding the propriety of the 36 states structure or creation of new ones as against a return to regionalism on the basis of the six geopolitical zones.
Raising some posers, he said: “Has the creation of more states allayed the fears of minorities and the feelings of marginalisation and domination? Has it resulted to good governance and speedier development at State levels than we had before? If it is meant to bring governance closer to the people, what then is the essence of the local government areas? Importantly, too, is the proliferation of states and even the extant ones viable and self-sustainable?
“Again, at a time the global trend is aggressively moving towards the contraction of the size of government and cost of governance and at a time the nation is already sweating profusely under the yoke of unwieldy size of government at the federal, state, and local levels, can we really sustain the status-quo let alone create new burdens?”