The clamour for state creation pitched delegates against one another at the national conference on Wednesday.
Some delegates claimed that it was wrong for the Committee on Political Restructuring and Forms of Government to have recommended for the creation of one state for the South-East alone without anything for other zones.
The report of the committee says, “There shall be created an additional state for the South-East zone and that all other requests for state creation should be considered on merit.”
The committee approved criteria for the creation of states by saying that any new state sought to be created must be viable.
In determining what is viable, the committee says such state must be economically viable or potentially economically viable and it should have human, natural and material resources and should have a minimum land mass/mass.
New state, it said, should have cultural/historical antecedents, with strong cultural affinity amongst the population of the new state and that such new state should have a minimum population of one million people.
There were 34 request for state creation before the committee while a request was made to change the name of Adamawa State to Gongola State.
A delegate, who was a former Minister of Industry, Chief Nike Akande, canvassed for the creation of another state from the present Oyo State.
She requested that all requests for state creation should be considered in their merit and “in accordance to the criteria, I support the creation of more states.
“In this regard, I propose the split of Oyo State into two, which are Ibadan State and the rest. Oyo State has a landmass of about 28,245.26km square. It is one of the most urbanized in the country.
“In the 2006 census, the state has a population of about 5.58million ranking in the fifth most populated among the 36 states federation.
“The splitting is justifiable, expedient and necessary given the position of the state. The proposed state meets the generally accepted criteria for state creation including population, viability, historian considerations, culture affinity and contiguity.
“Creation of another state from Oyo State would ensure social and economic development of the states. ”
In his contribution, a former National Chairman of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, Sen. Ahmadu Ali queried the rationale used by the committee to ward a new state for the South-East.
He said, “I don’t know what criterion was used in awarding a state for the south-East state. All of us must go and fight to state creation. I said it before that the old eastern region has 11 states.
“I believe that states that wish to merge should merge. Regionalism is retrogressive. The zone we also talk about is a dangerous precedent and is not constitutional. There is an attempt to smuggle it not the report of the Conference.”
Chief Olabode George also called for the creation of Isale Eko State from fhe present Lagos State.
In his contribution, a former Governor of Ofun State. Chief Olusegun Osoba queried the rationale for the creation of local governments in the country.
He said it was wrong for highly populated states like Lagos to have a small number of local governments while smaller states should have large number of local governments.
Osoba said, “Local government should be taken out of the Constitution. A state like Lagos with over 12million people and must 20 local government is unjustified. Therefore, states should be allowed to create their local governments.”
Another delegate, Mr. Lawrence Ikpeazu kicked against the call for the creation of states saying that unlike the country, United States of America had a few states at the beginning but that some of the states that joined the union came with their land, people and resources.
Ikpeazu said, “We should not be asking for the cake when we have not contributed to the baking of the cake.”
He suggested that local government creation should not be thrown to the state to avoid abuse of the process.
Belo Aliyu (Zamfara) also said that all those agitating for state creation should be made to follow the laid down criteria, adding that that there should not be preferential treatment.
In his own contribution, Mr. Vincent Okobi drew attention to the poll he said was conducted in China to determine what the problems of Nigeria were.
He told the delegates that the result of the poll indicated that the Conference would be saddled with the problems of tackling poor census and corruption.
Before the problems of the country could be solved including state creation, he called for the conduct of acceptable census, which he said could only be done by the United Nations.
He said, “Mr. Chairman, I am saying, when we are talking state creation, whether we are talking local government, we are talking census. We are talking about the sharing of the national resources.
“Census is the key to the problems we have. We must take this opportunity to remind the government that this country should give to the next generation a census that correct and reliable.”
However, Festus Okoye, Sergeant Awuse, Ken Nnamani thanked all those who have supported the creation of an additional state for the South-East.
The delegates are to vote on this and other recommendations and amendments to the recommendations to the report of the committee on Thursday. Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
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Viable? Why are we talking viability when all we do is to gather in Abuja every month to share money which is a primitive way of doing things. When we tie population to state creation, all we do is to encourage the current inflation of census figures which is what Nigeria is noted for. The current state arrangement is a product of northern military leadership. There is no basis for the current structure that we call states. It is just an arrangement to unfairly share oil revenue. Disband states in nigeria, if the country is to make progress. Disband these 36 corruption centers!
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