Former Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba, SAN, has warned that except something is done and urgently too, Nigeria was on the verge of structural implosion, because the structures are no longer working.
Ndoma-Egba also observed that the nation was more of a unitary state than a federal state that it was supposed to be.
Ndoma-Egba, who stated this on Tuesday in an interview with journalists in Calabar, Cross River, said the unitary structure of Nigeria was even more enforced by the high number of items on the exclusive list against the items on the concurrent list.
Expressing worry over what he termed possible structural implosion, he said, “The structure is no longer working. We are are at the point of structural implosion more so as the economy has lost its productive capacity. Manufacturing is grounded and the economy’s absorptive capabilities are zero and unemployment soars by the day.
“Social infrastructure has collapsed, social indices are unimpressive and all these are reflective in the security situation and the value of the naira. Things will only get worse if we insist on retaining the current structure. We have to go back to the drawing board; we must restructure one way or the other.”
Speaking on the unitary nature of the system, Ndoma-Egba, who was leader of the 7th Senate from 2011 to 2015, said the unitary nature of the country has placed so much on the federal government, while it makes the states to be more dependent on the central government for economic survival even when they were considered federating units.
“Our situation now can be likened to a car whose engine has knocked and the owner is trying to fix brand new tyres in the car as a means of getting it to work. The so-called federal structure we have is no longer workable. The center is overburdened.
“It has become so unwieldy that more than seventy per cent of the federal expenditure goes to recurrent expenditure while less than thirty per cent is left for capital. Paradoxically, it is the capital budget that delivers development. With sixty-eight items in the exclusive and twenty nine in the concurrent lists, we have a more justifiable claim to being a unitary state than a federal one.
“The states, as federating units, have become absolutely dependent on federal allocations than their own internally generated revenues, what my friend and brother, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, refers to as feeding bottle federalism. The local government system across the country has completely collapsed leading to increased migration from the rural communities to state capitals, overstretching infrastructure and facilities beyond limits.”
THISDAY
