NIGERIA'S CURRENT 36 STATE STRUCTURE SHOULD BE SCRAPPED BECAUSE IT ONLY FAVORS CIVIL SERVANTS, POLITICIANS AND GOVERNMENT APPOINTEES AND THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS.

"Osun State Will Not Pay State Workers March Salaries. According to Governor Rauf Aregbesola, the government will not be able to pay the State Secretariat's electricity bills, let alone its N2.6bn wage bill." Sahara Report

There are around 24 states with the same problem that Osun State is currently facing but we keep running away from the practical solutions to these problems.

The jamboree constitutional conference on which over N7 billion was wasted in 2014 only exposed the underbelly of some of our politicians especially those who call themselves Afenifere who had for many years championed the idea of restructuring our federal system into a true federal system with just 6 regions but by the time they got their share of the proverbial national cake at the Conference, they came out with a recommendation for the creation of over 80 states.

They literally sold their birth right for a morsel of bread like Esau did in the Bible. You have many states like Osun state struggling to pay PHCN bills not to talk of salaries yet some ineffectual buffoons and sell-outs are asking for another layer of bureaucracy and waste where an 80 state civil service structure will be created so that their family members can keep taking the CBN jobs, NCS jobs, NIS jobs, NNPC jobs and state civil service jobs as well as the government appointments at the state and federal level.

They want 80 states so that the looting turn-by-turn bazaar can come closer to their family members, while the ordinary people continue to wallow in misery and poverty. SHAME ON AFENIFERE, SHAME ON ALL THEIR LEADERS. THEY ARE A DISGRACE TO THE YORUBA RACE. 

This is why I have written severally, that we need to collapse the unsustainable 36-state structure into a 6-region structure with a significantly reduced civil service population.

Only 20% of the current civil service population at the state level will survive the reform. If we don't confront these issues frontally, then many states will continue to go round in circles, leading to constant labor strikes.

If a state is spending 95% of its revenue on the salaries of civil servants, elected or selected politicians and government appointees and only 5% on capital projects, education, agricultural development, health care delivery then that state cannot sustainably exist as one. 

The longer this faulty structure continues the poorer the ordinary citizens become and the richer the civil servants, politicians and political appointees become.

There is hard data that points to the monumental corruption that takes place in the civil service where people who earn meager salaries retire and end up with billions of naira in their bank accounts simply because they attained the position of a Director or Director General in a state Ministry.

It is these group of people who will fight tooth and nail to keep this structure intact and unchanged.

© Bunmi Awoyemi