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Nigeria performed better under regional govt system –Umeh

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Okorocha is a pain in the neck of Imo people, Sen Umeh laments

A former Vice-Chairman of Senate Committee on Labour, Employment and Productivity, Senator Victor Umeh, has said Nigeria fared a lot better under the regional arrangement where governments were allowed to control resources found in their areas but only paid royalty to the central government.

Umeh, who is a former National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), told journalists that the 1966 coup d’état led by the late Major Kaduna Nzeogwu was the beginning of Nigeria’s problem.

He said the current arrangement where so much power is vested on the central government and at the expense of the states has not helped the country to achieve its potential.

He said: “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 at the centre.

“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 broke the regions 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.

“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.

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“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 was under the control of the regional government at that time.

“The whole clamour for restructuring today and the fair call for a 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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