₦airaland Forum

Ola one: He disobeyed his party. He suspended a Local Government chairman in Rivers. It has nothing to do with his NGF chairmanship. Okay now?

Sorry, a bit of clarification required if you don't mind. Did he disobey his party by suspending the local government chairman or are those two separate transgressions and if they are what exactly did he do or not do to disobey his party?

Mogidi: Amaechi would have been ex-governor now if he'd tried this with OBJ. Sometimes GEJ's humility and sense of purpose irks me.

I say to GEJ now, declare SOE in Rivers state and confine this ingrate to history.

You know what's funny? In a federation, the president should not be able to do that.

Sorry for asking but what exactly did Amaechi do?

What third world dump are you from?

Ikengawo: Honestly, it's not the system it's the people. Nigerians have a lot of unhealthy attitudes and notions about authority and power in all respects of life and little sense of duty or long term thinking. Nigeria has one of the best constitutions in the world, but what does it matter if nobody wants to learn what's in it, follow it, or challenge abusive leaders that misuse it?

what does it matter if we have a parliamentary system? In the average Nigerian school the head master behaves like a monarch, why wouldn't the prime minister? is that not the problem we're having with the presidency? something as common as a governor's forum election (mind you the leader of the forum have NO authority) has turned into a civil war.

it's not the constitution, it's not the presidency, it's the people and their culture.

What is the point of the state government if it has no power? What is the point of a local government that is subject to many other entities(a goat that belongs to everybody will starve), how can one man be expected to govern a nation of 170 million people( it is because Nigeria is so big and diverse that we went Federal yet our current constitution gives all power to one man making us effectively unitary so why does it still declare Nigeria as a federation)

The constitution is the most idiotic document ever written by a adult since the invention of writing.

The governors forum was established by the governors in an attempt to lobby for powers that should be granted them by virtue of the fact that we are a Federation, they shouldn't even have to make a forum so the forum is not the problem, their forum is a reaction to the problem. once again, maybe you should have considered why they made the forum instead of criticizing them for it blindly.

funnyx: Because those countries are less corrupt compare to Nigeria, of what use is bicameral legislature to Nigeria? Also what benefits do we get from these aides? We can't even see these legislative members, no town hall meetings, no regular surgeries

Have you considered why those countries are less corrupt than Nigeria? Also these aides that you consider a waste, is it just not working for Nigeria or is there something else that is responsible for their failure.

Let me explain a bit, when there is poor circulation of power and resources the entire system suffers, offices were established without being granted the right powers and responsibility or being properly defined, some established with overlapping duties and you find that the entire system decays, we have governors yet the president is granted more powers in the states than the governors then local governments are established with no real power while still having jurisdiction and taking responsibility away from the governors so nothing works. Things like corruption set in because many offices are not adequately engaged if they are at all and idle minds become the devils own, all our problems including corruption are mere symptoms of the original disease, "counter intuitive and stupid constitution syndrome", we don't need to change our government, the one we have is best for Nigeria, what we need is to do it properly.

Bicameral legislature is aimed at preventing the tyranny of the majority, Nigeria is uniquely susceptible to this because of the disparity in size of our many ethnic and religious groups, if ever there was a country that needed bicameral legislature it is Nigeria.

Finally, please, when you have a problem please try to understand why you are having that problem instead of just trying to remove it because if it is the result of something else the original problem still remains and you end up complicating things. What I am saying is, like Nigeria's previous rulers you just saw something that wasn't going right and never bothered to figure out why instead you thought "let us do this to get rid of it", it is very dangerous way of thinking. Our president was intentionally made too strong so that anther autonomous region cannot start a war, yes our problem now was intended as a solution to another problem(can you imagine), nobody tried to understand the Igbo, they just decided to prevent them from doing it again and caused more problems so in the future stop suggesting off the top of you head that we get rid of things that aren't working instead of understanding them, thanks.

Uyi Iredia: I think it's needed because it's less costly and give autonomy to the autonomous regions to develop at their own pace.

