ABUJA – Mr Osita Chidoka, Corps Marshall of Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), on Tuesday called on the National Conference to recommend “conditional devolution of powers” by the Federal Government to states.
Chidoka, who appeared before Standing Committee on National Security and Transport, said the capacity of some states needed to be enhanced to handle some responsibilities.
He said the conference would be doing the best for the country by reducing some powers at the centre and devolving them to the states.
“When we talk about true federalism, there is no such word. It is an aberration, a contradiction in itself. There is either federalism or no federalism.
“So I think what we should be talking about is to create a federal state and there are options for us to create a federal state.
“The power of the Federal Government has gradually been going to the states and the local governments and it will continue to go.
“But we have to be careful when we talk about devolution of power. We should create national time-lines and standards for states to acquire certain powers,” he said.
Chidoka cautioned against giving powers to states that some of them would end up not being able to exercise effectively.
According to him, if it becomes obvious that a state cannot perform the responsibility given to it, then the centre should intervene.
“If states have capacities, we can devolve these powers to them.
“The state should show capacity and the Federal Government can devolve that power to them. We should put a time-line in our constitution for that.
“If a state wants to have a prison or fire service, it needs to have some basic requirements,’’ he said.
According to him, you can create a benchmark for Federal Government to allow states to carry out those responsibilities with a clause that the centre will intervene in case of failure.
He said there was nothing contradictory in what Nigeria was currently going through.
According to him, Nigeria is going through its own unique form of governance that requires a Nigerian unique approach.
The FRSC boss said previous conferences were not waste of time but had brought about some unique solutions to the country’s problems.
“Textbook examples are not going to work in Nigeria; what will work are pragmatic solutions.
“The constitutional conference of 1995 came up with the idea of six zones and it has come to stay.
“Today, we share things by the six zonal structures. It was never part of our constitution but it was a proposal brought at the conference that gave rise to this.
“We also created the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission through conference; it is very unique,’’ Chidoka said.
According to him, what we need to do is to continue to make that progress and that is what this country needs.
It was the aftermath of Nigerian civil war that led to the concentration of powers at the centre to ensure that no part had power to hold the rest of Nigeria to ransom.
“Therefore, the issue of exclusive list remains because of our history,” he said. (NAN)
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