Chief Bode George, a former Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has faulted calls for the creation of 31 additional states in the country.
Speaking in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, on Sunday, the PDP chieftain said creation of additional states would not solve the country’s challenges, adding that it’s not sustainable.
Recall that the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu, had on Thursday said the House had received proposals for the creation of 31 new states.
Kalu said that six new states were proposed in the North Central, four in the North East, five in the North West ,five in the South South, five in the South East and seven in the South West.
Reacting, George said: “Don”t tell me we should create more states.Forget about more states.We want to create more states and then everybody will be rushing to Abuja.This is not sustainable.
“Let us look at our federal structure first,the same federal system we run with America.Why are we not running it as they run their own?
“Go to New York City, the Mayor of New York controls the airport ,the John Kennedy Airport,he controls the ports ,the sea ports.The Mayor of New York ,not the governor.
“Go to New Orleans,the mayor there controls the ports.The same in Texas ,all oil companies are not controlled by the President. That is federalism.Those people don’t run to Washington every hour to meet the President .
“In America, they have state police and even county police .Why can’t we have such here ? Creation of more states is not sustainable.What we need now is to address the problems in our federal structure,” he said.
He added, “There is no state in this country that The Almighty has not endowed. It is either agriculture or minerals or human resources.
“But the constitution of this country is not right.We need to revisit it and now allow all those states to manage themselves, manage their resources.”