Giving autonomy to the regions is called Federalism, it has nothing to do with presidential system or parliamentary.

funnyx: Apart from the president being too strong, the presidential system of govt is too expensive especially with the bi-camera legislature and their retinue of aides.

Yet there are countries that practice it, have you ever wondered why that is? Also, the expensive bit is the fact that a nation is a federation rather than a unitary state not because they have a presidency, you people are mistaking things here, also a country can be parliamentary and still have bicameral legislature and vice versa, most of them do.

You guys really should go and research these things properly.

I think he means Federal system and Unitary system rather than Presidential and Parliamentary because Canada's government is more like America's than it is like the English. The core of his argument though is that the presidency is too strong and that is the truth.

funnyx: Parliamentary system of govt is the best for Nigeria especially they type we practiced in the first republic.

Nigeria's problem is that the president is too strong, you don't need to switch to Parliamentary system to rectify that.

That has nothing to do with the misfortune of being born in Nigeria, there are obviously worse places to be born.

GDP is yearly production not accumulative value so its not a direct comparison but at 75bn Bill Gates is most likely richer than a fair few countries.

I don't care how whomever it is goes about it, all I care about is that they aim to change Nigeria and in what way they aim to do it.

lordimpaq: I believe the major problem is us as Nigerians failing to live as ONE.

The sooner we realize that we are all the same the better for us...that is why each individual in Nigeria are trying to accumulate more wealth than the other and this mentality has filtered down to marrow even in 5 year olds.
Eventually, it leads to selfishness, then it breeds greed which now materializes into corruption. If we learn to be selfless, all of us, Nigeria would be the best place ever.

That is not something that can happen, people don't just forget their differences or change their attitudes.

Vision 2020 will not happen for the simple reason that Nigeria has major problems that need to be addressed.

AjanleKoko: Where did you see the word 'free' in anything I wrote?

So you would build roads, skyscrapers and bridges, and not basic primary health care centers at the very least, where poor indigent people could at least some basic care?

If we go by that logic, Olikoye Ransome-Kuti should have wasted the funds available to him as Minister of health building a few mega-hospitals scattered across Nigeria. Like that could do anything for the grassroots.

You said free healthcare, read it again, I just did and it is there, you cannot build the basics, there is not enough money, paying public servants alone is a pain, building all the basics is an ideal situation, it is the governments job to provide the basics and no more so when you talk about building them all across the grass roots you have crossed from limited budget to adequate budget, that states cannot afford to even consider it. There are easily up to 10,000 roads in Lagos for example and it is not our biggest state, have you any idea what fixing and maintaining them alone will cost, then theres paying teachers, you will not be able to do 10% of what you talk about in your wildest dreams on Nigeria's sort of limited budget.

A lot of you guys are talking out of your arses

First of all, anulaxad is right. infrastructure refers to public structures not private, it is done by the government not the people so educating them doesn't give you infrastructure. Infrastructure is roads, airports, hospitals, bridges, electric grid, water supply, sewage, telecommunications and all the other basic things necessary for a modern community to function effectively, there is no country where these things are built by the people, it is government work all of it.

Second

AjanleKoko: With a limited purse and limited opportunities for revenue growth, I would do the following, in this order:

- Provide basics at the grassroots level: healthcare, education, security, and shelter (even if it means land appropriation for settlements). Also provide good access roads at all levels. That's what I would try to do with the purse.

- Try to see what kind of incentives I can put in place for the indigenes. Could be in the form of tax incentives, agric or fertilizer subsidies, education bursaries, free healthcare services, depending on whatever the purse can allow for.

- Push for investment into the region to boost the economic potential. If land is the only capital we have in the state, then I have to look for large-scale farmers. If it's mineral resources, I need to look for investors. Large-scale industries will create jobs, and will raise the living standards of the people in the state directly or indirectly.

Look at that, you can do all that on a limited budget, I don't see exactly how that was limited, it seems like you think limited means excess, oh dear, you even have free health care, ignorance really is bliss.

dc555: Let me give u a hint. Did u know there will be no Jerusalem today if there was no Holocaust?

