36-state structure needless - Sanusi

CBN Governor, Mallam Lamido Sanusi

The Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Lamido Sanusi on Saturday, in Kaduna, kicked against the 36-state structure of the country, saying many of them were not economically viable.

Apparently reacting to a recent assertion by the Senate that most states of the federation had become insolvent, Sanusi also criticised the running of multiple ministries and local government councils as they constituted a drain on the country’s already parlous economy.

The CBN governor who spoke at a book launch stated that some drastic measures were urgently needed to overhaul the country’s current political structures.

Sanusi further said the creation of nine new federal universities when existing ones were not adequately funded was needless.

In his paper entitled: "Re-invigorating education in Nigeria: An essay in honour of Professor Adamu Baike" he said, "Ultimately, we will have to be confronted with the task of taking the difficult step of overhauling the political structures that we have.

"Do we need 36 states? Do we need the number of ministries that we have? Is an economy where states spends 96 per cent of their revenue paying civil servant an economy that is likely to grow in the long run? These are difficult questions that we need to ask.

"We have created states, local governments and ministries as structures that are economically unviable and the result is that we do not have funding for infrastructure, we do not have funding for education; we do not have funding for health."

"I don’t know how many people know that 70 per cent of the revenue of the Federal Government is spent paying salaries and overhead; leaving the remaining 30 per cent for 150 million Nigerians".

"The recent decision of the FG to establish nine additional universities will further increase the number of federal.

"It is not the place of the Central Bank Governor to comment on education policy. But one wonders the wisdom behind creating new universities when the ones we have built are still suffering from underfunding.

"Although there are no comprehensive data on the number of Nigerian students abroad, recent data have shown that there are about 71,000 Nigerian students in Ghana paying about N155bn annually as tuition fees as against the annual budget of N121bn for all federal universities.

"In other words, the tuition paid by Nigerian students studying in Ghana with a better organised system is more the annual budget of all federal universities in the country."

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