There was a civil war going on and everybody thought that was ok to enable the federal government prosecute the war effectively, especially since General Gowon has not borrowed money externally to prosecute the war. Most Nigerians do not know that for the first year Gowon ruled Nigeria, the revenue formula of 1963 still applied. That each region kept a certain percentage of the earning and contributed a certain percentage (as enshrined in the 1963 constitution) to the centre. That the military governors shared, received and distributed the revenues and earnings of each region strictly according to the dictate of the 1963 constitution. Hasan Kastina, Adeyinka Adebayo etc, ran their regional government according to the revenue sharing formula of the 1963 constitution. Most Nigerians do not know that it was General Gowon and not General Ironsi who unified and centralized all the revenues at the center in order to prosecute the war. Ironsi’s decree 34 of May 1966 merely changed the nomenclature from REGIONS to GROUP OF PROVINCES. Ironsi never altered the revenue sharing formula. The facts are there in the files of government. After General Gowon centralized all the resources at the center, the victorious cabals at the end of the war, who now saw that power was so sweet, especially with oil boom, then decided that it would be difficult for any other region to ever take power out their hands, they therefore preferred centralizing all the resources and the revenues at the centre, only to be dispensed by whoever was in charge of the centre........


https://hallmarknews.com/gowon-not-ironsi-introduced-unitary-government-in-nigeria-evang-uko/?fbclid=IwAR32J0QcXK6Y0D8vzhem2bVcCJuaRC8IIkBWqPqBOU4x5FQPOceuKV4VK3k