I don't see your point, Hitler committed the holocaust in order to facilitate the creation of Israel?

zenith7: The ACN has faulted the process as it submitted that the Federal Government did not seek the endorsement of the National Assembly as stipulated in the amended 1999 Constitution. But Metuh in the statement disclosed that the opposition party was against emergency rule as he claimed the “ACN and its cohorts in the opposition are behind insurgents and therefore, must subvert every measure taken by government to tackle escalating insurgency.”

BLATANT DISREGARD FOR THE CONSTITUTION!!!

Please tell us these "interests" Hitler was working for?

babyosisi: Thank you!
ACN is pure evil and their recent utterances exposed them further
They are heartless souls only interested in their turn at Aso rock with no shred of empathy for the ordinary man
Anyone still in doubt needs a doctor
May they contest a thousand times and fail a 1001 times
Amen!

May God save your soul because your brain has lost all proper function, this knee-jerk "you are the cause" reaction pdp has made is out of absolute stewpidity, they have been doing it before and with all their tactics boko haram is still getting bigger, by all counts and measures they have failed Nigeria, how then can any sane human being still support them?

ShymmexLion: They should have allowed them to do that!

Nigeria is destined for failure; you've tried for 53 years and for 53 years you have failed miserably with a capital F.

It's time to try something new and break the darn cursed country into pieces!!

Let people align with their ethnic identities in their own new countries!

Stop stunting everyone's growth with Nigeria - Nigeria will NEVER work!!

Jah bless!

Nigeria could work, it would if someone with half a brain drafted the constitution, a set of terms that actually took the people into consideration.

Because people simply forget, this happens globally and has nothing to do with Nigeria. People turn light bulbs on because they need the light, it affects them directly but turning it off is about saving electricity and doesn't directly affect us so it can be easy to forget and ignore it.

The simple reason for this is poor planing, it came to some ones attention when things really became bad for those people but there is probably no one who is responsible to guaranteeing that those allowances are paid on time so no one is paying attention and the government is largely unaware what is happening, it is why the federal government can earmark millions for building of government house while people are starving half way across the world.

I asked my cousin why local governments getting autonomy is so clamoured for when no one else does it and he responded by saying peoples judgement is clouded by the "government" in their name, that there is no reason to scrap the states in favor of local governments.

If a governments jurisdiction is too small the government will be too weak and if it is too big effective governance becomes too difficult ergo the local governments are too small and the federal government is too big. The states aren't just random cut outs of land there is considerable deliberation across ethic and tribal lines and this isn't purely unfounded, Germans are industrial people while the Polish people aren't, so there are different economic priorities for Igbos, the Yoruba etc which is why the states somewhat seem to thread across tribal and ethnic lines on the other hand there is no reason why Plateau has 17 local governments while Kano has 45. The federal government was in direct control of Nigeria so it created the 36 states, on the local government level it is not ideal for a government so far removed from the situation to make informed decisions on the matter.

If Nigeria was going to do local governments and scrap the states we would still need to scrap the local governments and start over because like most of Nigeria's laws there was no logic put into their establishment so we'd at least have to do it right. Also, having multiple divisions like this only works when the orders come from the centre, if they are all autonomous efficiency will be lost, chaos would ensue as people would be headed in far too many directions, have you any idea what it would be like if the laws changed every few miles? Because since they are governments they have to have their own laws.

Also, most of the people who want more states only want it so their kin have a shot at governor so they cann get government money too, this is born from the fact that Nigeria is a hot bed for poverty and government is by far the easiest and surest way to wealth, it is a symptom and not a problem. 774 local governments would exponentially increase the cost of government and so will the fact that the central government would need to be a few times bigger to deal with them all. The failure of our states is due to the fact they they were never given any power to begin with, the central government holds all the cards with things like the exclusive list, they interfere with what the state governments want to do (like stopping Lagos from building a Lagos only power plant) and they have their grubby mits in the local governments as well, with all the interference and walls from the central governments state governments have become a powerless tier of government and it is more or less guaranteed that no one who really wants to do anything goes there and we are left with state governments populated by people who either don't care or just want the hand outs. There is no reason why our states shouldn't work if we allow them to, the states in the Nigerian experience as an argument is not the fault of the system but rather our implementation, the solution would be to change it but the local governments on the other hand have many practical and realistic arguments against it.

