The chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, committee on restructuring, Governor Nasir El-Rufai, has said asking for equal states for all the geo-political zones is injustice as it will amount to trying to make “the unequal equal”.
“You cannot come here and say we should create nine states in each zone. Nigeria is not equal in terms of land mass, population, resources etc. so, you can’t do that. It is injustice trying to make the unequal equal.”
”There is absolutely no way in the Nigeria of today that a state that has oil will have 100 per cent of the revenue. That is not possible because to get that document through, you have to pass it through the National Assembly and in the National Assembly, there are more states that have no oil than those that have oil and so, they will vote it down.”
“So, you better start proposing something that works for the entire country and not just you.
Otherwise, it will not help. The greatest injustice you can do is to try to make the unequal equal or the equal unequal.”
“When you make recommendation that you want to abolish the Senate, you should know that the Senate cannot be abolished unless the Senate votes to abolish the Senate. Who is going to vote to make himself unemployed?”
“We have a political process and so, we are not over-throwing the government and starting afresh.
So, we have to work with what we have in a sensible and pragmatic manner and reform what need to be reformed.”
“When you say create states on the one hand and on the other hand you say cost of governance is too high, you are contradicting yourself. For every state you create, you are adding to the budget of the country. So, you cannot be saying that the cost of governance is too high and yet ask for more states.”
“We must think for once what will be of interest to the country. We must think of what will be of interest to Nigeria because what will work in one part of the country may not work in another. If we don’t think first of what is of interest to all of us before the individuals, we will only have series of conflicting argument without consensus.”
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