Nigeria Fared Well Under Regional Arrangement – Umeh

Former Vice Chairman Senate Committee on Labour, Employment and Productivity, Senator Victor Umeh, has said that Nigeria was a lot better under the arrangement where governments at the regional level were allowed to control resources found in their areas, but only had to pay royalty to the central government.

Umeh, a former national chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), who represented the people of Anambra Central for seventeen months in the 8th Senate, gave the indication in an interview.

The ex-parliamentarian lamented the situation as it obtains today where too much power is being vested at the centre, thereby giving the central government the leeway to run the country as a unitary system.  

He noted that the 1966 coup d’état which disrupted Nigeria’s democracy at that time was the beginning of the country’s problem.   

“If that coup hadn’t taken place, our problem may not have been this bad today. Even though there were challenges in the country before the coup, but Nigeria was running a regional system of government – a parliamentary system of government – and the regions were pursuing development aggressively devoid of any problem. We had eastern, western and northern regions. We also had the mid-western region which was later created.

“And all these regions were developing at their own paces with the resources available to them. They were contributing royalties to the Federal Government of Nigeria. You could see that the speed of development was quite high. And people controlled the resources available to them in their various regions. But, that coup that came in January 1966 overthrew the democratic government in place and brought in a military government headed by Aguiyi Ironsi.

“Military officers were appointed to head the regional governments as governors. Auiyi Ironsi was assassinated in the counter-coup of July 1966 and Yakubu Gowon took over as the leader of the Nigeria military government. Gowon balkanised Nigeria into 12 states. With that, the regional governments were scrapped! There was nothing like regional government any more. The federal military government started controlling the states,” Umeh said.

The APGA chieftain added: “There is the clamour for us today to return to regional government. And this is because in that regional government, there was minimum interference in the activities and governments of the regions by the federal government.

“Today, everything is centralized. It wasn’t so under the regional government. For instance, apart from the police at the federal level, we had regional police that were under the control of the regional government at that time. The whole clamour for restructuring today and the fair call for return to regional arrangement is because the arrangement we have now has not helped the country. You could see that without that coup the northern region would have done better than what the states in the north are doing today. The Northern Region, under the visionary leadership of the late Sardauna, Alhaji Sir Ahmadu Bello witnessed development. The Western Region did very well under Obafemi Awolowo.

“Under Michael Okpara, so much happened in the Eastern Region. And all the things they (the regional governments) achieved were from agric produce as the major source of income at that time. Nigeria was mainly an agrarian economy in the Northern, Eastern and Western regions. The Western Region had cocoa.

“The North had groundnut, cotton and other agric products, including cattle. The Eastern Region had palm produce, cassava and other agric products. So, the economy then revolved around agriculture. And things were a lot better. At least, those of us who were young before the war can tell you that life was better at that time than now.”

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