It would be nice if a few more people weighed in on this though.

They can't all agree on everything all the time, that is part of being human. If everybody in PDP agreed on everything then something is very wrong in their heards most especially since their decisions in the past 14 years have been far from pleasing.

What do you mean by "work on regional basis"? are you saying that local governments should be dived into regions, what responsibility will these regions have, also aren't the local governments too small and numerous? I don't think they can all be self sustaining since local governments were not cut out using any formula, they are all just random cut outs of land, it doesn't feel like a good idea to base government along random lines.

Land_of_M&H:
They claim they are the lost tribes of Ephraim or Ifram and thats where the name biafra originated from. It means " Come Ifra"......"Bia Ifra".

So they have earned the right to fly israeli flag and biafra flag side by side.

ROFL

wtf is up with the Israeli flag?

doctorfox: These problems you highlighted are very valid and hold water. However, looking at the source of this revenue is also very important.
Nigeria as a nation is highly dependent on the price of crude oil for it's expenditure (budget). This over dependence we saw during the deliberation between the executive and the legislative over the benchmark price of crude oil to be used for the 2013 budget (finally settled at $79 per barrel).

Now, the Federal Government deducts its spending from the revenue and the rest is shared amongst the states. This is where we have a problem.
As most states know there is a monthly allocation for them, many state governments became solely dependent on this allocation and ignored the internally generated revenue of the state. Lagos state however, partially awoke to this realisation when a former president withheld the state's allocations for years.

Most states are still dependent on the federal allocations which is partly spent on paying salaries, white elephant projects, and the rest embezzled. Any little form of IGR goes unaccounted for as the states executive conspire with their legislatives to allocate these to themselves using schemes and projects that never get past the first phase.

Accountability and freedom of information still has a long way to go for us to see development in Nigeria.

This is why I said poor implementation of federalism, the state should be an independent body that doesn't get money from the federal government and that means oil will remain in the oil states and those that don't have oil will develop agriculture, industry etc. States are fed by the central government and constrained by it, the state quickly becomes a farce. Nobody working for the state government is actually there to fix the state because under our current system you cannot fix anything at the state level so we have state governments that are for show who are bullying local governments which are even more useless, so really the only tier of government that matters in Nigeria is the central government.

That Afam4eva, is why there is not development in Nigeria.

chichi234: in essence you are saying we should leave everybody to do as they like with no punishment and pray for people to change their minds.

Someone who takes vengeance by murder is guilty and should be punished but if he was lead to the position by a system that guaranteed it will happen again punishing him doesn't do much for society, he can and should be punished but priority goes to fixing the system. These people are big and powerful, they will of course resist and make no mistake about it they can put up a good fight, that would be time and resources better spent fixing Nigeria. I don't mind if they get away with it if it means I can guarantee in the future things will be done better, fixing Nigeria is more important than punishing people who misbehaved because it encouraged them to. Priorities people, priorities.

There is so much talk about the place of local governments in our nation and there is also so much talk about going back to 6 geopolitical zones and creation of more states. We spend a lot of time talking about whether GEJ is working or not but these are things that could readily change under his administration, we should be talking about them too, what do you guys think about these things, should they happen, yes or no, how and why?

Also, anybody have any idea when the constitution review is going to end.

If stewpidity is reason enough to be killed then there are those that should be but these people are not the cause of our current woe, stewpidity and ignorance is. Many Nigerians have gone and shifted the country in major ways because they didn't like one thing with no consideration for all the other effects it will have, the result is a flawed system that promotes incompetency and corruption.

Also OP, I think you just listed about every popular public servant you could think of, you suffer from the same stewpidity and ignorance. You people need to learn to think things thoroughly otherwise you will find yourself making regrettable reactions.

I think we have gotten to the point that we are basically being told whomever is elected there will be war so why pay heed to the warnings any more,they have lost value.

Nigeria has two problems, they are both listed in the following write up, they are to be exact the reason why the states cannot be developed. [size=16pt]The states make up 99.92% of the country so solving the problem of state development is effectively solving the Nigerian problem.[/size]

Being a paper presented at the Island Club, Lagos Business Session, on Wednesday, April 9, 2013.

THE Island Club has created a niche for itself as a platform for the generation of great ideas which have helped to foster national unity and development.

Therefore, I feel highly honoured to be considered worthy of delivering this lecture which dwells on a topic that is dear to us all as citizens of this great country, Nigeria.

It is my pleasure to speak on the challenges of state development within the context of Nigeria’s federal system.

Let me begin this section by relaying a recent experience of mine. I was at the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry recently to speak on the investment opportunities in Oyo State. The Chairman of the occasion was a former Secretary of the Commonwealth Business Council. He provided an insight that many critics of the investment drive of State Governments hardly think about. He said Nigeria, with its 36-state structure, presents 37 different opportunities for investments in Nigeria. These are the opportunities offered by the Federal Government and the 36 States. The moral in this is that, as a federal entity, the 36 States have individual and peculiar needs, challenges and opportunities. For too long, many of us had placed the onus of the development of Nigeria on the Federal Government. My personal experience as a senator at the federal level and Governor at the state level is that the state shares as much, if not more, of this burden of development as the Federal Government.

One major lesson that the democratic dispensation has brought into bold relief is that the state, as a tier of government, has a duty to develop its own vision and mission and design strategies to advance its development, within the context of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The days that the vision and mission of state governments were espoused in the national budget as it was under the military government are gone for good. Every state has a responsibility to work for its development within the confines of the national policy for development.

Permit me to confess that you will never know the depth of the rot in a government until you get in there. On assumption of office on May 29, 2011, I found out that the rot I had complained about in the government we inherited was a tip of the iceberg. It also soon became clearer that the speed at which we could pursue our vision for Oyo State also depended, to a great extent, on the constraints of the federal system of government in place in the country. It is against the background of the inherited ruins in government and the limitations of the federal system that we embarked on the project to Tranform, Restore And Reposition Oyo State.

The adoption of the federal system of government, as enshrined in the Lyttleton Constitution of Nigeria in 1954, was borne out of the conviction of the founding fathers of Nigeria that, as a country of about 350 ethnic nationalities, the federal system is the best form of government that will allow our peoples to protect their peculiar cultural identities and develop at their respective paces. However, the trajectory of Nigerian federal setup has altered the vision. The consequence is a federal system that has become a burden on the Federal Government and a drag on the development of the constituting units.

The core element of federalism is the existence of a system based on the sharing of power between at least two levels of government (federal and state) that allows each level to make final decisions on matters concurrently and exclusively. The core federal principle has the following core characteristics : No level of government is subordinate to the other; The two or more levels of government operate directly and simultaneously upon the citizens; There is a written constitution which is supreme – amendments, especially on matters related to the formal division of power should not be the exclusive preserve of one level of government; There is an independent and supreme court which serves as final arbiter in constitutional disputes; The levels of government, especially state governments, should have reasonable levels of viability and relative economic autonomy both to ensure that they are able to perform their constitutionally assigned functions and that they are not subordinate to the other level; and the constitution does not contain a secession clause that allows federating units to secede at will and does not also grant the Federal Government emergency powers that can make the states subordinate when used.



These features cannot be said to exit in contemporary federal system in Nigeria. I will highlight three areas in which our contemporary federal practice hampers, rather than advance, development in the States as a tier of government.

The first is the revenue allocation formula. As you are all aware, Nigeria’s federal structure comprises the federal government and the 36 state governments. There are also 774 local government areas which serve as the third tier of government. The federal government takes 52.8 percent of all federally collected revenue. The 36 States share 26.72 percent while the 774 local councils share 20 percent.

The implication of this is that the Federal Government is surfeit with resources while state governments face serious financial challenges. This is in spite of the fact that the states are responsible for basic needs that impact on the social well-being of the citizens and the development of the states.

For instance, the issues of education, health, infrastructure and even security, at the state level, are borne more by the states rather than the federal government. I give you an instance. The federal government caters for about 50 Secondary Schools and 40 Universities. Oyo State alone caters for over 2,000 Primary Schools, over 700 Secondary Schools, one (1) College of Education, one (1) College of Agriculture, one (1) Polytechnic and one (1) University. The State also shares responsibility with Osun State for the finance of the Ladoke Akintola University, Ogbomoso.

This responsibility for hundreds of educational institutions, especially at the primary and secondary school levels, is replicated in the states. For the development that we seek as a nation, we need to put more resources in primary and secondary education than the states can afford to do at present.

The second feature of our federal system that hampers the speed of development in the States is the constitutional delineation of power between the Federal Government and states governments. At present, the Federal Government controls 68 legislative items under the exclusive list and shares 24 with state governments on the concurrent list. Apart from the fact that the long legislative list raises issues of effectiveness at the federal level, given the expansive nature of the country, many of the items could be better executed by the States, rather than the Federal Government. Such matters include education, health, and even provision of public infrastructure within the States. For instance, rather than appropriate funds to the Federal Government to provide township roads, would it not be better for such monies to be appropriated to states that are in daily contact with the townships and their needs?

Finally, security. The foundation of all development is peace and security. This in essence puts the burden of security on any state government in search of development. But security has been made the exclusive responsibility of the federal government. The states face enormous security challenges but are armstrung by present constitutional provisions. We need to rethink the constitutional provisions on security for efficiency and effectiveness.

In general, the anti-federal provisions in Nigeria’s federal system include Large number of matters on the exclusive legislative list; Limitations to the competence of States in matters on the concurrent list (by which state laws are constitutionally rendered null and void to the extent of their inconsistencies with federal laws); Provision of emergency powers that allow the Federal Government to take over the affairs of states; Over-centralization of control of the Police; Provisions on local government that allow federal interference.

Extant laws that are anti-federal include the Land Use Act; the Laws on Petroleum and Gas that give these resources to the Federal Government; the Federal Inland Revenue Act of 2007 which empowers the Federal Inland Revenue Service to collect revenue for the three tiers of government, the Monitoring of Revenue Allocation to Local Government Act of 2005, which compels states to set up joint local government account committees and empowers the federal government to deduct from funds allocated to States money they failed to pay to local governments in the previous year.

The Experience in Oyo State:

The vision of our administration, despite these constitutional constraints, is to create a society in which everyone can be the best he legitimately desires to be. Our focus is the provision of an efficient public infrastructure and urban renewal; human capital development through education, skill acquisition and efficient healthcare delivery; development of value-chain agriculture and agro-allied industry; improved security and peace as well as good and transparent governance.

It is my pleasure to acknowledge that even our worst critics have admitted that we have done well in the delivery of our promises in these areas.

Let me use this platform to acknowledge the commendations we have received from far and near for the successful urban renewal initiative in Ibadan and other parts of Oyo State. Let me state with all emphasis at my disposal that we are just beginning. We are determined to make Ibadan and Oyo State in general attractive and inviting to investors and tourists. Next month, we are going to commission the first indigenous flyover in the ancient city of Ibadan. We are at present dualizing all the major entry points to Ibadan and other notable towns like Oyo, Ogbomoso and Iseyin. In 22 months, we have rehabilitated over 250 roads across the length and breadth of the State. We are still counting.

When this administration came into office, Oyo State was number one in the league of states afflicted by the menace of insecurity and violence. In 22 months, through the engagement of stakeholders, the establishment of the State Security Trust Fund and firm refusal to encourage the politics of brigandage that defined our predecessor administrations, we have established Oyo State as one of the most peaceful states in the country.

Our administration also identified the major challenges in the education sector as infrastructure decay, personnel inadequacies and monitoring needs. We have embarked on a massive rehabilitation of classrooms to make our classrooms comfortable for our children. At the last count, we have provided additional 67,000 pairs of furniture to cater for 134,000 pupils in our secondary schools. We have trained over 6,500 teachers and promoted 12,076 teaching and non-teaching staff in public secondary schools in the state. We have also entered into a partnership with the University of Ibadan to provide efficient monitoring and supervision of personnel in our schools.

We have paid N350 million each year in 2012 and 2013 as WAEC fees for our students. We introduced extra-mural classes for our final year students. In the last WAEC examination, Oyo State moved from the 34th position of 2011 to 24th position. We are determined to put Oyo State in the first 3 positions in WAEC examination.

Beyond secondary school education, we have provided the necessary facilities and secured the accreditation for the Oyo State College of Agriculture to offer Higher National Diploma programmes.

We also established the Technical University, Ibadan to offer courses that are at present not offered in Nigeria like Robotic Engineering, Underwater Engineering, etc.

Next week, we shall be signing an agreement with the University of Texas, United States of America on the programmes of the university. In the scheme, our students will share their four years in the university by spending two years in Ibadan and two years in Texas, the United States.

We have provided 20,000 youths with intervention employment. We are also exposing them to leadership and entrepreneurship training to equip them for the contemporary challenges of the economy. About 500 of the youths are being exposed to training under our Young Farmers Scheme, through which we are encouraging our youths to take advantage of the business opportunities in Agriculture. Still on agriculture, about four weeks ago, we made history by providing 320 tractors to our farming population in the quest to take advantage of our 38,000 square kilometers arable land.

We have constructed seven new earth dams across the state; rehabilitated three existing earth dams and provided agriculture loans to thousands of farmers.

Our women have received special attention of this administration. Two of the three arms of government in the state —- that is the legislature and the judiciary —- are led by women. We have seven women in our cabinet and 10 female Permanent Secretaries. In the area of empowerment, 396 grassroots women have received financial support for their businesses. Sixty-six women from the rural areas have been trained in Bee-keeping while 120 indigent women were trained in locust beans processing. About 400 women have received training in modern catering and 200 of them were given sundry business equipment to set up small scale businesses.

This administration has paid workers full 13th month salary for two consecutive years since coming into office. We have also trained over 15,000 public servants in two years. We have increased housing loan to civil servants by 100%. We have increased car loan to civil servants by 100%. We have increased pension by 142% and have paid backlog of pension accumulated for five years by predecessor administrations. We have introduced free transport services for workers in the state and removed the barrier on the path of Chief Typists who can now rise to level 12 by virtue of exposure to ICT training. We have also introduced life Insurance Policy for our civil servants.

On health, we have commenced the rehabilitation of our general hospitals and the provision of medical equipment in them. Only last week, we approved the procurement of hospital equipment worth N604m for Adeoyo General Hospital, Ibadan. We have also introduced the public-private partnership in the provision of some services in the hospitals to enhance efficiency. We have introduced periodic health outreach missions through which we take healthcare delivery to the doorsteps of our people. Over half a million patients have been treated under this scheme. We have also introduced 34 ambulances at critical points across the state to help in the evacuation of emergencies cases to our hospitals. Finally, we have rehabilitated 66 primary health centres to give life to our vision of taking healthcare delivery to the grassroots.

Conclusion:

We can do more than we have done if the constraints put on states’ capabilities in the federal provisions of our Constitution are removed.

In summary, we need to review our Constitution to grant responsibilities that are best performed at State level to the States. This should be complemented with concomitant amendment to the revenue allocation formula to free more resources for the states to discharge their responsibilitie

Abolishing local governments and turning them into completely state dependent districts is best, they are unnecessary and complicate things for the state governments who should be the driving force behind Nigeria.

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=119366:the-challenge-of-state-development-in-federal-nigeria&catid=72:focus&Itemid=598